Aloof U.S. Attorney Broadens Scope and Influence of Office

Robert C. Bonner had been U.S. attorney in Los Angeles barely three months when he tossed his first grenade--proposing to merge an elite, independent strike force of organized-crime prosecutors into his own law enforcement empire.

The grenade was lobbed right back at him, still smoking. Associate Atty. Gen. Stephen Trott, Bonner’s predecessor in Los Angeles and his boss in Washington, told reporters that the strike force was just fine where it was.

There was talk that Bonner, whose public criticism of the investigation into auto maker John Z. DeLorean’s alleged narcotics trafficking had already raised eyebrows at the Justice Department, had done it again.

Bonner did not make any more public statements about taking over the organized-crime strike force. Many assumed that the proposal had died--until a month ago, when Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III ordered strike force chiefs throughout the nation to begin reporting to the U.S. attorney in their district.

There had been no public pronouncements, no posturing, no fanfare, but many of those closest to Bonner say it was his quiet lobbying over several years that produced the change.

Bonner’s low-key power brokering was in many ways typical of the style he has developed as chief federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.

Concluding his first four-year term as U.S. attorney, the once-controversial lawyer has developed a reputation as an aggressive, frequently combative prosecutor, who has brought unprecedented visibility to the office. But he is also a man who, for all his public overtures, has in the end a stronger affinity for the cerebral than the dramatic.

Criticized by some of his own staff attorneys as too aloof, too unapproachable, disinclined to make public shows of appreciation for the heavy workloads he demands, Bonner is at the same time credited with bringing a new level of professionalism to the office that oversees criminal and civil law enforcement throughout Southern California.

As U.S. attorney, Bonner, 46, has:

- Presided over an unprecedented wave of prosecutions of white-collar crime.

- Focused federal law enforcement efforts on bribery, kickbacks and overbilling within the region’s defense industry.

- More than tripled the manpower as signed to narcotics cases.

- Overseen what is widely regarded as one of California’s most significant political corruption investigations in several decades.

During Bonner’s tenure, federal prosecutions have moved increasingly away from the comfortable staples of federal law enforcement--”buy-bust” narcotics transactions, bank robberies and counterfeiting--and focused increasingly on complex, difficult prosecutions, such as drug-money laundering, securities fraud and boiler-room solicitations.

Federal attorneys in Los Angeles now are more likely to be Ivy League law school graduates than crusty career prosecutors. They spend as much time involved as active partners in long-running criminal investigations as they do in the courtroom; their cases often depend more on crafty paper trail analysis than dramatic undercover stings.

Yet the office, under Bonner’s stewardship, has enjoyed a conviction rate of more than 98%. Well over 80% of the 1,000 criminal indictments the office obtains each year result in guilty pleas, but even among those that go to trial, the conviction rate nears 90%.

“Under his tutelage, it has become an aggressive prosecutor’s office, and I think, pretty much, you could say aggressive on all fronts,” said Vincent J. Marella, a defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor who worked with Bonner during Bonner’s years as an assistant U.S. attorney.

Serious Minded

“He’s much more of an experienced, serious-minded prosecutor than other appointments over the past years,” said another member of the federal defense Bar, S. Thomas Pollack.

“I don’t think he’s like his counterpart in New York, (Rudolph W.) Guiliani,” Pollack added. “I don’t sense that (Bonner) is a driven political figure.

“I think he’s just, he’s outspoken in the good sense of the term, and that is that he’s thoughtful, he speaks fairly freely about what’s on his mind.

“So whatever run-ins he may have had early on with the Administration were probably more a function of being thoughtful and outspoken about what he thought than any intent to make a lot of press or take on the Establishment.”

Not that Bonner has shunned the limelight. Far from it. He has hired the office’s first full-time public relations person and courted coverage of cases from prestigious national news outlets like “60 Minutes.” Nearly every indictment the office handles is distributed to reporters, accompanied by a news release. Press conferences are scheduled almost twice a month.

Increased Visibility

“I think I have increased the visibility of the office, and it’s not because of a desire on my part for personal glorification, or anything like that,” Bonner said.

“It’s always seemed to me that a very large part of what we do in the U.S. attorney’s office is calculated to achieving deterrence, dissuading individuals who might be inclined to commit certain kinds of federal crimes from doing so, because there is a consequence to it.”

A few among the 110 assistant U.S. attorneys in the office express private doubts about Bonner’s press policies, complaining that it is often easier for reporters than prosecutors to get an appointment with Bonner.

At the same time, few on the staff are critical of Bonner’s unusual decision to personally take on the case that generated more public attention than any other during his tenure: the trial of former FBI Agent Richard Miller on espionage charges.

Hung Jury

Bonner, in a move nearly unprecedented for a U.S. attorney in an office the size of Los Angeles, spent seven months in the courtroom personally trying the case--a trial period unexpectedly extended when a hung jury led to a mistrial in the first go-round.

Some judges and lawyers have called Bonner’s decision to try the case a mistake, arguing that he needlessly risked his own reputation for what one lawyer called “self-promotion,” while ignoring his responsibilities as an administrator.

“My analysis essentially was that given the fact that not only was it an espionage case, but involved an agent of the FBI, that it was a very important, a very sensitive case,” Bonner said, “and (I felt) that if I were ever going to go down and try anything, that there would be no more important case in the office while I was U.S. attorney as a prosecution.”

As a trial lawyer, Bonner displayed anything but his usual reserve, frequently exploding into booming oratory, engaging in spirited cross-examinations and drawing a tongue-lashing from U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon for bullying the defense.

The corps of staff prosecutors within the office was jubilant.

‘Banging Heads’

“I think trying the Miller case was helpful to the morale in the office, because he was going down there and banging heads with defense lawyers, just the way the rest of us do,” Assistant U.S. Atty. David Katz said.

Russell Hayman, an assistant who tried the Miller case with Bonner, said:

“I was very impressed that the U.S. attorney, the chief prosecutor of the office, would get down in the trenches, if you will, to the extent where he was working with me late into the night, sometimes all day Sunday, sometimes Saturday too, doing the things that have to be done to prosecute a case vigorously.”

With much of his time spent in the courtroom, Bonner was at the same time overseeing what would be one of the most important grand jury investigations of his tenure--a probe of allegations that General Dynamics Corp. had fraudulently charged the government on a contract for the Sgt. York anti-aircraft gun.

The probe eventually led to the widely publicized indictment of the corporation and four of its top officers, including former National Aeronautics and Space Administration Administrator James Beggs, on criminal fraud charges.

But in what was clearly one of the most embarrassing episodes of Bonner’s tenure, the indictment was dismissed on the government’s own motion last summer when federal authorities admitted that there was reason to believe that General Dynamics’ contract charges may have been legal after all.

Egg on Face

“He really had egg on his face,” said one lawyer in private practice. “Rob was advised from the beginning, look, this is simply a customary way of billing the government, you’re really acting under some false assumptions, and you owe it to yourself to check it out before you go running around alleging fraud.”

Most of those closest to the case say that if there is blame to be apportioned, most of it rests with the Justice Department’s fraud section in Washington, which supervised the investigation.

But Bonner himself refuses to pass off responsibility.

“I suppose I’d like to say that it was all Washington, but it wasn’t, it was a joint effort,” he said. “Frankly, I think that one is appropriately criticized anytime you bring an indictment and you later determine you can’t follow through with it.”

To some lawyers who have worked with him, the General Dynamics case pointed up, more than anything else, Bonner’s ability to be fair: to be a lawyer first, an advocate second.

Howard Weitzman, the lawyer who handed Bonner’s administration its first significant setback with DeLorean’s acquittal on cocaine conspiracy charges, recalled how Bonner approached him after Weitzman’s closing argument in the highly publicized trial.

“He said, ‘I just want you to know that was a brilliant argument,’ ” Weitzman recalled.

Voted for Acquittal

And after the jury voted for acquittal, he said, “Rob was one of the few people from the government to compliment and congratulate me on the results--as a lawyer--although he clearly felt that the verdict should have been different.”

“To me, that’s a real class act,” Weitzman said.

Stanley Greenberg, one of the lawyers who battled Bonner during the Miller trial, was not as complimentary, saying Bonner “overall . . . has done a good job” but accusing him of using news conferences “as the first step in jury selection.”

“Rightly or wrongly, he has used his frequent news conferences to the advantage of the prosecution,” Greenberg said. “By having a press conference, he’s conveying to the jury pool the prosecution’s view of the case and, frequently, the evidence.”

Bonner’s early media campaigns elicited some grumbling in Washington, but Trott, who left Los Angeles to take over the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said the grumbling has not reflected badly on Bonner.

“Rob has his own views on things, which I think is great. You don’t want a lot of yes men saying ‘Right, right’ all the time. . . . Rob is a guy who’ll ask . . . ‘Do we still need this? Isn’t there a better way to do this?’

Respect Views

“I still disagree with him on some of the issues, but I respect his views. They’re the views of a professional,” Trott said.

“I think he’s been independent, and that’s a good quality for a U.S. attorney,” said Chief U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real, himself a former U.S. attorney in Los Angeles. “All of the wisdom does not reside east of the Potomac. . . . I’d describe him as a very good, competent U.S. attorney who’s doing, I think, a very good job.”

Among his own staff, Bonner is a respected figure in the office, but it is not as easy to say he is universally well liked.

While Trott was a congenial sort who frequently drank with the troops after work and entertained with amateur magic tricks, Bonner seldom attends staff social events. In a rash of recent going-away parties for tenured prosecutors in the office’s Criminal Division, Bonner has been noticeably absent.

“Steve (Trott) is a people person. After your first trial, Steve manages to know that you’ve got a trial and comes by and says hello when it’s over,” one prosecutor said. “You’re aware of the fact that he has taken some interest in my career, and if I did do a good job, he knows it.

‘Just Not There’

“Rob, that’s not the way he operates. He doesn’t view himself as being any kind of a father figure in the office. He’s almost a nonentity in terms of the impact on morale, because he’s just not there.”

When Robert Brosio reached his 20-year anniversary with the office, much of it in the prestigious position of head of the Criminal Division, Bonner’s assistant told him that there were plans for a ceremony to award him a 20-year pin, some prosecutors related.

“Then one day he (Brosio) goes in, and here is the pin, just sitting there on his desk,” one staff attorney said. “Bob Brosio could care less about a stupid pin. But how much does it take, you know?”

Other attorneys say Bonner’s quiet--some say even shy--manner leaves the mistaken impression that he is unapproachable.

“Rob has, I think, a fairly formal management style. . . . But at the same time, he is a very warm and personable guy. The better you know him, the better a personal friend he is,” said one of the office’s senior prosecutors.

‘Not a Bureaucrat’

“One of the things about Bonner is, he’s not a bureaucrat at all. He’s the kind of person you can go down and ask him a question about trial strategy and how to pursue a case, and he’s really interested in how an investigation develops and how trial strategy develops,” Katz said.

One of the highlights of Bonner’s tenure was the investigation of former fireworks manufacturer W. Patrick Moriarty’s political activities, a probe that led to the convictions of more than 10 California public officials, including former Assemblyman Bruce Young (D-Norwalk).

Bonner, a Republican, weathered some criticism because no Republicans were indicted in the case. Bonner himself expressed some disappointment that the prosecutions never reached as wide a spectrum of targets as expected.

“I never felt that Moriarty was totally forthcoming,” Bonner said. “Moriarty was the kind of person, when you pinned him to the wall on something, he’d tell you what happened. But he certainly wasn’t somebody who ever went out of his way to volunteer information. . . . But on the other hand, he did cooperate, and he did help us make some cases, even though it was to some extent like pulling teeth.”

Made It Clear

The investigation made it clear that Southern California is not immune from political corruption, Bonner said.

“I think if we were comparing it to other well-known areas of the U.S., we probably should all get up and cheer, because we don’t have a corruption problem that is as epidemic or endemic as several well-known places east of the Mississippi. I mean, we don’t have a pattern of corruption in the local police, thank God we don’t have that, and I’m convinced we don’t.

“But I do think a concern is at the city government level,” Bonner said. “And certainly, I have some real concerns about the kinds of things that are either on the line or across the line up in Sacramento. And I think probably my overall observation on this would be that to avoid becoming the next Cook County . . . it’s necessary to not just rest on our laurels, but to be vigilant in this area.”

One of Bonner’s early moves as U.S. attorney was to divide the office’s major frauds unit into two sections, one focusing on public corruption and government fraud, the other on commercial fraud.

More Resources

The upshot has been more resources available to pursue corruption cases and more aggressive prosecutions in fraud cases. A regionwide task force on telemarketing fraud has prosecuted 42 cases during its first two years of operation, producing 137 individual indictments and netting $3 million in fines and $2 million in restitution.

A full-scale prosecution effort targeted at defense industry kickbacks in 1986 produced more than two dozen convictions, including employees at some of the country’s largest aerospace companies. In addition, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have begun to move into defense industry prosecutions at the corporate level, bringing indictments and civil suits against companies like Rockwell International and McDonnell Douglas Corp. on false billing and other fraud charges.

The office’s narcotics unit had just five prosecutors when Bonner took over the office, said James P. Walsh, head of the unit.

“We’re now up to about 17,” he said.

In addition, Bonner has signed a pact with the Los Angeles County district attorney for a full-time county prosecutor to join the staff, focusing exclusively on the sale of narcotics near schools--punishable with stiff prison sentences under a new federal “school yard” statute.

Increasing Emphasis

Over the next four years, Bonner foresees an increasing emphasis on obscenity and child pornography prosecutions, additional “insider trading” cases and a continuing focus on bank fraud and bankruptcy fraud cases.

Bonner has not committed to serving out the full four years of a second term. Because he is a presidential appointee, a change in administrations could mean an end to his tenure as U.S. attorney.

Sources close to the judicial selection process say U.S. District Judge Pamela M. Rymer is a prime candidate for elevation to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Should she be nominated and confirmed under the current Administration, Bonner is considered a likely replacement on the district court. He has been rated “exceptionally well qualified” by a committee advising U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson (R.-Calif.) on district court appointments.

But time is running short for such an appointment, and Bonner admitted that he has begun considering other options, including a return to private practice when a new administration moves in. Only recently, he ruled out a run against Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, deciding “after talking to some close and trusted advisers . . . not to enter the fray.”

“I think I should say that I have, and still am, thoroughly enjoying the job I have,” he added. “It’s a job that, really, more than any other position, I wanted to have, and I don’t have any present plans to leave it. In terms of what the future holds--well, that decision may be made for me.”