Turning the Page: “Convictions”
Was Enron Task Force Politicized?

Former federal prosecutor John Kroger, who’s currently running for attorney general of Oregon, details his career taking down the mob and white-collar criminals in his new book, “Convictions: A Prosecutor’s Battles Against Mafia Killers, Drug Kingpins, and Enron Thieves.”

One of the most interesting anecdotes concerns his application to join the Justice Department’s Enron Task Force in 2002, a process already fraught with the politicization that would become a full-fledged scandal in 2006 and 2007:

When I agreed to join the Enron Task Force, a senior DOJ prosecutor involved in the case sent me an e-mail:

‘Better buy some elephant cuff-links if you are coming to DC; certain parts of your resume will not resound w/the current crowd.’

I thought she was joking. A few days later, however, she sent me another e-mail warning. Political appointees, she said, would be vetting my resume. [Kroger had been a policy adviser to President Clinton, former House Speaker Tom Foley and Senator Chuck Schumer.]

My friend suggested that if I wanted to be hired, I might want to ‘moderate’ my resume a bit. ‘Seriously, as lame as this sounds, the higher-ups at the department are SUPER right-wing.‘

The idea that career prosecutors would be judged politically, not professionally, sent a shiver of anger down my spine, for that is totally contrary to the DOJ ethic.”

Kroger also describes how he resigned his career partly in response to the DOJ’s prosecution of Lea Fastow, the wife of Enron executive Andrew Fastow, condemning it as “a very ugly exercise of brute government power.”

“One of my fellow prosecutors made this clear at our meeting. He said, ‘Let’s see how Fastow feels about going to trial when his children are in fucking foster care.’”

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