Fitzgerald mum on leaks case in NIU speech
DeKALB - On the day after documents filed in the Valerie Plame-CIA leak case set off a new round of criticism of the Bush administration, the man overseeing the case's prosecution came to Northern Illinois University. But if the standing-room-only crowd of mostly law students and professors had questions about the latest allegation in the case -- that President Bush himself authorized leaking of classified information - U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald wasn't about to answer them. “I'll take your questions, other than on the CIA leak case,” he said, following his approximately 20-minute address, this year's Francis X. Riley Lecture on Professionalism at the NIU College of Law. The statement drew a lot of laughter, and for the most part questions stayed away from anything that might be connected to the Plame case or the trial of former Gov. George Ryan. Fitzgerald's Chicago office is prosecuting that one, while he is investigating the leak case as a special prosecutor. The jury in the Ryan case is still deliberating after two jurors were removed following revelations by the Chicago Tribune that they had past criminal arrests they did not report on juror questionnaires before the trial. In response to a question about the difficulties of selecting jurors in high-profile cases, Fitzgerald prefaced his answer by saying, “I don't want to talk about anything having to do with a current trial.” But he said that in general, selecting a jury in a case that's gotten a lot of media attention - such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing - doesn't necessarily mean prosecutors want jurors who haven't read the papers and don't know much about the case to begin with. “You don't need people who have been living in a cave,” he said, you want jurors who can set aside what they've heard about a case and render a fair judgment in the courtroom. He said that jurors typically are good at following a judge's instructions. Fitzgerald declined to comment on the case against Zacarias Moussaoui, other than to correct the person who asked him to comment on a detail of the case. An attorney who reportedly coached a witness in the case was not an employee of the Justice Department, he said. To a question about limiting judicial discretion when it comes to imposing prison sentences, Fitzgerald said he could see that the practice can have its drawbacks. At the same time, he said stricter sentencing guidelines can cut down on the wide disparity in punishments handed down to people who have committed the same crime, just in different parts of the country or before different judges. Fitzgerald, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., said he was on an airplane flying from New York to Chicago on Sept. 11. He had officially started his job in Chicago on Sept. 1 after working for 13 years as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York. He said that when he heard of the first plane hitting the Twin Towers, the image in his mind was of a small plane, presumably involved in an accident. But when he heard a second plane had hit the towers, there was “no doubt” in his mind that it was al-Qaida. In addition to prosecuting the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, he had also gotten convictions in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which also were orchestrated by al-Qaida. His voice grew softer and he seemed to search for words as he spoke about the 9/11 attacks - a “defining moment” in the nation's history, he said. Chris Rickert can be reached at crickert@daily-chronicle.com.