Why don't US Attorneys swagger anymore?
... [I]n reading the prosecutors’ e-mail messages released by the Justice Department, the chastened words [of the fired prosecutors] could be disorienting to those accustomed to some federal prosecutors of the past, swaggering princes who often boasted of their independence from Washington.
“Big” Jim Thompson, the Chicago federal prosecutor, claimed many political scalps in the 1970s, not least that of former Gov. Otto Kerner Jr.
Herbert J. Stern, United States attorney in New Jersey in the early 1970s, edged awfully close to indicting a plurality of the public officials in his state in four years. (The count? Eight mayors, two secretaries of state, two state treasurers, two political bosses, a congressman and 64 public officials.)
In Manhattan, Rudolph W. Giuliani chased down financiers and crushed mafia families. And Robert M. Morgenthau, one of his predecessors in the Southern District, shrugged off a threatening phone call from a Democratic powerbroker and got indictments of top aides to the Democratic House Speaker John W. McCormack in the 1960’s.
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“Big” Jim Thompson, the Chicago federal prosecutor, claimed many political scalps in the 1970s, not least that of former Gov. Otto Kerner Jr.
Herbert J. Stern, United States attorney in New Jersey in the early 1970s, edged awfully close to indicting a plurality of the public officials in his state in four years. (The count? Eight mayors, two secretaries of state, two state treasurers, two political bosses, a congressman and 64 public officials.)
In Manhattan, Rudolph W. Giuliani chased down financiers and crushed mafia families. And Robert M. Morgenthau, one of his predecessors in the Southern District, shrugged off a threatening phone call from a Democratic powerbroker and got indictments of top aides to the Democratic House Speaker John W. McCormack in the 1960’s.