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Patrick Fitzgerald

U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois (since 2001)

Why He Matters

The dogged Fitzgerald has been compared to Eliot Ness, the former head of the liquor-busting "Untouchables" in Prohibition-era Chicago.

A former Justice Department attorney and assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Fitzgerald has tried to bring down an array of criminals from the Gambino crime family, to blind Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, to former Illinois Gov. George Ryan (R). But the workaholic prosecutor's most famous investigation was into the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity, a probe that led all the way to the Bush White House and resulted in the conviction of former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby (President George W. Bush later commuted his sentence).

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Assistant U.S. District Attorney, Southern District of New York, Justice Department (1988-2001); Narcotics unit chief, Southern District of New York (1994-1995); Section chief, Organized Crime and Terrorism, Southern District of New York (1995-2001); Associate, Christy and Viener (1993-1995)
Hometown: Brooklyn, N.Y.
Alma Mater: Amherst Collge, B.A. (math and economics), 1982; Harvard Law School, J.D., 1986
Spouse: Jennifer Letzkus

Religion: Catholic
Chicago Office: Dirksen Federal Building, 219 South Dearborn Street, Fifth Floor Chicago, Illinois
DC Office: Bond Federal Building1400 New York Avenue, NW, Ninth FloorWashington D.C.
Web site

Path to Power

Fitzgerald was born in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. His father, an Irish immigrant, worked as a doorman. Fitzgerald would take the same job to help pay his way through college.

The young Fitzgerald attended Our Lady Help of Christian school in Brooklyn before going to high school in Manhattan at Regis High School, a Jesuit school for gifted students. Like all students at Regis, he attended the school on a scholarship.

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Colleagues agree that his upbringing and Catholic-school education imbued Fitzgerald with a clear sense of right and wrong. "He grew up in a working-class household with a strong sense of morality. He has a sort of 'Oh, gosh' quality, an aspect that's almost corny, that sees things as black or white," former colleague J. Gilmore Childers said.

Fitzgerald left New York for Amherst College in western Massachusetts where he played rugby and majored in math and economics, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1982. He went on to Harvard Law School, graduating in 1986.

After law school, Fitzgerald moved to New York City to become an associate in civil litigation at the law firm Christy & Viener. (The firm merged with a European law firm in 1998 and is now known as Salans.)

Justice Department

In 1988, the 27-year-old Fitzgerald went to work for the Justice Department as an assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York. His 13 years at DOJ included stints as chief of the narcotics unit from 1994 to 1995, and co-chief of the organized crime and terrorism section from 1995 to 2001.

Fitzgerald made a name for himself with high-profile cases, including prosecuting mafia leaders in the Gambino family. In 1995, he relied on a Civil-War era sedition law to convict blind Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others of plotting bomb attacks on New York landmarks, including the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

In May 2001, he convicted four men of the 1998 bombing the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people. After those attacks, Fitzgerald was assigned to a team building a criminal case against Osama bin Laden.

U.S. Attorney for Northern District of Illinois

Ten days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, George W. Bush nominated Fitzgerald to become U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, where he oversees more than 300 employees, including 160 assistant U.S. attorneys.

When Fitzgerald arrived in Chicago in 2001, the New Yorker's appointment was controversial. The U.S. attorney post had traditionally gone to someone with Chicago ties, and many politicians had their own thoughts on who should get the job.

But Fitzgerald's outsider status allowed him to take on "the dark, cynical world of local government, where abuse of power appeared to have become a way of life," and comparisons with Chicago's prohibition-era hero Eliot Ness have come fast and furious.

In his first year on the job, Fitzgerald began investigating George Ryan, then Illinois' Republican governor. In 2006, Ryan was convicted of taking kickbacks on state contracts. Fitzgerald also pursued corruption charges against aides to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, a Democrat.

In 2003, less than a month after indicting Ryan, Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft appointed Fitzgerald as special counsel to discover who leaked the name of a CIA agent to newspaper columnist Robert Novak. During the course of the investigation, Fitzgerald jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller for 78 days for refusing to reveal her source. In 2005, he convicted Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby of perjury in the case.

Back in Chicago, Fitzgerald also found time to indict Canadian media mogul and owner of Chicago's Sun-Times Media Group Conrad Black and three associates on charges of fraud and obstruction of justice. Black's defense team included high-profile Chicago defense attorney Ed Genson. Genson is set to do battle with Fitzgerald once again: he has been retained to defend Blagojevich.

On December 9, 2008, Fitzgerald had Blagojevich arrested for what Fitzgerald called a "staggering" level of corruption, including trying to sell or trade Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat after Obama was elected president. Government wiretaps on the governor's phones revealed that Blagojevich had gone on a "political corruption crime spree," Fitzgerald said in a press conference that some have charged was prejudicial in impugning Blagojevich before he is indicted, "We acted to stop that crime spree."

The Issues

Although he was appointed to his current position by George W. Bush, Fitzgerald is famous for his political neutrality. He has prosecuted high-profile politicians from both parties, and the New York Times reported that on his 1988 New York voter registration, he chose ''non-partisan'' as his party affiliation, according to state records. "Many former colleagues said they were unsure what Mr. Fitzgerald's political leanings were," the Times reported.

"He takes on Republicans and Democrats," Dick Simpson, a political-science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told People. "He doesn't harbor ambitions to be a politician, so he doesn't care."

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Anti-Corruption: Ryan and Blagojevich

Within his first year as U.S. attorney in Illinois, Fitzgerald was investigating then-Gov. Ryan (R). In 2003, Fitzgerald indicted Ryan on a variety of charges, including selling drivers' licenses for bribes. After a six-month trial that ended in 2006, Ryan was convicted of 18 counts of racketeering conspiracy, mail fraud, lying to the FBI, obstructing the IRS and filing false tax returns.

When Ryan left office after his indictment, Blagojevich (D) took over. But he, too, became a Fitzgerald target in December 2008, when he allegedly tried to sell the Senate seat that had just been vacated by newly-elected President Barack Obama.

From jail, Blagojevich refused to resign. He was eventually ousted by the Illinois Senate and replaced by Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn. In April 2009, Fitzgerald brought 24 counts against the former governor, from corruption to lying to the FBI.

After a long case and exceptionally long jury deliberations, Blagojevich was convicted of only one count, lying to the FBI. The jury was deadlocked on the other 23 counts, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial. Fitzgerald vowed to retool his case and recharge the disgraced governor.

The CIA Leak Case

In a July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote, "Some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

In his July 14, 2003, syndicated column, conservative Robert Novak wrote, "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger."

CIA operatives' identities are classified, and an investigation was launched immediately into who told Novak about Plame's job. Because the source of the leak seemed to point toward the White House, Bush AG John Ashcroft recused himself. He called Fitzgerald to Washington, D.C. as special counsel to probe the leaking of Plame's identity.

Fitzgerald's dogged two-year investigation set off national debate about not only the actions of the Bush administration, but also the rights of journalists to protect their sources.

The prosecutor jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller for 78 days for refusing to reveal an unnamed source. His pursuit of journalists' phone records caused the Chicago Tribune to run a 2005 editorial titled, "Mr. Fitzgerald, Back Off. New York Times columnist William Safire called Fitzgerald's search for the names of confidential sources "this generation's gravest threat to our ability to ferret out the news."

Fitzgerald never indicted anyone for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, but he convicted Cheney Chief of Staff Libby of perjury and obstruction of justice in relation to the case. Libby was the highest-ranking White House official to be convicted of a felony since the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. President Bush commuted Libby's 30-month prison sentence.

The Network

As a prosecutor, Fitzgerald may have made more enemies than friends. But his tenacity has also won him lots of fans. In 2001, then-Sen. Peter G. Fitzgerald (R-Ill.), who is not related to the prosecutor, pushed for Fitzgerald's appointment as U.S. attorney in Illinois. After Sen. Fitzgerald retired in 2004, Barack Obama won his Senate seat.

As an assistant U.S. Attorney in New York's southern district, Fitzgerald worked under Mary Jo White, the first woman to hold that position. She is now a partner in litigation at the law firm of Debevoise and Plimpton in New York.

Campaign Contributions

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Fitzgerald has not tipped his hand by contributing to any political campaigns.

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