EXCLUDED: Investigations of officials often recuse a local area's U.S. attorney's office.
WASHINGTON -- The federal investigation that erupted with fury 10 days ago with searches of a half-dozen Alaska legislative offices is being managed independent of the Alaska U.S. Attorney's office, a U.S. Justice Department official said Monday.
"The whole office is recused," Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said.
Instead, the wide-ranging investigation is being overseen by attorneys from the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section in Washington, D.C., Sierra said.
The Public Integrity Section has about 25 attorneys, a team that often lives out of suitcases in pursuit of corruption cases as far away as Guam. They've prosecuted petty thefts by sheriff's deputies, the massive frauds of Enron and the high-profile corruption case of Jack Abramoff.
Sierra wouldn't say why the Alaska office wasn't allowed to participate in the case or how many lawyers from Washington were assigned to it. But the case is even off-limits to Nelson Cohen, the new U.S. Attorney for Alaska who just arrived last month from Pittsburgh, he said.
Sierra said it's not unusual that the local U.S. Attorney's office will recuse itself from a sensitive corruption case and wall off its legal, public relations and even clerical staffs from the investigation and prosecutions. Sometimes one or two assistant U.S. attorneys might still be assigned to work with the Public Integrity attorneys, but Sierra said he didn't know if that was the case in Alaska.
FBI agents from Alaska are lead investigators, working the case alongside the prosecutors from the Public Integrity Section, said Eric Gonzalez, spokesman for the FBI in Alaska.
The investigation is being run out of the FBI building on East Sixth Avenue in downtown Anchorage.
If it's anything like the Enron case, Sierra said, the investigation has taken over a sizeable chunk of the FBI building.
Dozens of extra FBI agents were brought in from Outside to execute about two dozen search warrants when the first raids started at legislative offices and elsewhere Aug. 31. After the initial round of searches and interviews, the Outside agents were sent home, Gonzalez said.
Authorities won't release any particulars, including how many FBI agents remain on the case, Gonzalez said. Other agencies also are involved, including the IRS.
While officials say little, the warrants target the relationships between legislators and the oil field service and construction company, Veco. The company, which has long been generous with campaign donations at the state and federal levels and lobbying in Juneau, has gone so far as to hire sitting legislators, including Senate President Ben Stevens, R-Anchorage, the son of Alaska's powerful U.S. senator, Ted Stevens.
In disclosures he was required to file as a legislator, Ben Stevens has reported that Veco paid him $252,000 over the last five years to serve as a consultant, including $57,000 in 2005. Neither Stevens nor Veco has described what he did for the money. Stevens is one of six lawmakers whose offices were searched Aug. 31.
Perhaps a year ago, the FBI began collecting campaign and other publicly available financial disclosure records on selected legislators, said Brooke Miles, executive director of the Alaska Public Offices Commission. As she remembers it, agents then came back at the beginning of this year for campaign reports and financial disclosure records on all legislators.
Created in 1976, the Public Integrity Section has a number of jurisdictions. It investigates election fraud, misconduct by federal judges and corruption of elected officials.
U.S. Attorney offices prosecute corruption cases, too. The Alaska office prosecuted a dozen officials, lobbyists and businessmen in a massive kickback scandal in the North Slope Borough in the 1980s.
But the position of U.S. attorney is a political appointment headquartered in a local jurisdiction, so the Justice Department will sometimes assume control over cases involving powerful local figures.
"Public corruption cases tend to raise unique problems of public perception that are generally absent in more routine criminal cases," the Public Integrity Section wrote in its 2004 report to Congress, explaining why U.S. Attorney's offices are sometimes recused.
"An investigation of alleged corruption by a government official, whether at the federal, state or local level, or someone associated with such officials, always has the potential to be high-profile, simply because its focus is on the conduct of a public official. In addition, these cases are often politically sensitive, because their ultimate targets tend to be politicians or government officials appointed by politicians. A successful public corruption prosecution requires both the appearance and the reality of fairness and impartiality."
Daily News reporter Richard Mauer can be reached at rmauer@adn.com or 1-202-383-0007. Daily News reporter Lisa Demer contributed to this story.
