Quote of note:
Other memos show the chief of the elite organized crime strike force in Detroit, Assistant U.S. Attorney Keith Corbett, challenged the judgment of Justice's terrorism chief, Barry Sabin.
"I see no reason to listen to petty bureaucratic complaints by people who will not and could not try the case," Corbett wrote. "Sorry if this response seems impolite, but I have had it with Barry Sabin."
When Washington evaluated the Detroit office as uncooperative after the trial, Detroit responded with a strong retort.
The lone Justice lawyer sent from Washington to help told his Detroit colleagues "he had no intention of participating in the trial" and refused to assist when an urgent issue arose involving a witness and the State Department, the Detroit office wrote.
The Washington lawyer "spent the same 10 (trial) weeks in a hotel at taxpayers' expense when he was not playing basketball in the evenings," the memo stated.
AP: Superiors hindered terror prosecutors
By John Solomon, Associated Press Writer | August 8, 2004
WASHINGTON --Prosecutors in the first major terror trial after Sept. 11 were hindered by superiors from presenting some of their most powerful evidence, including testimony from an al-Qaida leader and video footage showing Osama bin Laden's European operatives casing American landmarks, Justice Department memos show.
The department's terrorism unit "provided no help of any kind in this prosecution," the U.S. Attorney's office in Detroit wrote in one of the memos, which detail bitter divisions between front-line prosecutors and their superiors in Washington.
The Detroit case ended last summer with the convictions, hailed by the Bush administration, of three men who were accused of operating a sleeper terror cell that possessed plans for attacks around the world.
A fourth defendant was acquitted, however, and only two of the four men originally arrested were convicted of terrorism charges. Now the convictions are in jeopardy because of an internal investigation into allegations that defense lawyers were denied evidence that could have helped them.
Whatever the outcome, internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and more than three dozen interviews with current and former officials detail how the differences between Washington and the field office kept important evidence from being shown to jurors.
"We were butting heads vigorously with narrow-shouldered bureaucrats in Washington," Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino told AP in an interview. He is the lead Detroit prosecutor who is now under investigation in Washington.
