Career Justice Department attorney named firewall between Special Prosecutor and Attorney General.

In another sign that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has uncovered some serious criminal wrongdoing in the investigation of the White House leak of Valerie Plame and her non-official cover network tracking weapons of mass destruction proliferation, outgoing Deputy Attorney General James Comey appointed career Justice Department attorney and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis as the person who will broadly oversee Fitzgerald's investigation. Margolis has served as Chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section and head of the Strike Force Against Organized Crime and he is considered a top organized crime buster by his colleagues. The Margolis appointment is significant since President Bush announced that Timothy E. Flanigan would replace Comey. Flanigan's links to recently indicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff has Democrats and Republicans questioning Flanigan's suitability for the number to jo at Justice. There was also a Newsweek report that Bush Yale/Skull & Bones classmate Robert McCallum would be named as Fitzgerald's overseer. With Comey trumping the White House by naming Margolis, a 40 year Justice Department veteran whose portfolio includes the Abscam investigation of powerful politicians, it now appears that the McCallum story was floated by the White House as an attempt to intimidate Fitzgerald. Career Justice Department prosecutors view the Margolis appointment as an indication that Comey wants to protect his friend Fitzgerald from White House pressure as preperations for indictments of at least two White House officials are in their final stages.

International fugitive Marc Rich. Margolis and Libby sparred before over the Rich pardon.

What is particularly noteworthy with the Margolis appointment is a note that surfaced during the congressional investigation of President Clinton's pardon of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich. A 1999 note written by Jack Quinn(see below **), Rich's Arnold & Porter law firm attorney, states that David Margolis was one of the Justice Department prosecutors who thought it was ridiculous for any Justice Department to meet with Rich's attorneys to hammer out a pardon agreement. ["Eric" and "EH" are references to then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder; "Mary Jo" is Mary Jo White, then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and chief investigator of the Rich pardon; "JR" is a reference to then-Attorney General Janet Reno.] Obviously Margolis, as an organized crime buster, was well aware of Rich's international criminal activities and his ties with Russian and Israeli mobsters. Margolis, along with other Justice prosecutors, including White, was opposed to the pardon of Rich. At the time of the lobbying effort for the pardon, one of Rich's other attorneys was none other than Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a prime target of the Fitzgerald probe.

** JACK QUINN
Eric 11/8/99
c.o.s.
Dave Margolis
All think ridiculous
Send letter to Mary Jo not Larry or me cc EH + JR
Once we get, we'll call her and say you shd do it
Be reasonable and conciliatory

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