The Last Trusted Prosecutor in Washington
Excerpt: John Durham may be the most consequential and least known figure in Washington right now. In May, U.S. attorney general William Barr selected Durham, a longtime prosecutor with a résumé so sterling it nearly glows, to investigate the origins of the special counsel’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and whether it was properly predicated. (...) By 2000, Durham had built a reputation as one of the country’s best prosecutors, and he got the call from FBI director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno to handle one of the Department of Justice’s most infamous cases: the claim that FBI agents had protected notorious Boston gangster Whitey Bulger, even as Bulger continued to commit violent crimes. This was a jaw-dropping tale of corruption that later inspired the film The Departed and was also dramatized in Black Mass. U.S. Attorney Donald Stern had recommended Durham for the job, and he told the Associated Press in an interview years later, “We didn’t go to Washington with a list. We went to Washington and said, ‘We want John Durham to do it.’" John Le Carré wrote in The Russia House, ‘Some things are necessary evils, some things are more evil than necessary.’ That is the fundamental question of what was going on in Boston,” Durham said in his lecture at the University of St. Joseph. The Boston scandal represented the Bureau’s nightmare scenario. FBI special agent John Connolly Jr. had grown up in South Boston with mobsters James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, as well as Whitey Bulger’s younger brother William Bulger, who was elected to the state house in 1960 and state senate in 1970. [Jim Geraghty has written what is likely the longest in-depth profile of Durham ever produced. This almost reads like a thriller you’d expect to have John Grisham or Tom Clancy listed as the author, but it’s all true and verifiable. Amazingly, Durham was even praised by AG Eric Holder. You really do want to read this. Ron P.]
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment