4. The Parks Towers Narrative Appendix [b4]
Park Towers is a project involving John Mitchell as to which the court of appeals would find insufficient evidence to sustain a conviction. Nevertheless, and despite its length, the Park Towers narrative appendix, including its two addendums (as discussed in my December 5, 1995 letter to Larry D. Thompson) warrant careful attention from anyone with a serious interest in prosecutorial abuses generally or the conduct of Associate Independent Counsel Robert E. O’Neill and Deputy Independent Counsel Bruce C. Swartz in particular. For the materials set out what might be deemed a study in prosecutorial deviousness. The following is a very brief summary of the matter.
The Independent Counsel’s case as Park Towers was a circumstantial one, based on the following inferences:
(1) that Richard Shelby secured the services of John Mitchell because of Mitchell’s relationship to Deborah Gore Dean
(2) that a conspiratorial reference in a document to "the contact at HUD" was a reference to Dean rather than to Deputy Assistant Secretary Silvio DeBartolomeis;
(3) that Park Towers was discussed at a September 9, 1985 lunch attended by Shelby, Mitchell, and Dean;
(4) that Dean provided Shelby a copy of the Park Towers rapid reply;
(5) that Dean had been responsible for the post-allocation waiver of HUD regulations that allowed the Park Towers project to go forward;
(6) that Dean had provided Shelby a copy of that waiver;
(7) that Shelby concealed his contacts with Dean from Feinberg and Fine;
(8) that Shelby concealed Mitchell's involvement from Feinberg and Fine
(9) that there existed no documents showing Shelby’s contact with DeBartolomeis.
But Independent Counsel attorneys knew, with absolute certainty as to some and near certainty as to the remainder, that each of these inferences was false. In cases of inferences that Independent Counsel attorneys merely knew were almost certainly false, those attorneys forewent obvious and readily available avenues to determine whether the inference was in fact false and in one case elicited testimony that Independent Counsel attorneys knew was almost certainly false. And in the cases where documents existed specifically showing that inferences were false, Independent Counsel attorneys would fail to make Brady disclosures of those documents.
Robert E. O’Neill’s duplicitous tactics in leading the jury to believe these inferences were true is given some attention in the Robert E. O’Neill profile (at [3]) . And Bruce C. Swartz’s efforts to deceive the court in defending O’Neill’s actions are given attention in the Bruce C. Swartz profile (at [2]). The fact that each inference underlying this claim involving Deborah Gore Dean and John Mitchell was false – which is to say that the claim was fabricated – is something to be borne in mind as one considers the indications, discussed in the Arlin M. Adams profile and elsewhere (including Section B.3 supra and B.11 infra), that Adams bore a grudge against Mitchell for having kept Adams from the Supreme Court.
This matter is also summarized in many items of correspondence and addressed at pages 47-64 of Dean’s February 1997 Memorandum. The material should also be examined with regard to the truthfulness of statements made by Associate Independent Counsel Paula A. Sweeney as to why the Independent Counsel failed to make any Brady disclosures until the eve of trial. A version of the Park Towers materials that gives great attention to the Independent Counsel positions on Brady disclosures may also be found in Part I of the DC Bar Counsel materials (redacted as discussed in Section B.11a).
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