Main justice

Jim McGee and Brian Duffy take us behind the walls of Main Justice, as the department's headquarters is known to insiders, to show how its awesome powers to investigate and punish wrongdoing are used - and sometimes abused - in the war on crime. Setting their sights on the department's Criminal Division, and on the anonymous career lawyers whose decisions often become the stuff of front-page headlines and congressional hearings, McGee and Duffy show how the Justice Department has marshaled its legal firepower against Colombia's murderous Cali cocaine cartel, violent gangs in Shreveport and Chicago, CIA-agent-turned-traitor Aldrich Ames, and international terrorists. They also expose cases in which U.S. attorneys - whether to further a political agenda or because of excessive zeal - have abused their powers, often with devastating results for ordinary Americans. The story of Main Justice is told from several vantage points: from the streets of America, where FBI and DEA agents employ sophisticated investigative tools to make arrests; from the executive suites in Washington, where career lawyers decide which cases will be prosecuted; and from the federal courtrooms, where U.S. attorneys spar with defense lawyers and judges to obtain guilty verdicts. Main Justice also shows how the Clinton administration has altered the focus of federal law enforcement by targeting the violent street gangs that terrorize our cities and towns, and has established new procedures to safeguard the public against prosecutorial misconduct. In addition, McGee and Duffy explore the intersection of federal law enforcement and the nation's intelligence operations, a netherworld in which the constitutional limits on domestic law enforcement are increasingly challenged. The Aldrich Ames case highlighted the use of electronic and physical surveillance of suspected spies, including warrantless searches of their homes, while the growing threat of international terrorism, along with the ever-present problem of drug trafficking across our borders points to the need for closer cooperation between prosecutors and intelligence agents.