Border politics may have been her downfall

From the moment she took over as U.S. attorney in San Diego in 2002, Carol Chien-Hua Lam made no secret that white-collar crime would be her top priority -- including transgressions by prominent business and political figures.

And she was as good as her word, prosecuting corporate targets, local officials and a U.S. congressman, Republican Randy “Duke” Cunningham of Rancho Santa Fe, who is in prison as a result of her efforts.

Lam, however, was recently fired, one of eight U.S. attorneys ousted by the Justice Department in what has become another headache for the Bush administration.

Congressional Democrats have challenged the firings, questioning whether aggressive prosecutors were removed for political reasons.

Lam’s case has political overtones, but it also reflects a more complicated reality: a conflict over what the priorities of federal prosecutors should be and who should set them. In her case, pursuing white-collar crime at the expense of border crime, illegal immigration and gun violence.

California, with its cutting-edge business community and overnight fortunes, is fertile ground for white-collar crime and corruption.

At the same time, the state has some of the most active border crossings in the nation and big problems with drugs, smuggling, immigration and gang violence, issues that have been on the front burner of the Justice Department and the White House.

Heading into last year’s midterm election, President Bush and his political strategists were struggling with a rebellion by conservative Republicans over immigration policy. The White House goal was to demonstrate toughness on border crime and security.

The record suggests Lam did not see things that way.

For one thing, she apparently took the appointment as U.S. attorney as a favor to Republican officials after several candidates were eliminated. And she always had an independent streak.

Associates said she also had a low opinion of the endless cases of border crime and was seemingly tone deaf to the rising political furor over illegal immigration.

That inevitably meant a conflict not only with Justice Department but with other federal law enforcement agencies involved in border security.

“They’re clapping like seals now that she’s gone,” said one federal official in San Diego, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he works closely with the U.S. attorney’s office there. “The Border Patrol. Customs.... They couldn’t be happier.”

Charles La Bella, who was interim U.S. attorney in San Diego under President Clinton in the late 1990s and who squared off against Lam in a high-profile case involving allegations of kickbacks by hospital officials, said he sensed that she was not paying attention to the border.

He said that when he headed the U.S. attorney’s office, he learned the importance of border and immigration issues.

“But there she was in court with me all the time” at the kickback trial, which went on for months, he said.

‘Very, very formal’

Lam, 45, has always followed her own compass.

The daughter of parents who came from Shanghai before the communists overran China, she grew up in New Jersey, was educated at Yale University and moved to California to attend law school at Stanford University.

She signed on as an assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego in 1986 and worked for 14 years, winning a name for herself not on border cases, where many of her peers started out, but for landing bigger fish.

In 1990, she helped put away an accused mobster for money laundering.

In 1992, she won a guilty plea from the president of a La Jolla-based laboratory in a billing fraud case.

Some former prosecutors remember Lam acting as if she were too good to be bothered by border cases.

Nor is she remembered for her camaraderie.

“She was not an outgoing person,” recalled one prosecutor who now works in another border city. “You could stop her in the hall and chat, but it was always very, very formal.”

In 2000, Lam became a Superior Court judge in San Diego. Two years later, when she emerged as a compromise candidate for the U.S. attorney job, she told the San Diego Union-Tribune that one of the most important lessons she learned as a judge was that hard sentences deterred criminals. She once sentenced a notorious bank robber to 175 years.

The big cases came her way as the top federal prosecutor.

The largest prize was Cunningham, a longtime congressman and a Vietnam War hero caught up in a bribery and tax-evasion scandal. He pleaded guilty and was given an eight-year sentence.

The day before she left office Feb. 15, she announced the indictments of two of Cunningham’s alleged co-conspirators.

“High government positions and powerful connections should not be tickets to corrupt self-enrichment,” she said. “The public trust is not for sale.”

Border questions

Although such cases were making national headlines, critics said the U.S. attorney’s office seemed to have gone missing on the border.

A Border Patrol report last May found that 6% of the 289 suspected smugglers arrested in the San Diego area were prosecuted by her office in the fiscal year ending in September 2003.

“It is very difficult to keep agents’ morale up,” the report said.

Some lawyers recalled seeing prosecutors ask for lenient sentences -- sometimes less than 11 months -- for repeat smugglers, including one with 20 arrests, just to clear cases.

“People were astounded sitting in the courtroom to see how many times people were getting away with things,” said one lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he works closely with the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego.

Lam was criticized by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said the U.S. attorney was not keeping up with the high volume of border arrests.

In July, Darryl Griffen, head of the Border Patrol in San Diego, complained that too many smugglers and other criminals were being escorted back to Mexico.

Lam’s performance evaluation report for 2005, written in Washington, said the number of immigration cases her office was handling was “statistically lower” than those of other border districts, even though San Diego has one of the largest and most open borders.

She disagreed with the evaluation and maintained that she was tough on border crimes.

On Tuesday, Lam testified on Capitol Hill with other recently fired federal prosecutors. She acknowledged complaints from the Border Patrol agents’ labor union about her decision last year to reduce prosecutions of low-level “coyotes” used in smuggling operations.

She said her office did not have the resources to keep up with the demand for more border trials.

Lam is now senior vice president and legal counsel for Qualcomm Inc., the San Diego-based telecommunications company.

richard.serrano@latimes.com