Word: kearney
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Police discovered that one victim -John LaMay, 17-had been seen in the company of two homosexuals: Patrick Kearney, 37, an electronics engineer for the Hughes Aircraft Co., and his roommate, David Hill, 34, unemployed. In May, as the investigation went on, Kearney quit his job and took off with Hill for El Paso, Texas, where they went into hiding. But last week the two men were arraigned for murder. They had calmly walked into a sheriffs office in Riverside, Calif., and pointed to their photographs on a nearby wanted poster. Said Hill: "We're them...
Last week, the first felony indictment of an agent in the bureau's 69-year history was returned by a New York City grand jury. John J. Kearney, 55, a retired FBI special-unit supervisor, was named on five counts of illegal wiretapping, conspiracy and intercepting mail in the course of a futile hunt for Weather Underground terrorists between 1970 and 1972. Additional indictments of FBI officials, possibly reaching as high as the assistant director level, are expected soon. The message: Violations of the law, even in the name of law enforcement, are no longer to be automatically tolerated...
Dirty Dozen. Attorney General Griffin Bell announced the Kearney indictment after informing Jimmy Carter. The yearlong investigation of Kearney and other agents was led by J. Stanley Pottinger, assistant Attorney General for civil rights under Presidents Nixon and Ford. Last year FBI Director Clarence Kelley assured Congress that all bureau abuses had been uncovered. But then a Socialist Workers Party lawsuit produced new, damning evidence of repeated "black bag jobs," or illegal break-ins, by FBI agents in several cities. Pottinger was permitted to assemble a task force of Justice Department lawyers and FBI agents to probe bureau excesses, starting...
Ironically, the Kearney indictment came twelve weeks after the Justice Department dropped its inquiry into the illegal opening of more than 200,000 letters by CIA agents from 1953 to 1973. The outcome of the Kearney case, and others likely to follow, is difficult to predict. When-and indeed if-the case actually comes to trial, notes Washington Attorney Edward P. Morgan, it will still be doubtful "whether an American jury will convict an FBI man for trying to combat terrorism...
Despite considerable internal pressure to kill the indictments, Attorney General Griffin Bell endorsed the investigators' recommendations and permitted Kearney's indictment. But this indictment represents only a small, if commendable, first step in the necessary process of bringing the FBI officials responsible for illegal activities to a full and complete accounting of their actions. The investigation must continue unimpeded...