Word: marston
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...critics' principal target has been the Administration's inept firing of Philadelphia's Republican U.S. Attorney, David W. Marston, who had been digging into political corruption in Pennsylvania. But Civiletti, a former Baltimore attorney who has headed the Justice Department's criminal division for a year, has quite persuasively, and usually patiently, explained again and again that he had nothing to do with Marston's dismissal. In fact, when the Marston controversy became a national political issue, Civiletti was in South Korea interviewing Rice Broker Tongsun Park about the Korean influence-buying scandal...
...Jimmy Carter and his Attorney General Griffin Bell. But when the Senate Judiciary Committee began to consider Benjamin R. Civiletti's nomination as Deputy Attorney General last week, the mood was surprisingly low-key. Only a narrow attack was mounted on the ouster of Philadelphia's U.S. Attorney, David Marston, the issue expected to dominate the hearings this week. Said Wyoming Republican Senator Malcolm Wallop: "There was no reason why Marston should not have been fired as a Republican; the only question is the timing...
Civiletti, 42, a quietly 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...