Plans to Abolish Anti-Mob Units Stir Controversy

To their supporters, the case for the Justice Department’s organized crime strike forces is open and shut: Over the last decade, they have put much of the mob’s top leadership behind bars.

But to Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, the strike forces are “an anachronism that grew up in an era when U.S. attorneys were not as competent, dedicated or proficient in dealing with serious crime.”

That era is long since past, Thornburgh believes. So in the name of ending bureaucratic rivalries and needless duplication and consolidating Justice Department resources against organized crime, he is on the verge of folding many of the strike forces into the offices of U.S. attorneys, who are the chief federal prosecutors around the country.

Thornburgh’s expected action has touched off the sharpest internal Justice Department controversy of his eight months on the job.

And the issue has import beyond haggling over turf, because it presages more sweeping changes Thornburgh plans for later this year. Because more and more of the department’s business is worldwide, he is planning to establish an international division, and the organized crime and racketeering section, which runs the strike forces, may well become a part of it.

At the heart of the dispute over the strike forces is the nature of organized crime prosecution--a complex, drawn-out process that requires particular stamina and expertise.

Should U.S. attorneys, who have massive resources at their disposal and authority to prosecute all forms of federal crime, be given exclusive jurisdiction in the fight against the mob?

Or are U.S. attorneys, who are appointed by the President and frequently harbor political ambitions of their own, less well-suited to the task than a career cadre of specially trained, Washington-directed prosecutors who are in the battle for the long haul?

Howls of Protest

Thornburgh, by siding with the U.S. attorneys, has raised howls from past and present strike force prosecutors. Officials who ran the Justice Department’s criminal division have also protested, as has the man Thornburgh himself chose a decade ago to run the criminal division’s organized crime and racketeering section.

Four influential senators--Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), all on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the permanent investigations subcommittee of the Governmental Affairs Committee--wrote Thornburgh this month urging him to wait until congressional committees have a chance to consider the move.

In a separate letter, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) pointed out that the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act requires William J. Bennett, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, in consultation with Thornburgh, to report to Congress in November on organizational changes anywhere in the federal drug-fighting apparatus. Biden asked for discussion before the matter is decided.

History of Opposition

The dispute has its origins in Thornburgh’s first tour at the Justice Department, as head of the criminal division in 1975 and 1976. He had been U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh and head of a committee of the federal prosecutors that urged the attorney general to do away with the strike forces.

The first strike force was set up in 1967 in Buffalo, N.Y., to wage an intense, multi-agency war against entrenched organized crime. Its record of indicting more than 30 underworld figures led directly to establishing strike forces in six other cities. By 1971, the number had grown to 17.

But Thornburgh said in a 1976 speech that by the time he took over the criminal division, the strike forces had recruitment and training problems and suffered from lack of central planning. They had so alienated U.S. attorneys, he said, that the Justice Department had issued guidelines emphasizing that the U.S. attorney was the department’s “principal representative” in the field.

Folds, Closes Offices

Under Thornburgh as criminal division chief, strike forces in Manhattan and Pittsburgh were folded into the U.S. attorneys’ offices there. The New Orleans and St. Louis offices were closed and New Jersey’s strike force chief was placed under the U.S. attorney there.

Thornburgh frequently cites Manhattan as proof that independent strike forces are not necessary. Rudolph W. Giuliani, who retired as U.S. attorney for Manhattan earlier this year, compiled a strong record of prosecuting local organized crime leaders.

But the strike forces also have scored some recent notable successes, including convictions of Mafia leaders in Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee and Cleveland.

Thornburgh acknowledged those triumphs but insisted that he still finds “structural and mechanical shortcomings” in today’s 14 independent strike forces, which include offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas. At the same time, he said, “the U.S. attorneys have achieved great efficiency” since his last tour in the Justice Department 13 years ago.

Some Think He’s Wrong

Some other authorities in criminal justice are convinced that Thornburgh is dead wrong.

“Law enforcement ought to be about something else than keeping U.S. attorneys happy,” said Philip B. Heymann, a Harvard Law School professor who headed the criminal division during the Jimmy Carter Administration. “It ought to be about protecting American citizens.”

Heymann said that the debate has raised a fundamental question: “Do there continue to be organized groups--the Mafia, bikers, prison gangs and the like--that are engaged in serious crime and that have the skills and capacity and threat for corruption to make them secure from ordinary law enforcement?”

The answer, Heymann believes, is yes. And the strike forces should be retained, he said, “until you’re pretty damn sure it is not.”

Heymann conceded that some U.S. attorneys, including Giuliani, have been effective in taking on organized crime.

‘Short Time Horizon’

But on the whole, Heymann said, U.S. attorneys are “ambitious, sometimes able, often not experienced, sometimes highly political, and always with a relatively short time horizon.” If they controlled the strike force prosecutors, he said, there would be “a constant temptation to any but the most dedicated U.S. attorney” to use them to “make a quick headline or two.”

Kurt W. Muellenberg, a veteran strike force prosecutor chosen by Thornburgh to remake the attack on organized crime in 1976, said that this time, “Thornburgh is clearly wrong.”

“Nothing is broken, nothing needs to be fixed,” Muellenberg wrote in a letter to Nunn.

John Voorhees, a lawyer who served as a strike force attorney in Boston, Philadelphia and New Orleans, said eliminating the strike forces “would signal to the underworld that the federal government is retreating on a path that leads back to the bygone days when organized crime was barely acknowledged and prosecutions were rare and often unsuccessful.”

Supports U.S. Attorneys

Thornburgh rejects the argument that U.S. attorneys are inherently more political than strike force chiefs and lack the patience to sustain attacks on organized crime.

“That may have had some validity when these operations were first set up,” Thornburgh said. “There was a lot of concern that U.S. attorneys were more politicized and less professional than they are today.”

But merging the strike forces into U.S. attorney offices “represents a stepping up of the resources” that can be focused on mob prosecutions, he said, “because the U.S. attorneys now will be directly involved and have all of their vast resources, which have been increased enormously during the 1980s, available to use.”

“If I could write the headline on your story,” he said, “it would be: ‘U.S. to Step Up War on Mob,’ even though I know I’ll see headlines: ‘U.S. Backs Off in War on Mob.’ ”