Thursday, March 10, 2005
Thursday, March 10, 2005
John A. Kaye, the Monmouth prosecutor, interfered in a federal investigation in his county, some officials believe. But he has denied doing so. March 9, 2005 New Jersey Prosecutor Finds He's the One Investigated By LESLIE EATON
During two colorful and sometimes controversial decades as the prosecutor in Monmouth County, N.J., John A. Kaye has been the pursuer, going after drug dealers, drunken drivers, killers and assorted creeps. But now, the pursuer has become the pursued, or at least the reviewed. The state attorney general is looking into his conduct. Five of his investigators have been summoned to appear before a federal grand jury. And a prominent state senator says that Mr. Kaye should consider stepping down, contending that he has "repeatedly betrayed the public trust and compromised the integrity of his office." This scrutiny comes because some federal law enforcement officials believe that Mr. Kaye deliberately interfered in an investigation into government corruption in Monmouth. The United States attorney, Christopher J. Christie, has said publicly that Mr. Kaye's actions forced the Federal Bureau of Investigation to end its sting operation early, though not before it had enough evidence to charge 11 local officials. Mr. Christie and Mr. Kaye, both Republicans, have long been at odds over the extent of public corruption in the county, with Mr. Kaye insisting in a 2002 interview with The Asbury Park Press that his territory "may be the least corrupt county in this state." Subsequent criminal cases, including the most recent, suggest otherwise. Mr. Kaye declined to be interviewed for this article. But in earlier conversations, he denied interfering with the federal inquiry. Rather, he said, he was conducting several investigations of his own that prompted him to question some of the people who were subsequently arrested in the federal sweep. Disputes between local and federal prosecutors in New Jersey are not uncommon, though seldom so public. But this disagreement has cast a harsh spotlight on the career of the longest-serving county prosecutor in the state, with all of its highlights (Mr. Kaye became the president of the National District Attorneys Association in 1996) and darker moments, like losing two lawsuits against him that cost the county hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it comes as Mr. Kaye, 61, appears to be near the end of his career in law enforcement. County prosecutors are appointed by the governor on the recommendation of local officials and are confirmed by the State Senate. Mr. Kaye's term ends in June, and for reappointment he would need the backing of the acting governor, Richard J. Codey, a Democrat, who opposed his reappointment five years ago and has not become a supporter since. The prospect of such an ending to Mr. Kaye's tenure saddens some of his supporters, like John O. Bennett III, a longtime Republican state senator from Monmouth County who was defeated in 2003 after a controversy involving his overbilling a local township for legal work. He called it an innocent mistake; though Mr. Christie opened a criminal investigation, Mr. Bennett has never been charged. "I've been a big fan of his," Mr. Bennett said of Mr. Kaye. "I hope this does not taint what has been a stellar public service career." But Mr. Kaye's critics are saying, in essence, I told you so. "I really feel vindicated," said Larry S. Loigman, a lawyer in Red Bank who has butted heads with Mr. Kaye for many years over the way he runs his office and his attitude toward local corruption. According to his biography on his office's Web site, Mr. Kaye was a local boy who graduated from the University of Scranton and the Dickinson School of Law, which is now part of Pennsylvania State University. Admitted to the bar in 1968, he practiced law in Freehold, the Monmouth County seat, before being appointed prosecutor at the end of 1983. Almost immediately, he found himself involved in big cases, including prosecuting a big insurance-fraud ring that killed racehorses. Over the years, his office developed a reputation for aggressive prosecutions; he was also considered a leader in pursuing cases involving hazardous waste or pollution. More controversial was his office's handling of the 1997 case of Samuel Manzie, who as a 15-year-old molested and strangled an 11-year-old boy in nearby Ocean County. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 70 years in prison. But it turned out that Mr. Manzie had himself been sexually abused in Monmouth by Stephen P. Simmons, a pedophile he met over the Internet, and killed the child shortly after Mr. Kaye's office sought his help in collecting evidence against Mr. Simmons by secretly recording his phone calls with him. Mr. Manzie later rebelled, smashing the recording equipment and alerting Mr. Simmons. Later, when Mr. Kaye tried to prosecute Mr. Simmons, Mr. Manzie refused to testify, and many of the charges were thrown out. In 1999, Mr. Simmons pleaded guilty to two counts, criminal sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child, and remains in prison under New Jersey's Sexually Violent Predators Act. Mr. Kaye has always defended his handling of the Manzie case, which was a major topic at his last confirmation hearings, in 2000. Some lawmakers also remain rankled by what they consider his lack of candor about two federal lawsuits brought by employees, back when he was reappointed in 1994. "There's a pattern of his acting above the law in certain ways," said State Senator John H. Adler, a Democrat from Cherry Hill, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and who voted against Mr. Kaye in 2000. While he would not call on Mr. Kaye to step down now unless the attorney general finds that he did indeed interfere with the federal investigation, the senator said, "It's probably the honorable thing for him to resign." In 1993, a federal jury in Trenton found that Mr. Kaye had defamed James W. Kennedy, who had worked for him as an assistant prosecutor, and awarded Mr. Kennedy $100,000 in damages, which was upheld in 1995 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In 1996, that same appellate court also affirmed a jury finding against Mr. Kaye in a lawsuit by Barbara A. Coleman, an investigator in his office. The jury found that she was repeatedly passed over for promotion because of her sex and awarded her $365,000 from the county and, in an unusual move, $60,000 from Mr. Kaye individually. Her lawyers were also awarded more than $100,000 in legal fees. The county freeholders voted to pay Mr. Kaye's penalties and the costs of defending him. (Mr. Loigman, the Red Bank lawyer, sued to block the county from picking up those costs but lost.) Critics of Mr. Kaye say that he could have settled both suits and saved taxpayers a great deal of money. "He cost us more than $1 million in defense and in judgments against him," said Ellen M. Karcher, a Democrat who replaced Mr. Bennett in the State Senate and who is also likely to have a big influence on who replaces Mr. Kaye. "Monmouth County residents deserve better," she said. But the criticism of Mr. Kaye that may sting the most these days is the suggestion that he has turned a blind eye to corruption and government misdeeds. His 2002 statement about the honesty of local officials followed the guilty plea of one mayor for taking bribes; about 20 people have since been charged, indicted or convicted or have pleaded guilty in corruption cases in the county. None were prosecuted by his office. Mr. Kaye, for his part, told The Asbury Park Press last month that his office did indeed investigate political corruption, citing the failed 1992 prosecution of John R. Merla, the mayor of Keyport, who was acquitted of taking a bribe involving a sewer hook-up. Mr. Merla was among the 11 local officials picked up by the F.B.I. last month. He was accused of accepting at least $11,500 from a Florida-based contractor in return for work. Mr. Merla has said he is innocent. Before those arrests, Mr. Kaye's office had interviewed Mr. Merla, along with a former Keyport councilman who was also picked up in the federal sweep. Mr. Kaye says he was not interfering, but was pursuing his own investigations concerning, among other things, truck thefts and a local suicide. Those inquiries also prompted him to send investigators to Florida, he said recently, and was not an effort to track down the contractor who is cooperating with the F.B.I. and appeared to play a key role in the federal investigation. He also insisted that he cleared his activities over the telephone with Mr. Christie, the United States attorney. But Mr. Christie's spokesman, Michael Drewniak, said that the "conversation, as described by Prosecutor Kaye, never occurred." John Holl contributed reporting for this article. Copyright 2005
March 10, 2005
THE TV WATCH
Signing Off, Rather's Wish for Viewers Is Still 'Courage'
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
an Rather resigned as CBS News anchor with the same closing exhortation that brought him such ridicule soon after he took over from Walter Cronkite 24 years ago to the day: "Courage."
Dry-eyed and calm, Mr. Rather told his viewers last night that he wished courage to the mourners of Sept. 11; to soldiers, sailors and journalists in harm's way; to tsunami and other natural disaster victims; and to all those oppressed by financial burdens or failing health. But it was also Mr. Rather's way of telling the world that he left his post without remorse or regrets. On his final broadcast, Mr. Rather delivered one last act of on-air brinkmanship - a dance along the fine line between reporting and posturing.
Mr. Rather prides himself on his toughness, but his last days on the job mostly revealed his hunger to explain himself in the wake of the flawed "60 Minutes" report about President Bush's National Guard service that tainted his and CBS's reputations and forced him out a year earlier than he had intended. In his last few broadcasts, and most noticeably in last night's hourlong tribute on CBS, "Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers," Mr. Rather insistently wrapped himself in the romance of the old-fashioned reporter equipped with only a passport, notebook and trenchcoat. Toward the end of the tribute, Mr. Rather said, somewhat wistfully, "When I walk down the street, I want people to say, there goes a real reporter."
Naturally, when people notice him, they will say there is that famous former network anchor.
His 42-year career in broadcasting was as distinguished as it was jagged, but perhaps more than any other television journalist he embodied the tension between television and journalism; he was the newsman who most ostentatiously put himself at the center of every story, at times literally tying himself to a telephone pole under rain and wind to illustrate two things at once: how terrible the hurricane was and how dedicated he was to describe it. (In the tribute, Mr. Rather cited Edward R. Murrow's rooftop dispatches from London during the Blitz as his inspiration, but his style was at times even more vainglorious - "I am there." )
Television has always had a symbiotic relationship with news events. Stories are never just about the pictures, they are also about the person posing against the backdrop of a flood, a battle or a famine, lending authoritative presence to a crisis but also leeching attention away from the event.
And Mr. Rather's propensity to put himself forward is as much part of his legacy as all the major events he covered, from the Kennedy assassination to the Vietnam War, Watergate, all the way to Sept. 11. On ABC last night, Peter Jennings alluded to it in his generous tribute to his departing rival. "A word about Dan Rather, who is winding up his last night as the anchor of the "CBS Evening News," Mr. Jennings told his viewers. "You've surely heard about that. Dan - more than any other newsman in America, I think - has always made news, as well as covered it, though that was not necessarily his intention." (NBC's new anchor, Brian Williams, gave a shorter but kind adieu.)
In their day, Mr. Jennings and NBC's Tom Brokaw also did their fair share of showboating - trolling the West Bank in safari jackets or riding bicyles through Beijing at the time of Tiananmen Square. But it was Mr. Rather who returned from Afghanistan with the nickname "Gunga Dan" and stormed off the set when CBS delayed the broadcast for a tennis championship, leaving the network with dead air for seven minutes. He always went a bit further in blurring the lines between actor, news reader and newsman. Mr. Rather fancies himself as a reporter who uneasily wore the crown of anchor - a conceit that grew tiresome, rather like a chief of police who constantly tells his officers that he longs to be back on the street, working stakeouts and collaring perps.
He was a riveting figure in the field. On the anchor desk, his combative, often emotive personality and florid way with homespun metaphors could grate. But his sincerity was never in doubt, not even by the right-wing critics who lambasted Mr. Rather as the poster child of liberal bias in the mainstream media.
At the close of his final broadcast, Mr. Rather was given a standing ovation by dozens of CBS employees gathered around his desk, a show of solidarity that clashed with the peevish mutterings of newsmen and executives higher up in the network chain of command. The network's grumpy old men, from Mike Wallace to Don Hewitt, took potshots at Mr. Rather at his most vulnerable moment, undermining any lingering claim they had to being the Wise Men of the Tiffany Network. Walter Cronkite was the worst, emerging from his twilight to tell CNN that he wished Bob Schieffer had replaced Mr. Rather years ago.
Mr. Rather's attempts to defend himself, however, spoke more of an aging anchor's self-delusion than self-knowledge. "Too much passion melded to loving the work leads to making mistakes," Mr. Rather said in the hourlong tribute. "I would rather have too much than not enough."
The mistake that led to last night's premature farewell was more mundane than that. The final indignity for Mr. Rather wasn't just that his career ended on a mistake, but that the flawed "60 Minutes" story trapped him in the role he most despised: an overextended news reader who relied, too blindly, on the shoddy reporting of his producers.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
March 9, 2005 In Wind, Snow, Cold and Frustration, a Dangerous Storm By LISA W. FODERARO
A day after spring seemed to burst out of hiding, winter came charging back to the New York region yesterday with a storm that brought plunging temperatures and wind-whipped snow that appeared strangely immune to gravity - blowing up and sideways as well as down. From street corners, office windows and front porches, many watched in dismay as the blizzard-like storm raged with intensity. Some said it seemed like a cruel joke on those who only hours earlier had doffed jackets and looked eagerly for crocus shoots. "It's completely unacceptable," said Louisa DeRose, a 24-year-old student at New York Law School, as she sipped coffee during a break outside on Worth Street. "I would rather that yesterday didn't happen. It was like a false ray of hope." The storm created hazardous conditions and resulted in major delays and frustration for thousands of drivers leaving work yesterday afternoon, just as standing water and slush on streets and highways was turning to ice. Last night, strong winds battered the region, pushing pedestrians off sidewalks in Midtown and toppling trees. There were delays and cancellations at all three New York area airports, with wind gusts posing more of a problem than snow on the runways. Several planes were diverted to Baltimore and Washington, but the decisions were made by pilots, not air traffic controllers, said James Peters, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. A Hawker aircraft that was landing at Teterboro Airport skidded 200 to 300 feet off a runway around 10:15 p.m., Tony Ciavolella, a spokesman for the airport, said. None of the two passengers and two crew members were injured, he said. It was not clear if weather was a factor, he said, but the airport was closed overnight. The state and local police reported numerous accidents and traffic tie-ups on icy roadways. On Route 3 in Clifton, N.J., traffic was backed up for several miles in both directions because of spinouts and fender-benders, as well as a jackknifed tractor-trailer. All eastbound lanes of the Long Island Expressway were shut down at Exit 49 just before 6 p.m. because of another jackknifed trailer. In Westchester County, 72 disabled vehicles and 19 accidents had been reported as of 6:30 p.m. "People are traveling in packs, and if one person panics and applies the brakes, you'll have several cars running into each other," said Lt. Michael J. Palumbo of the Westchester County police. Traffic on some avenues in Manhattan was nearly halted by 5 p.m. At Amsterdam Avenue and 122nd Street, where drivers must negotiate a hill, cars were spinning their wheels. Not far away, at Broadway and 110th Street, a pedestrian trying to cross the street was seen making a near perfect belly flop on the pavement. In Farmingdale, on Long Island, there was a three-hour backlog of calls to the state police for accidents and stranded vehicles. The storm started out as rain but turned to snow throughout much of the region as temperatures fell. Between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. in Central Park, the thermometer dropped to 24 degrees from 51 degrees. There were sustained winds of 15 to 25 miles per hour, and gusts of up to 48 miles per hour in White Plains and at Kennedy International Airport. Over all, the snowfall was relatively modest, with most places getting a few inches. By late afternoon, as the storm was winding down, 4 inches were recorded in Islip on Long Island; 4 inches in New Fairfield, Conn.; 2 inches in Bergenfield, N.J.; and 1.5 inches in Central Park. But a huge amount of snow fell in other areas, and the storm lingered longer over Long Island and eastern Connecticut. Averill Park, near Albany, received 18 inches, 5 of them in a single hour. "When it did come down, it came down pretty heavy and quick, and sometimes that can be just as disruptive as a storm that produces more snow but over a longer duration," said Todd Miner, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University. Many schools and organizations canceled afternoon and evening activates, while even some major retailers closed early. Power companies said they experienced scattered but mostly minor failures caused by high winds, as well as by cars that had crashed into utility poles. One exception was on Long Island, where 6,800 customers lost power, primarily in Manhasset, Merrick and East Meadow, the Long Island Power Authority reported. The snow arrived like a final dollop on top of an especially snowy winter, with 37 inches recorded in Central Park before yesterday's storm, according to Jeff Warner, a Penn State meteorologist. Normal snowfall through March 7 in the park is 19 inches, he said. Some parents and children seemed frustrated that the snow meant extra chores but little winter romping, what with the high winds and mainly skimpy accumulation. Walking in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, Xavier Marechaux, a teacher, took off his fedora and plopped it on the head of his 6-year-old son, David. "I'm starting to get a little fed up," Mr. Marechaux said. "It was nice at the beginning, but I have to clean my sidewalk and my car, and it's still not enough for a really good snow day." But others seemed almost pleased to have been caught off guard. "I think it's a good thing," said Richard Diener, a retired social studies teacher who was in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. "Life still has to have mystery and surprise." And perhaps no one was as wistful as Andrew Walter, for whom it was moving day. Mr. Walter, a 35-year-old advertising executive bound for San Francisco, was clearing his sidewalk in Carroll Gardens, so the movers would not slip. "Today is the last time I'll see snow for a long time," he said, "so I'm happy about it." Reporting for this article was contributed by Peter Beller, Ann Farmer, John Holl, Colin Moynihan and Thomas J. Lueck. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
