Word: eilberg
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...decisive trial lawyer plucked from private practice in Baltimore on the recommendation of Carter Adviser Charles Kirbo, had his brief encounter with the Marston affair while serving as head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. Marston had told a Civiletti aide, Russell ("Tim") Baker, that Pennsylvania Congressman Joshua Eilberg was involved in a corruption investigation. Carter and Bell have said they did not know that Eilberg was a target at the time they agreed to his request to dump Marston. But what escaped their notice is another question...
...sworn statement, Baker claimed he passed the word about Marston's investigation of Eilberg to Civiletti last August and again in November?shortly after Eilberg leaned on Carter. Civiletti swore he did not gather from the first conversation that Eilberg was himself under investigation, and said he did not recall any subsequent conversation with Baker about Eilberg. The contradiction led New York Times Columnist William Safire to draw a harsh conclusion last week: "Ben Civiletti or Tim Baker?one, not both?is telling the truth [and]deserves advancement, while the other ought to be receiving, rather than dishing out, criminal...
There are other signs of ineptitude as well. Quite apart from Marston's probe in Philadelphia, Justice investigators in Washington became aware late last year that Eilberg and his fellow Pennsylvania Democrat Daniel J. Flood were both candidates for investigation. Following a federal bribery conviction, a former Flood aide named Stephen Elko arrived at the department offering to tell tales?in exchange for immunity from further prosecution?that implicated Flood and Eilberg. Yet by all accounts, this information did not travel up the department hierarchy in time to warn Bell and Carter away from the urgings of Eilberg, whose telephone...
...believed the investigation was still in its preliminary stages at the time; that there was no change in its status from when he was first informed of it in August. He also swears he twice told the head of the criminal division, Benjamin Civiletti, about the investigation of Eilberg. "My notes indicate that I reported my conversation with Marston to Mr. Civiletti some time on or after November 25, 1977," Baker has stated...
...NATION'S highest law enforcers present contradictory testimonies, each anxious that the Justice Department will not be held responsible for failing to inform Carter of the Eilberg investigation, and the nation is to believe in the integrity of its servants? We are left with the distinct impression of a rather messy cover-up in two branches of the federal government--the judiciary and executive--and we are to believe the days of Watergate are over...