So when ABC’s “20/20” aired allegations earlier this month that Napolitano had thwarted an undercover operation to catch a child pornographer, the GOP pounced. The Dole campaign rushed out a press release criticizing Napolitano for being soft on porn, and Dole himself demanded that Attorney General Janet Reno explain the Arizona prosecutor’s “shocking” conduct. Dole’s Capitol Hill ally, Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, vowed to make Napolitano explain herself before Congress. It was all part of a concerted Republican effort to build a “Hall of Shame” for prosecutors and judges deemed soft on crime. Around the country, NEWSWEEK has learned, a loose network of former Republican prosecutors is searching for liberal jurists and lawyers, the kind who might, say, turn loose another Willie Horton.
The facts in Napolitano’s case may raise questions about political correctness, but they hardly qualify her as the child molester’s best friend. The case involved James N. Moore, a Phoenix bus driver who got caught up in a sting called Operation Special Delivery. In order to catch potential child molesters, the Postal Service came up with a scheme to sell child porn to unsuspecting customers. Under the federal Child Protection Act, the Feds can prosecute people who “knowingly” receive child pornography. After Moore showed up on a mailing list of porn customers, Postal Service inspectors sent him a solicitation offering him videotapes of all-male entertainment and “hot lads.” According to police, he then ordered $27 worth of tapes from the “Young Teen” (ages 12-15) and “Young Men” (16-21) selections.
When the post office asked the U.S. attorney for a warrant to search Moore’s home, Napolitano’s office refused. Her assistants believed that the evidence that Moore was predisposed to buy child porn was “weak.” According to postal inspector Karen Cassatt, one of Napolitano’s assist- ants declared that the U.S. Attorney’s Office had a “philosophical disagreement” with the sting operation because it targeted homosexual males. Though Napolitano denied this to NEWSWEEK (“The statement was never made,” she said), Cassatt has detailed notes of the conversation. Angrily, Cassatt took the case to the county prosecutor, who had Moore arrested under state law. According to police, Moore admitted to having had at least 200 casual encounters with young males, many under the age of 18. Moore was charged with sexual exploitation of minors, a charge that carries a sentence of 10 to 24 years on each count.
Justice officials privately admit that Napolitano probably made the wrong legal call in refusing to go after Moore. But publicly, they mounted a vigorous defense of her anti-crime credentials, pointing out that she had approved nine of 10 search warrants in other childporn cases. Justice spokesman Carl Stern dubbed the allegations against Napolitano “tabloid trash and twaddle,” while White House aide Rahm Emanuel called the attack on Napolitano “an attempt to whitewash Senator Dole’s nonexistent record on crime.” Democrats also wheeled out tough-talking Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio to praise the U.S. attorney’s “great record fighting pornography.”
That didn’t matter to Dole, who moved on to the next target. “They’re picking a prosecutor a week,” says a Justice of- ficial. After kiddie porn came the case of Miami U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey, who was thrown out of a topless bar after biting a stripper. In May Reno forced Coffey out before Dole could really exploit this latest embarrassment, but House Republican Conference chairman John Boehner did get off a shot in a “rapid response” press release. The Coffey case, he quipped, “gives a new meaning to “taking a bite out of crime’.”
Next week Dole will take on the U.S. attorney in San Diego, Alan Bersin, for “letting captured drug dealers go.” The allegations stem from a Los Angeles Times report that Bersin has sent more than 1,000 drug-smuggling suspects back to Mexico since 1994, in part because of overcrowding in jails and lack of resources. Slow on the uptake in the Napolitano case, Justice is learning how to fight back. Using the lexicon of the campaign, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick has told aides she wants a “rapid response” to counter charges “in the same news cycle.” Gorelick is even setting up a campaign-like “war room” in her office. In a campaign year, Justice can’t afford to be totally blind.
