-Caveat Lector-
[ I do not know enough about this case to have an opinion, but this is an
entirely different slant on it ... ]
Chicago Tribune
June 17, 2001 Sunday
CHICAGOLAND FINAL EDITION
The only scandal was this hearing
By: James Warren.
Indiana's cantankerous Rep. Dan Burton was unavailable to chair the House
Government Reform Committee for personal reasons Friday. His Republican
colleague, Christopher Shays, wasn't so lucky.
With Burton's beaming portrait hovering over him, Connecticut's earnest and
politically moderate Shays stepped in to oversee a four-hour hearing of
such
dispiriting ignominy that he can knock on wood it went virtually uncovered
by media. It thus might not filter back to constituents in leafy Greenwich
or New Canaan who are possibly concerned about basic fairness or efficient
use of their tax dollars.
The hearing was titled "The Use of Prosecutorial Power in the Investigation
of Joseph M. Gersten." It was, Shays explicitly opined at the start, a case
study of how "prosecutorial zeal to achieve a preordained conclusion
appears
to have resulted in the suppression of obviously exculpatory facts."
What it proved to be was a mountain of innuendo and hyperbole that so
crumbled in the face of facts that even Shays would come mercifully close
to
disavowing the very staff report that prompted the session. If the panel's
majority GOP, especially its apparently dogged staff, have a sliver of
shame, they might ponder a) visiting a parish priest, b) getting loaded on
a
vat of grain alcohol, or c) taking brief unpaid leaves of absence.
It was that bad.
The fittingly unseemly background to Friday's legislative misadventure
involves Joe Gersten, a once-prominent Miami-Dade County politician who
left
the country in 1993 after a drugs and sex scandal and his defeat for
re-election as a county commissioner.
The scandal was prompted by Gersten's filing a report with police that his
blue Mercedes-Benz had been stolen one evening from in front of his house
in
a nice Coral Gables neighborhood. But the next day it was found in the
possession of two prostitutes and a pimp, who had the correct car keys--and
Gersten's wallet, gun and briefcase, with nude photos of a man.
That didn't make sense to the cops, because the three were not the sort to
be found in that neighborhood. In addition, they had pawned Gersten's gold
necklace, sports jacket and slacks, which he had bought early that evening
at a dry cleaner (now there's a full-service cleaner!).
When other elements were thrown in, it became clear that Gersten's claim of
car theft was an attempt to hide from his fiance and others the truth: that
he had been in a distinctly different part of town and had been fleeced at
a
crack house while with at least one prostitute.
But Gersten declined to answer questions, and a warrant was issued to get
him to talk about his theft report. And while prosecutors realized that the
four witnesses to Gersten's apparent crack house foray were all slimeballs
and would make bringing a case on solicitation of prostitution unlikely,
they wanted to talk to him.
In what for prosecutors was an unrelated matter of no consequence, a
15-year-old witness suggested that Gersten might have been involved in a
recent murder. But he recanted that claim within 90 minutes.
Hit with a contempt of court citation, Gersten fled to Australia and
portrayed himself as a victim of prosecutors, including the chief
prosecutor
in the county at the time, one Janet Reno.
His saga has convinced some Australian media, if not the courts, which
again
last week spurned his attempt to gain refugee status and thus allow him to
stay permanently. And he has seemingly conned a combination Sydney
doctor/human-rights activist who came to Washington and convinced Burton
that Gersten's was a tale of injustice.
As Senate Democrats are being reminded, there's power in majority status,
like spearheading investigations. Burton became notorious during the
Clinton
years for what appeared to be wild goose chases. Those included pursuing a
belief that White House lawyer Vincent Foster had been murdered--one reason
Democrats claimed that interest in Gersten surely reflected apparent animus
toward Reno, who is mulling a run for Florida governor.
The Republican majority staff report, which has been available for many
weeks on www.house.gov/reform, is a screed, even if conceivably
well-intentioned. It could stand as a testament to the need for government
reform. The notion that it may dwell on Web sites ad infinitum,
unchallenged
and with even prudent readers not realizing its awful flaws, inspires
dyspepsia.
It concludes that law enforcers "purposely ignored significant exculpatory
information in their investigations" of Gersten; "failed to investigate the
attempt to frame Gersten for murder"; that the local state's attorney
"appears to be engaged in an ongoing effort to withhold significant
information from Congress"; and that local bar associations should look
into
ethical misconduct by the prosecutors.
The report was crafted and released without the testimony of the key law
enforcers on the case. They could only answer the questions of Burton's
staff at this hearing, after being stunned by the report blasting them and
refusing to cooperate in advance of the hearing, insisting they be
subpoenaed to testify fully in public.
On Friday, they had their chance, shredding Shays and crew.
Richard Gregorie, a much-lauded longtime federal prosecutor who was part of
the prosecution of Panama's Manuel Noriega, offered detail after detail
that
left little doubt that Gersten's car was not stolen.
Gersten's claim was the fiction of a man "caught between a rock and a hard
place" who refused to talk even when given immunity and whose lawyer tried
to persuade Gregorie and Reno to go soft because he had a drug problem.
Then there was Mary Cagle, an assistant state's attorney who was Gregorie's
boss back then and was picked by Republican Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to serve
on a Public Corruption Study Commission.
She noted that the harsh 26-page staff report was "compiled without giving
any of the prosecutors involved an opportunity to address the committee's
concerns." She underscored how Gersten was never charged with anything,
highlighting an especially slimy section of the report that intimates her
office illegally removed from the case file a potentially relevant
document.
Even when that document surfaced, it became clear that it says absolutely
nothing about the basic issue of whether Gersten lied about the theft
claim.
As for the report's notion that Gersten was partly a victim due to a
potential murder frame-up, in which he might face "the electric chair," she
cited the patently obvious: There was never any murder investigation
involving Gersten.
With Burton-like oiliness, Shays requested that a portion of the
15-year-old's interrogation by a homicide investigator be placed on screens
around the room:
"THEN THE FBI TRYING TO SET UP THE MAN FOR SOMETHING HE DIDN'T DO," was the
quote Shays excerpted.
Shays tried to make much of this, to imply that the FBI had some suspicious
role in all this, even paying off one prostitute with $400 (a claim that
was
not proved).
But one was left concluding that an untrustworthy juvenile, given to
hanging
with crack addicts and prostitutes, was concocting an incredible
assertion--one the prosecutors in the auto theft case didn't know about and
would not have cared about if they had known.
As the hearing plodded on, it degenerated into what in these environs is
name-calling, between Shays and Henry Waxman, a Los Angeles Democrat.
Waxman
wondered why Congress' time was being spent on this matter and scoffed at
the GOP, in a turnaround from a few years ago now defending a public
official for lying to cover up sex.
By day's end, Shays, a far more sensible fellow than Burton, was saying
that, yes, perhaps such a report would not have been issued if he had been
the real chairman. But, of course, his majority staff are wonderful,
hard-working fellows, blah, blah, blah.
Oh, there was a fourth witness, a retired but straight-from-Central Casting
homicide detective named Mike Osborn. He had interviewed the 15-year-old
and, he told Shays and Waxman, the kid's murder theory "was a crock."
Succinct thought. So was the hearing.
=======================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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