Word: lacey
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SEVENTY-FOUR-YEAR-OLD FREDERICK B. Lacey is America's leading justice-for-rent. The retired federal judge has been hired to lead investigations of sensitive cases ranging from the Iraq-gate scandal to Michael Jordan's gambling activities. But Lacey 's handling of his most challenging role, federal supervision of the 1.4 million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters, has provoked debate about whether Lacey and his justice Department employers have gone soft in their handling of America's most corrupt union...
Criticism of Lacey's judgment has been building since last July, when he issued a 79-page report exonerating Teamsters boss Ron Carey, a self-styled reformer, from allegations that he is linked to organized crime. Lacey conducted his probe as the leader of the Independent Review Board, the three-member federally created agency that polices the union. While the board's report criticized Carey for some dishonesty in matters relating to his real estate dealings, it accepted his denials regarding the Mob. Critics in the union described Lacey 's report as a whitewash, while Carey claimed...
...TIME has obtained a private letter written by Lacey in April 1994, amid his investigation of Carey, that raises questions about his impartiality. The letter was a warning to Thomas Puccio, one of two court-appointed trustees of a Teamsters local (the other: Michael Moroney, a labor-racketeering investigator) who were threatening to go public with materials allegedly linking Carey to a former Mafia boss. During a conversation in March 1994, Lacey reminded Puccio in the letter, "I told you that I thought you and Mr. Moroney ought to have in mind what would happen if you brought Carey down...
Puccio declines to discuss the letter, which he considers "confidential," but he, appears satisfied with Lacey 's report. Says he: "I don't have any doubt that the investigation was sufficient enough to satisfy the standards they were trying to satisfy...
...where, though? Stay tuned, said Dole. "We'll flesh things out as we go along." Says the candidate's chief strategist, Bill Lacey: "Our only vulnerability would be if we don't have a viable message." It may be that the sum of Dole's rhetoric never coheres into a concrete plan of action; yet setting a tone is the requisite beginning of a "viable message," and that's what Dole was about last week...