Day: September 28, 2009

Ummm Ashton, we finally found out where the “[email protected] D%&m FBI” has been….

Special agents need lovin’ too. Bruce Alpert at the Times Picayune has the story:

As the corruption case against former Rep. William Jefferson was about to go to trial in June, prosecutors learned from their star witness that she had had a sexual relationship with the undercover FBI agent who drove her to all the meetings where she secretly taped and delivered cash to the New Orleans Democrat

But according to court documents unsealed last week, the FBI and its Office of Professional Responsibility knew at least as far back as last December that the agent, John Guandolo, “had had an intimate relationship with a confidential source that he thought could damage an investigation.” But they never passed that information to the U.S. attorney’s office prosecuting Jefferson or the lead FBI agent in the investigation.

The failure to provide the court and the prosecutors with such explosive information raises questions about FBI conduct, even as the revelation about Guandolo’s relationship with Lori Mody, the northern Virginia businesswoman at the center of the Jefferson probe, adds a new layer of intrigue to the case.

It also shows how the actions of a single agent could have wrecked the long and meticulous Justice Department pursuit of Jefferson. Mody did not testify at the trial, but the tapes she secretly recorded were allowed to be played for the jury and were a key to the conviction of the nine-term congressman on 11 of 16 corruption charges. Continue reading “Ummm Ashton, we finally found out where the “[email protected] D%&m FBI” has been….”

The Times Picayune profiles a Katrina hero and the storm’s latest casualty

After Katrina the euphoria of survival eventually gave way to the (at times) overwhelming task of recovery; from that of my family and my business to helping my clients navigate the maze of important financial decisions that were part and parcel of the process. Though we were able to finally call the task “done” by mid 2007 it is the spring of 2006 that I remember most because there were a few occasions I almost broke under the stress. It is from that perspective that I noted and was immediately attracted to a story in today’s Times Picayune above Reverend Jerry Kramer who evidently put the recovery of the entire Broadmoor neighborhood on his back. The dues he paid for doing that was his own health. Bruce Nolan filed the story:

The Rev. Jerry Kramer, a hyper-energetic Episcopal priest who transformed a small neighborhood church into a powerhouse that helped drive the post-Katrina recovery of the entire Broadmoor neighborhood, stunned his parishioners last week with news that, sick and exhausted, he has resigned.

In an accompanying e-mail message, Kramer said that if he recovers after several months on a temporary medical disability, he hopes next year to return to missionary work in Tanzania with his wife and two children.

“But I have to get well to do that, ” he said last week. “I need some rest. I absolutely need some rest.

“I haven’t been able to put in a full day (of work) in over a year.”

In the four years since Katrina, Kramer developed a reputation as a innovative priest who, from the moment he paddled up to his flooded church on South Claiborne Avenue, merged its recovery with the recovery of the surrounding neighborhood.

“I think before he arrived, we were trying to figure out what our mission was, ” said Martha McKnight, the head of the vestry at Kramer’s Free Church of the Annunciation.

“Boy, did Katrina take care of that.” Continue reading “The Times Picayune profiles a Katrina hero and the storm’s latest casualty”