I would like to wish each of you a happy New Year and extend a special welcome to our new members. We are looking forward to an exciting year for NAFUSA, and hope that your engagement with NAFUSA this year will strengthen the ties that bind us together. I encourage you to stay involved and to contribute to the common purpose and vitality of our organization. Most importantly, I hope you will share the warm camaraderie of our membership and the rich personal and professional relationships that give us common cause. We have just concluded a very successful year and a terrific annual conference in Atlanta. I would like to thank Rick Deane again for his outstanding leadership this past year. I would also like to express my sincere appreciation to Rich Rossman for his remarkable commitment and service as our Executive Director. Rich really keeps our organization humming. And I am grateful for our engaged and committed Board that provides thoughtful and meaningful guidance on NAFUSA's policies and programs. It is an honor and privilege for me to have the opportunity to serve as your president in the year ahead.

 

We have a full year planned for 2013. As the year progresses, I hope you will reflect on your interest in being a more active participant in NAFUSA and consider possible service on a committee next year. We also have some new members on our Board that is very engaged and active and is a key driver of our programs and policies. Service on the Board has been a wonderful opportunity to share in the common experiences and rich heritage that we have as former United States Attorneys and to appreciate the special culture of NAFUSA rooted in our respect for the pursuit of justice and the role of the United States Attorney in our justice system.

 

We have scheduled a Board meeting in May to review the progress and plans of the organization, and importantly to advance the planning of our annual conference, which will be in Washington, DC, at the end of September. We hope you will be able to join us for the September meeting which promises to be a wonderful opportunity to advance your professional learning and to renew and enrich your personal and professional relationships. In part, we hope at that time to be able to share in understanding some of the issues and changes that lie ahead in the Justice Department community in what should be a dynamic year of a new Administration.

 

So we begin the year on a sound financial footing as an organization with a vibrant membership and a committed leadership. We will exercise our stewardship to maintain the financial health of the organization while seeking to expand our membership, provide a rich and rewarding professional program, and deepen the important personal and professional relationships that are the foundation of our common purpose. We encourage you to share in our events and the lives and professional activities of our members through our newsletter and website. I note, that in this era of partisan gridlock, it is reassuring that NAFUSA continues to flourish as a non-partisan organization comprised of both R's and D's who share a common commitment to support the independence of the U.S. Attorney and the pursuit of justice in our nation. I look forward to serving as your president in the year ahead and to engaging you in developing rich personal and professional relationships with your colleagues and rewarding professional experiences and opportunities through NAFUSA.

 

 

Jay B. Stephens

  

  

  

In a December 27, 2012 article in The Wall Street Journal, Heather Haddon writes Ex-Prosecutors Use Links To Forge a Path to Politics (sub req.) and notes that when NAFUSA member Susan Brooks is sworn in as a member of Congress on January 3, 2013,

she will join a sizable group of Republican politicians that has emerged from a tightknit cadre of former U.S. attorneys appointed by President George W. Bush. Of the 145 U.S. attorneys that Mr. Bush installed, 21 have moved on to elected office or political appointments.

Haddon calls NAFUSA member Chris Christie "the standard bearer for the group", and lists additional former Bush U.S. Attorneys in politics: Gov. Matt Mead of Wyoming, Rep. Thomas Marino of central Pennsylvania, George Holding, who won a House seat in North Carolina and Drew Wrigley, lieutenant governor of North Carolina.

 

"They have really bonded," NAFUSA Executive Director Rich Rossman is quoted as saying of the Bush II U.S. Attorneys.

  

Jim Letten, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, announced his resignation, effective December 18, 2012. Letten, the longest-serving U.S. Attorney in the nation, was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001 and reappointed by President Barack Obama. Letten has earned a reputation for a strong record in combatting public corruption, including the successful prosecution of former Gov. Edwin Edwards on bribery and racketeeing charges.

 

Letten's office has unfortunately been the focus of a recent allegations of inappropriate comments about active criminal cases under aliases at nola.com, the web site of The Times-Picayune newspaper. These allegations have led to the resignation of one of Letten's top assistants and the demotion of his first assistant. The Department of Justice named a federal prosecutor from Georgia to take over the investigation into the office's internal problems.

 

  

  

The Santa Fe NAFUSA conference in 2011 featured a two hour panel discussion on WikiLeaks. The above photo shows panelists Charlie Savage and Valerie Plame Wilson. More than a year later, issues relating to WikiLeaks continue in the news. In The New York Times on December 7, Savage co-authored with Scott Shane an article dealing with the on-going military proceedings at Fort Meade involving Private Bradley Manning. Read: In Wiki-Leaks Case, Defense Puts Jailers on Trial.

 

Savage and Shane write:

It seemed incongruous that he has essentially acknowledged responsibility for the largest leak of classified material in history. The material included a quarter-million State Department cables whose release may have chilled diplomats' ability to do their work discreetly but also helped fuel the Arab Spring; video of American helicopter crews shooting people on the ground in Baghdad who they thought were enemy fighters but were actually Reuters journalists; field reports on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and confidential assessments of the detainees locked up at Guant�namo Bay, Cuba.

The proceedings at Fort Meade involve a request by Manning's lawyer to dismiss the charges on the grounds that his pretrial treatment was unlawful. As The Times notes, that outcome appears unlikely. Manning still faces a court-martial, scheduled for March.

 

In a related development, Scott Shane reports in yesterday's Sunday New York Times front page article Ex-Officer is First from C.I.A. to Face Prison for a Leak that John C. Kiriakou, former C.I.A. officer, is scheduled to be sentenced to 30 months in prison as a result of his plea of guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Shane reports that Kiriakou had led the team that found terroritst Abu Zubaydah in 2002. He later became concerned about some of the tactics used in the war against terror, and first spoke out about waterboarding in 2007. He then became a source for some reporters, including Shane. He pled guilty to emailing the name of a covert C.I.A. officer to a free lance reporter, who did not publish it.

 

In writing of leak-related prosecutions during the Obabma Administration, Shane says:

 

Before Mr. Obama took office, prosecutions for disclosing classified information to the news media had been rare. That was a comforting fact for national security reporters and their sources, but a lamentable one for intelligence officials who complained that leaks damaged intelligence operations, endangered American operatives and their informants and strained relations with allied spy services.

 

 

By most counts, there were only three cases until recently: against Daniel Ellsberg and a colleague for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971; against Samuel Loring Morison, a Navy intelligence analyst, for selling classified satellite photographs to Jane's, the military publisher, in 1985; and against Lawrence Franklin, a Defense Department official, who was charged in 2005 with passing secrets to two officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group, who shared some of them with reporters.

 

Thus Mr. Obama has presided over twice as many such cases as all his predecessors combined, though at least two of the six prosecutions since 2009 resulted from investigations begun under President George W. Bush. An outcry over a series of revelations last year - about American cyberattacks on Iran, a double agent who infiltrated the Qaeda branch in Yemen and procedures for targeted killings - prompted Mr. Holder to begin new leak investigations that have not yet produced any charges.

 

The resulting chill on officials' willingness to talk is deplored by journalists and advocates of open government; without leaks, they note, Americans might never have learned about the C.I.A.'s interrogation methods or the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping. But for supporters of greater secrecy, the chill is precisely the goal.

 

As for Julian Assange, Savage and Shane report:

As the military pursues the case against Private Manning, the Justice Department continues to explore the possibility of charging WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, or other activists with the group, possibly as conspirators in Private Manning's alleged offense. Federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Va., are still assigned to that investigation, according to law enforcement officials, but it is not clear how active they have been lately in presenting evidence to a grand jury.

 

 

 

 

 

  

The Supreme Court announced on December 7, 2012,  that it would accept two cases challenging state and federal laws that define marriage to include only unions of a man and a woman.

 

One of the cases, from California, was filed in 2009 by NAFUSA member Theodore B. Olson, shown right, former solicitor general of the United States, and David Boies. After a lengthy trial, a federal district judge ruled in favor of the plaintifffs, holding that the Constitution required the state of California to allow same-sex couples to marry, despite an effort by California voters to override a decision by the state's Supreme Court. A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed the decision.

 

The second case involves an appeal from the Second Circuit which struck down the Defense of Marriage Act which defines marriage as between only a man and a woman for the purposes of federal laws and programs. In February 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Department would no longer defend the statute in court. House Republicans intervened and retained Paul D. Clement, another former solicitor general to defend the law

 

As Adam Liptak, who spoke at NAFUSA's New York conference in 2010, wrote in the New York Times:

The court's docket is now crowded with cases about the meaning of equality, with the new cases joining ones on affirmative action in higher education and on the future of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Decisions in all of the cases are expected by June.

  

 

 NAFUSA member Bob Barr, shown above at the Santa Fe conference with Jeri admiring his New Mexican hat, has teamed up with Mary McCarthy, a former high-ranking intelligence official, in an Op-Ed piece published by The Christian Science Monitor entitled How to protect Americans from anti-terrorism data sharing.

 

Barr and McCarthy describe fusion centers as "state and regionally based information-sharing hubs designed to pool the knowledge and expertise of state, local, and federal law enforcement, intelligence agencies, military officials, and private sector entities." But they opine that the centers are not being run properly and pose "very real risks" to civil liberties. They propose remedies to fix the perceived problems.

 

The editorial relies heavily on the Recommendations for Fusion Centers: Preserving Privacy & Civil Liberties While Protecting Against Crime & Terrorism report released by The Constitution Project's Liberty and Security Committee. Barr and McCarthy are members of the committee, as are NAFUSA members Asa Hutchinson and William Sessions.

 

Barr served as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia 1986-1990, and as a member of Congress (R-Ga.).

 

  

 

Two of Milwaukee's former United States Attorneys have formed a new law practice. Steven Biskupic (shown left) and Michelle Jacobs (shown below), both former long-time federal prosecutors and more recently partners at one of Wisconsin's top private firms, have opened Biskupic & Jacobs, S.C.

 

 

The new firm will concentrate on complex business disputes, government investigations, appellate work, and white collar criminal defense.

 

Combined, Biskupic and Jacobs have more than 40 years of legal experience. Both served as assistant United States attorneys for more than 10 years each. Biskupic then served as the United States Attorney from 2002 to 2009, and Jacobs succeeded him, serving from 2009-10.

 

Both have a wealth of experience on some of Wisconsin's most high profile cases. Biskupic was the lead prosecutor on more than two dozen public corruption cases, securing convictions of four Milwaukee aldermen, the Kenosha County executive, and seven Milwaukee police officers involved in the beating of Frank Jude. More recently, while in private practice, Biskupic was involved in recall and removal-related matters involving high level public officials. In one matter, he served as special prosecutor for the Sheboygan Common Council's proceedings to remove its mayor.

 

Jacobs has successfully argued more than 75 appellate cases, both civil and criminal, including the case against former Milwaukee alderman Michael McGee Jr. Jacobs has also tried a large number of civil and criminal cases, including regulatory, white collar, and business related matters.

 

Biskupic is a Marquette University Law School graduate. Jacobs is a University of Wisconsin Law School graduate.

 

Gary Grindler, Attorney General Eric Holder's chief of staff, announced that he is leaving the Department of Justice, effective December 5, 2012. He has served as the chief of staff to the attorney general since January 2011. He was named acting deputy attorney general in 2010 after the departure of David Ogden. He previously served in a number of positions at DOJ, including as a deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division.

 

Grindler will be replaced by Margaret Richardson, currently the deputy chief of staff. Richardson joined DOJ in early 2009. She previously directed the Clean Slate Clinic at the East Bay Community Law Center in Berkeley, Calif. She has been a counselor to the attorney general since January 2009.