Anyone know any background on Patrick Fitzgerald?

[JohnnyBoots]

[shraby]

1. This link has some info on Fitzgerald

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1913856>

[Kagemusha]

2. A quick and dirty recap...

Goes after political corruption, reputation as a very aggressive straight arrow with no political favortism to either party. People thought he was losing his touch in this case but, that's the grand jury effect - most everything's sealed precisely to keep us from knowing what he's up to until there's indictments as a feature designed to protect the accused.

[DisassemblingHisLies]

3. "Whether Probing a Leak or Trying Terrorists, Patrick Fitzgerald

is Relentless":

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55560-2005Feb1?language=printer

He comes from a humble, working class family. And interestingly, he has been compared to Eliot Ness:

Fitzgerald frequently makes crime-fighting headlines in Chicago, where he took over the U.S. attorney's office just 10 days before 9/11. What's surprising is that he got the job at all. A New Yorker born and bred, Fitzgerald knew hardly a soul in Chicago, which was precisely the idea. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (no relation) was looking for an outsider to battle the state's notoriously corrupt political apparatus.

The recently retired Illinois Republican tells a story about back in Al Capone's day, when Col. Robert McCormick, the imperious publisher of the Chicago Tribune, called FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and demanded that he send someone to Chicago who could not be bought.

Hoover sent the untouchable Eliot Ness.

Now, as then, the U.S. attorney's job has the gloss of patronage. The late Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley used to say the U.S. attorney in Chicago is one of the three most important people in the state, and Peter Fitzgerald said he wanted "someone who couldn't be influenced either to prosecute someone unfairly or protect someone from being prosecuted unjustly."

[JohnnyBoots]

4. That's what I wanted to hear

[DisassemblingHisLies]

5. The part about "can't be bought"?

I liked that part, too. It was also good to know that he wasn't a rich, spoiled brat who had everything handed to him & fixed for him growing up. He's got a decent soul.

[roguevalley]

6. I hear he's going second rounds with Miller. This isn't his first shot

at her. I wish I had the link. Perhaps it was in Salon.

[DisassemblingHisLies]

7. This may be the first round you were thinking of...

Don't forget: This isn't the first time Plame prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has tangled with Judy Miller while investigating a leak out of the Bush White House.

A little more than a year ago, I reported on TPM how Fitzgerald had quite aggressively investigated another Bush White House leak in late 2001 and early 2002. Fitzgerald had been investigating three Islamic charities accused of supporting terrorism -- the Holy Land Foundation, the Global Relief Foundation, and the Benevolence International Foundation. But just before his investigators could swoop in with warrants, two of the charities in question got wind of what was coming and, apparently, were able to destroy a good deal of evidence.

What tipped them off were calls from two reporters at the New York Times who'd been leaked information about the investigation by folks at the White House.

One of those two reporters was Judy Miller.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/7/7/1148/62336