The Next Best Path

Instead, Iglesias says the one-time prosecutors have bonded as "brothers and sisters under fire."

"It's like being in boot camp or being hazed in a fraternity," says Bud Cummins, who was a U.S. attorney in Arkansas.

Not all of them share Iglesias's zest for the spotlight. When asked whether this all had been a good experience for everyone, Washington state's John McKay says: "No, not at all. I think it was a bad thing. I wasn't looking for attention, and it was pretty miserable, quite frankly. Others have said, 'Oh boy, it's good you got all this attention.' I'm never going to feel that way."

Defining Moments

If Iglesias finds positive aspects to this whole ordeal, perhaps it's because his own story could pass for a church testimonial. A man of Kuna Indian heritage and the son of missionaries, he spent the first six years of life in Panama, where his folks opened schools and hospitals and churches. Eventually the family of five came back to the United States, settling in Santa Fe, where Iglesias played halfback for the public high school's excuse for a football team.

After doing his time at Wheaton College in Illinois and finishing law school at the University of New Mexico, he joined the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps in 1984. Based in the District from 1984 to 1988, Iglesias had the unenviable task of being a defense attorney in a setting where acquittals are rare.

But it was here that two events changed Iglesias's life for good.

The first was an assignment to Guantanamo Bay with fellow JAG lawyer Deborah Sorkin, the sister of Aaron Sorkin. The case, which involved defending Marines charged with the attempted murder of a fellow soldier during a hazing incident, would form the basis for "A Few Good Men," the Sorkin play that became a movie. From then on Iglesias gladly told everyone that he was the inspiration behind the truth-demanding, fist-pumping JAG attorney played by Cruise.

The second event was merely a haircut in the Old Town section of Alexandria. Iglesias met Cyndy, who would cut his hair and win his heart. They married in 1988 and moved to New Mexico, and he worked his way up through the various layers of government. Cyndy seemed the ideal candidate's wife -- perky, pretty, a woman who can say "neat" without eliciting a grimace -- when Iglesias ran for New Mexico attorney general in 1998. Now she seems even more apt for her new role as the spouse of a public martyr.

"Dave is very intense, very focused," says Iglesias's Wheaton classmate Kevin McCarthy, pastor of a nondenominational church in Michigan. "Cyndy is lighthearted and jovial and fiercely loyal -- someone who's always cheered him on."

In many ways the couple have switched places in their new life. As Iglesias searches for an inner calm after his life as a hard-driving prosecutor, Cyndy has become a combination cheerleader/wife/mother/appointments secretary/news watcher/public relations specialist. She's clipped and downloaded every article she can find on the scandal, collecting them in a binder that will become the family's new coffee-table book.

On the morning of May 3, while Iglesias paced in the back yard fielding a job offer, it was Cyndy, her arms tightly folded, who watched the testimony of former deputy attorney general James Comey on the couple's computer in the bedroom. With her youngest daughter, Sophia, 10, waiting to go to school, Cyndy nodded in approval as Comey called her husband "a very strong U.S. attorney," then offered her own color commentary to the often sensory-numbing proceedings.

"That is so refreshing when you're dealing with testimony like that," she says. "I am so glad he's testifying."