February 16, 2025 • 25 mins
Newt’s guest is former U.S. Attorney William Kolibash. They discuss his extensive career in the Northern District of West Virginia, where he prosecuted a wide range of criminals, from moonshiners and drug dealers to sex traffickers and violent gangs. Kolibash shares insights from his new book, “Justice Never Rests: A U.S. Attorney’s Battle Against Murderers, Drug Lords, Mob Kingpins & Cults,” detailing his pioneering use of the RICO statute and multi-jurisdictional task forces. He recounts his journey from a history major at Brown University to a law career influenced by the Vietnam War draft, his experiences in the military's Judge Advocate General Corps, and his eventual appointment as U.S. Attorney by President Reagan. Kolibash also reflects on the importance of collaboration with law enforcement and the challenges of combating organized crime and drug cartels.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of Newsworld. In his twenty years in
the Northern District of West Virginia, first as an assistant
and then as the sitting US Attorney, William Calabash prosecuted
all manner of crimes and criminals, ranging from old school
moonshiners who operated a massive marijuanaing, to sex traffickers to
(00:27):
violent Jamaican posses to major drug dealers at the forefront
of the cocaine wave. He also convicted the notorious godfather
of Midwestern crime, Paul Hankish, and finished his career by
bringing down the murderous and corrupt Swami of the Hari
Krishna Movement. He pioneered the use of the Rico Statute
(00:48):
to bring criminals to justice and became the first US
attorney ever to make use of multi jurisdictional task forces
and investigated granjuries. I'm really pleased to welcome my guest,
former US Attorney William Calabash, and he's here to talk
about his new book, Justice Never Rests, a US Attorney's
battle against murderers, drug lords, mob kingpins, and colts. Bill, Welcome,
(01:24):
and thank you for joining me in news World.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do this.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I mean, you've had a career that sounds like a
series of movies. It's pretty wild.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yeah, I've heard that several people who have read the
book indicated that this should be a movie, And in fact,
I have a call later in this evening with producer
out in Hollywood who's read the book, so we may
be going in that direction.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Sir, that would be great. I'm very curious because you
didn't start out to be a lawyer. What made you
decide to go to law school and pursue this as
a career.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I graduated from Brown University in nineteen sixty six, and
that was at the height of the Vietnam War, and
you had two options. Of course, they were using the
draft number system, and I had a draft number where
I would have been drafted.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
And so the two options that you had.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
At the end of the year to get a deferment
would be to become a teacher and teach in a
certain designated area, or you could get a deferment to
go to.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Law school for three years.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
So I was not interested in teaching, and several of
my classmates were interested in law school. My fraternity brothers
and so I applied to law school as an alternative
to being drafted or taking another course.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
I'm kind of curious about the story about why you
dropped out of physics and transferred over to history, because
it's a very human story.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Yes, I went to a private military school in Wheeling,
which has excellent academic credentials, and I did very well.
Was the second my class, and I did extremely well
in math and physics, and I thought I was really
smart and could go in that direction in my career.
And that was my first year at Brown. My second
year when things really got complicated in physics courses, in
(03:14):
chemistry courses, and all those types of courses required not
only classroom work but a lab. And I think the
physics course was maybe three hours with a three or
four hour lab. And I was walking across campus with
a stack of books for the physics course, and I
saw one of my fraternity brothers carrying a paperback book
and I.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Said, well, what's that. He says, that's his textbook for history.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I balanced the way of each books and I says,
maybe I may be interested in that. I was interested
in history when I was in high school too, So
that's how it came about that I became a history major.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
So when you decided to go to law school, how
did you end up a West Virginia.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
I applied to several schools, but West Virginia was probably
the one I thought I could get accepted to. I
didn't have exactly a stellar academic background Brown. I was
kind of a gentleman see type student and probably had
a better average and other critter activity. And I thought
that would give me a good opportunity there. And with
(04:12):
my lsat scores, I thought that would give me an
opportunity with the background going to, you know, a prestigious
school like Brown, but I would have an opportunity to
go there. And my family was back in West Virginia
and so forth we wanted to get back home.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
So when you graduated from law school and you were
admitted to the West Virginia State Bar, you were then
offered a commission as a captain in the US Army.
Why did you accept?
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Oh, it was an excellent opportunity, and that would give
me an opportunity to do two things. One to really
gain a lot of experience in practice of law, and
then also to.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Serve my country. In West Virginia, it's a very prominent
serving your country and things like that. So that's the reason.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
When you're in the Judge Advocate General Corps, you've actually
had opportunities to experience trials in court much greater than
the same opportunity if you were, like in a big
law firm. What was that like to be in your
mid twenties in a military court in Fort Hood trying
(05:16):
cases that went all the way to capital.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Very great experience. It's a tremendous opportunity. And at that
time the speaker of what happened is the Military Justice
Actor I think was nineteen sixty eight was passed and
that required that there'd be lawyers on both sides, on
prosecutor on defense.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Previous to that, they leaded the line.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Officers as prosecutors and they weren't that effective. So there
was an opportunity to really get into the courtroom because
you would have people with law degrees on both sides.
And I did both sides, and it was a tremendous
learning experience where you would study the law. One day,
you may be trying to get a piece of evidence
on a search and caesar. Next day you would maybe
(05:56):
trying to keep that out. So from an academic experience point,
you couldn't get that experience into private practice.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
You have to switch your psychology. I mean, half a
day you're prosecutor half a day you're a defense attorney.
Those are really dramatically different attitudes and dramatically different arguments,
aren't they.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Yes, it was challenging legal wise, and of course the
law was consistent what change would be the facts of
a particular case. And then I also became a chief
of Military Justice, which meant that I reviewed all the
court martial transcripts and did a review for the commanding
General on what action authentity it would take on those.
And that was a very good experience for what later
(06:38):
became a pellic practice when I went into the US
Attorney's office.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
So you really we're getting a remarkable volume of experience
compared to what would have happened if you'd gone into
a normal, big civilian law firm.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Oh correct.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Fort Hood was a pretty active anti war installation. Jane
Fonda would come down there, So we had a lot
of difficult cases involving disobeying orders and things of.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
That particular case.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
And I mentioned one particular one in the book where
I was a defense attorney for an individual who was
charged with disobeying orders, and I had to go into
the Olio Strut coffee house, which was the hotbed of
the scent, to meet my client in full uniform. So
that's another interesting experience. I don't think you could match
the experience that I got at ford Hood.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Both militarily and practically speaking.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
You get a I think remarkable opportunity. First of all,
you're approached by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force,
but that would take you to Detroit. But then luckily
an opening came up in the US Attorney's Office in
the Northern District of West Virginia, which would take you
(07:50):
back home. I mean, was that a pretty easy yes
to decide to be an assistant US Attorney?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yes, it was.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
It was pretty easy, and my background really fit in
perfectly with what the US Attorney's Office was. The Organized
Crime Drug Task Force was obviously more focused on organized
crime criminal prosecution, but the US Attorney's Office, and at
that time, there were only two assistants, and you had
really a broad range of legal actions, not only criminal
(08:17):
but civil action. And that gave me an opportunity to
be familiarized with the full practice of law. But basically
before that, my focus was primarily on criminal cases and
criminal appeals.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
How much do you think that experience made you sort
of approach the courtroom differently than you would have done
without that.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I don't know what I would have done without that,
because when you're trying a case, you can look at
the law, you can look at the books, but you
also have to develop that sixth sense when a person
is a witness, how to handle a witness, how to
do cross examination actually, how to respond to a judge,
and more importantly, how to respond to a jury. And
(09:01):
that's the imasurable experience that I got starting with trying cases.
Even though the military court is a panel of officers,
it's a jury and you're talking to people and you're
trying to convince people one way or the other of
what your position is. So that's the kind of experience
that you cannot get unless you're actually in the courtroom.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
When you become the assistant US attorney, what are your responsibilities?
What does an assistant US attorney do well?
Speaker 3 (09:25):
In our office, I would handle some criminal cases, and
back in the seventies, what we were focusing on pretty
much is the property crimes, bank robberies, stolen cars with
the FBI, some tax cases and things of that nature. Civilly,
we would be doing social Security appeal cases, some Federal
Torque Claim Act cases representing some of the agencies if
(09:46):
they had to go into court, and in civil cases,
we did not have a real heavy civil case load.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Another area was condemnation cases.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Because there was a lot of condemnation cases at the
time because there was dams being built on a high river,
property being taken, and that was a pretty heavy part
of the civil doc and I did not do a
lot of that.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
That was assigned to another attorney.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
But that's the kind of broad kind of cases that
we had in the US Attorney's office.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
You're now out of the army, and the army had
a pretty good rule about not being politically active. But
you have an interesting career as a Democrat and a Republican.
Explain that just a little bit.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Well.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Growing up in West Virginia at that time, as you
would be where West Virginia was a very strong Democratic state.
Senator Berg, Senator Randolph, later on Senator Rockefeller, and also
the state government was controlled. I was not interested in politics,
nor did anybody in my family interested in politics. So
when we become the register, you as a Democrat because
(10:47):
that's the only party that was around, and of course
you couldn't be active in politics in the army, and
I never was really active politically. When I would read
the appointment assistant US Attorney in a Democratic or Republican administration,
as a courtesy to the US Attorney, I changed registration
as a Republican. It really didn't have anything to do
with any political activity, of course, which I couldn't do anyway.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Then life changes in you end up as a Republican
and Ronald Reagan nominates you to be US attorney.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yes, what happened there is in the Democratic administration there
the federal judge, there's a chapter on how he would
try to manipulate things. Never permitted the presidentially appointed US attorney.
He had a court appointed the US Attorney for I
think it was four years whatever it was there. And
then the Justice Department, the executive director at that time
(12:01):
was Bill Tyson. He said, the administration is not going
to permit a courter point an attorney. We're going to
have a presidentially appointed US attorney. And there were some
candidates that were submitted who for one reason or another,
were not acceptable, but they.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Did not want to take a side one way or
the other.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
So Bill Tyson said, what we're going to do instead
of having the state submit a name, We're going to
submit your name over into the White House and see
what happens. And again, Governor Moore, who was the powerbroker
at the time, was kind of skeptical of me because
I had been a Democrat at one time for reasons
unknown to me why he would think that way. But
(12:39):
then there was the Prizer, Stanley Prizer, who was very
influential in my career. He was one of the big
defense attorneys in some of the corruption cases when I
was a US assistant. He convinced Governor Moore not to
oppose the appointment, and so with no opposition, the appointment
then went to the Congress and I was appointed, confirmed,
and pointed by a president.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Record, Now you are in charge. Hasn't it sort of
surprised you how much West Virginia has shifted from the
most democratic state in the country to the most republican
in our.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Lifetime, Yes, definitely.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
As I say, I grew up with Senator Bird, Senator
Randolph and of course, I'm sure you're very familiar with
the power that they've had. That was very surprising, But
I wasn't really active in politics, and I couldn't be
active being in the US Attorney's office. But it was
really surprising to see the shift and see how it
continues on.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
It's been really much better for the state.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I think the Republican administrations have done an excellent job
in promoting the state.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Now we get down to the sort of the heart
of the book, and you begin your book with a really,
i think incredibly dangerous account of receiving a mail bomb
from an inmate.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Well, some of these inmates who were doing time in
state prisons, and state prisons were at least in their view,
were not a very nice place to be and in fact,
a very bad place to be, and they for some
reason thought that during time in a federal installation would
be much easier. So what they would do is they
would commit a crime, a federal crime, and hoped that
(14:12):
they would be prosecuted, and then once they were convicted
and sentence, they would be transferred to a federal institution. Well,
mister Hamrick threatened the jodge, and we prosecuted him, but
he found out that he was going to have to
finish his state sentence before he started his federal sentence,
and he was very upset with that and said he
wanted to do something to make sure he could get.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Out of state custody.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
So he ended up creating this bomb and sending it
to me.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Luckily, for you, the bomb didn't quite work. This must
have been an unbelievable moment.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It was.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I walked into the offices right after New Year's and
normally my secretary would bring the mail back, but she
wasn't present that particular day, and we didn't have at
that time. There was no running the mail through any
type of device or anything like that, and so I
saw it on her day and I picked it up.
It was in a legal size envelope. It had an
Oak Street address is where the county jail was located,
(15:07):
and we would get petitions from prisoners all the time,
so I didn't think anything of it looking at the address,
and I opened it up. When I saw the bu
teante lighters in there, sew some strapnel fly out of there,
I knew exactly what it was, and I immediately put
it on the desk and left and there was a
long hallway between my office and the Secretary's office, and
went down that hallway and immediately called the ATF in
(15:30):
the FBI.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
How does a criminal in prison make abomb.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
This guy was very inventive and there's a description in
the book about all his activities. He did a lot
of nasty things that he was a white supremacist, and
he was one guy in the speaker that I think
was capable of assassinating a public official, high level public official,
even bus up the president. And he got these items
in the commissary and a bututane lighter, he got a
(15:58):
legal pad, he got the shrap there. The way the
bomb was constructed, he was shaved down the utane lighters,
and then he would have a wire connected to a
nine volt battery and he would put a celerant on
the lightyers and then when the bomb opened up that
a celiant would melt the propane and.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Blow it up.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Well, he didn't use an a celerant that would do that,
and that's what saved me. There were other things that
he could have used as the commissary with which probably
able work, but fortunately he did not do that.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Well that's a close shave though, but I gathered that
you had a number of these kind of threats over
the years.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Yes, but I don't think any of them were serious
as that. And what my concern was that I think
in these organized crime cases, if they're going to do
some damage to the case, they're not going to assassinate
the prosecutor.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
For the most part, They're going to go after witnesses.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
What concerned me most was when we started doing the
crack cocaine cases, that somebody would say, somebody who had
a vendetta against us or me would say, here's you know,
eight ball crack and shoot that guy. That kind of
random type person was a concern. Most of the threats
from the organized crime people, I don't think there are
any of those materialized where we acts and were able
(17:12):
to take some action and do a prosecution.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Do you think that if you're an organized crime it's
just not worth the risk of taking on a federal
law enforcement person.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Yeah, I think so, especially in West Virginia. I don't
think that any of those individuals would want to risk
the repercussions that would come from something of that nature.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
One of the things that makes your career unique is
that you were a genuine pioneer in using the Rico statute.
First of all, for the rest of us, what is
a Rico statute.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Ricos statue was passed in the seventies and was designed
to combat organized crime. And basically what it does is
that permits you to put a group of different types
of individuals who are.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Maybe running a group or a formal group.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Such as maybe a corporation of business something like that,
put those all together, and if those individuals are committing
different types of crimes, which they're called predicats under the
Rico statute, and that establishes what is a pattern of
racketeering activity, you can put that all in one particular case.
You can put all the individuals in one case and
all the crimes in one case. So you have a bribery,
(18:35):
you have extortion, you have murder, all those crimes committed
and then comes under a Rico conspiracy. And there's also
a Rico substantive statute. All the individuals can be tied together,
and all the crimes could be tied together if they
established the pattern of racketeering activity before you'd have to
prosecute those like a murder case individually, a bribery case individually,
(18:57):
with individual defendants, and you could not do that effectively.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Rico in that sense, Was it an important tool for
you in going after organized crime?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Certainly it was the tool because it gave us the
statutory authority to pursue these groups and to combine them
all in one large prosecution.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Your book talks about a lot of interesting, very different prosecutions.
When you look back on it, which case is the
most challenging and what did you learn from it?
Speaker 3 (19:28):
It's hard to single out a particular case. Of course,
Paul Hanke's case in Wheeling had a lot of different
tangents to it.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
The hare Christna case was another one.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Those two prosecutions were probably the most challenging from an
investigative standpoint. And I think the Jamaican case is over
in Martinsburg and what was done when we cleaned all
that out of there and how the community went back
to being the nice sleeping community in the eastern Pananda,
West Virginia.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Emphasized that if you're a US attorney, it's really important
to collaborate with law enforcement, and the law enforcement really
plays sort of an essential role. Can you just talk
briefly about the role of law enforcement from the standpoint
of the US.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Attorney Yeah, one of the good things in the Reagan
administration and Attorney General Meese is what they did.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
They asked us to form what is called law.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Enforcement coordinating committees and to bring in all the different
law enforcement agencies. Before that concept was being brought about.
I won't say this trust, but one of the examples
was nobody wanted to work with the IRS because the
IRS has all the red tape and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Nobody wanted to work with the FBI because.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
If we gave them a case, the FBI would take
credit for it and things like that. We dispelled all
those rumors and stuff when we had the first grand jury.
We had the IRS working. Of course they would do
the financial part. We had the state police, and then
we had the federal investigative agencies doing the other types
of crimes. The first case we'd was the marijuana Moonshiner case,
and it worked. We had support from the supervisors of
(21:05):
the RS, the SAC of the FBI, the superintendent of
the West Virginia State Police, and then some local law
enforcement and once they saw the concept that worked, they say,
this is great, we now can trust one another. We
dispelled all those rumors and everything, and we've been successful.
And the other thing the speaker was, when forfeitures came
(21:26):
into play back in the seventies, there wasn't a lot
of forfeiture law. There was a federal what it's called
drug law continuing to throw an enterprise law which was
similar to the Rico Statute, but limited drugs. It did
have a forfeiture provision and we used that in some
of the earlier cases. Then Congress passed a lot of
good forfeiture laws and money monitoring laws, and that permitted
(21:48):
us to do forfeitures. And of course those proceeds were
distributed to the agencies who worked in the case, so
there was a little extra incentive from that aspect.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
When you look at all of the efforts time we
put into trying to protect Americans from drug cartels and
what have you, and you look at the fact that
in the last couple of years we've had more than
twice as many young people die every year from things
like fentanyl has died in the entire eight years of
the Vietnam War. From your perspective, with your extraordinary experience,
(22:22):
what do you think we have to do to defeat
drugs in America.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I think we have to form effective task forces. Once
this concept was made prominent, there were everybody the local.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Form of task force. Here.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
What you need is a strong leader to put all
this together. You have to have one person making a decision.
And I always told my agents that you can tell
me anything you want, I'll consider it. But I got
one more vote than you do. And you've got to
have that cooperation. If you don't have the cooperation, you're
not going to be successful. And I think we cite
a couple cases in the book there where that cooperation
(22:57):
was not there.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
I think one of the gaudy case. And that's what
you need now.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
In the international situation, there are other interests involved, I guess.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I mean we got into that a little.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Bit with prosecuting the Jamaicans. There were some politics involved
down in Jamaica, and the Department of State came in,
so on.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
And so forth.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
You know, I don't know how, and you're much more
experience than I am, how you remedy those types of conflicts.
You've got to take me a hard charger and you
just got to keep going and knocking things down. That's
what President Trump appears to be doing and hopefully he'll
apply that to the cartels and ag Bondi also, I think.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Is going to be very effective.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
When you think about your experience and you see what's
happening today. Are there any kind of major changes you'd
like to see in the way law enforcement and US
attorneys work.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yes, I'd like to see more cooperation.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
You know, we've got to have that cooperation between the
Justice Department and the local US attorneys. And I say
the prime example of that is Attorney General mess He
let the US attorneys do their jobs. We didn't get
a lot of inner afferent from a Department of Justice,
and you can't have that oversight from the people sitting
in the apartment in DC try to second guest US
attorneys out there.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
So I think that's going to common with saj Bondi.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
She's got all the experience and she certainly has President
Trump's support behind her.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I think that's absolutely right. And Bondi is a very tough,
very smart person. Bill. I want to thank you for
joining me. Your new book, Justice Never Rests, A US
Attorney's battle against murderers, drug lords, mob kingpins, and colls,
is available now on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere. And
we're going to feature a link to buy it on
(24:37):
our show page.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Thank you, I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Thank you. To my guest, William Klabash, you can get
a link to buy his new book, Justice Never Rests
on our show page at neutraorld dot com. NEUTRALD is
produced by Gangwi three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer
is Guernsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork
for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks
(25:07):
to the team at gingridh thwreet sixty. If you've been
enjoying news World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts
and both rate us with five stars and give us
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Right now, listeners of newt World concerned for my three
freeweekly columns at ginglishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter, I'm
(25:28):
new Gingrich. This is newts World
On this episode of Newsworld. In his twenty years in
the Northern District of West Virginia, first as an assistant
and then as the sitting US Attorney, William Calabash prosecuted
all manner of crimes and criminals, ranging from old school
moonshiners who operated a massive marijuanaing, to sex traffickers to
(00:27):
violent Jamaican posses to major drug dealers at the forefront
of the cocaine wave. He also convicted the notorious godfather
of Midwestern crime, Paul Hankish, and finished his career by
bringing down the murderous and corrupt Swami of the Hari
Krishna Movement. He pioneered the use of the Rico Statute
(00:48):
to bring criminals to justice and became the first US
attorney ever to make use of multi jurisdictional task forces
and investigated granjuries. I'm really pleased to welcome my guest,
former US Attorney William Calabash, and he's here to talk
about his new book, Justice Never Rests, a US Attorney's
battle against murderers, drug lords, mob kingpins, and colts. Bill, Welcome,
(01:24):
and thank you for joining me in news World.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do this.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I mean, you've had a career that sounds like a
series of movies. It's pretty wild.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yeah, I've heard that several people who have read the
book indicated that this should be a movie, And in fact,
I have a call later in this evening with producer
out in Hollywood who's read the book, so we may
be going in that direction.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Sir, that would be great. I'm very curious because you
didn't start out to be a lawyer. What made you
decide to go to law school and pursue this as
a career.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I graduated from Brown University in nineteen sixty six, and
that was at the height of the Vietnam War, and
you had two options. Of course, they were using the
draft number system, and I had a draft number where
I would have been drafted.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
And so the two options that you had.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
At the end of the year to get a deferment
would be to become a teacher and teach in a
certain designated area, or you could get a deferment to
go to.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Law school for three years.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
So I was not interested in teaching, and several of
my classmates were interested in law school. My fraternity brothers
and so I applied to law school as an alternative
to being drafted or taking another course.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
I'm kind of curious about the story about why you
dropped out of physics and transferred over to history, because
it's a very human story.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Yes, I went to a private military school in Wheeling,
which has excellent academic credentials, and I did very well.
Was the second my class, and I did extremely well
in math and physics, and I thought I was really
smart and could go in that direction in my career.
And that was my first year at Brown. My second
year when things really got complicated in physics courses, in
(03:14):
chemistry courses, and all those types of courses required not
only classroom work but a lab. And I think the
physics course was maybe three hours with a three or
four hour lab. And I was walking across campus with
a stack of books for the physics course, and I
saw one of my fraternity brothers carrying a paperback book
and I.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Said, well, what's that. He says, that's his textbook for history.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I balanced the way of each books and I says,
maybe I may be interested in that. I was interested
in history when I was in high school too, So
that's how it came about that I became a history major.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
So when you decided to go to law school, how
did you end up a West Virginia.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
I applied to several schools, but West Virginia was probably
the one I thought I could get accepted to. I
didn't have exactly a stellar academic background Brown. I was
kind of a gentleman see type student and probably had
a better average and other critter activity. And I thought
that would give me a good opportunity there. And with
(04:12):
my lsat scores, I thought that would give me an
opportunity with the background going to, you know, a prestigious
school like Brown, but I would have an opportunity to
go there. And my family was back in West Virginia
and so forth we wanted to get back home.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
So when you graduated from law school and you were
admitted to the West Virginia State Bar, you were then
offered a commission as a captain in the US Army.
Why did you accept?
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Oh, it was an excellent opportunity, and that would give
me an opportunity to do two things. One to really
gain a lot of experience in practice of law, and
then also to.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Serve my country. In West Virginia, it's a very prominent
serving your country and things like that. So that's the reason.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
When you're in the Judge Advocate General Corps, you've actually
had opportunities to experience trials in court much greater than
the same opportunity if you were, like in a big
law firm. What was that like to be in your
mid twenties in a military court in Fort Hood trying
(05:16):
cases that went all the way to capital.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Very great experience. It's a tremendous opportunity. And at that
time the speaker of what happened is the Military Justice
Actor I think was nineteen sixty eight was passed and
that required that there'd be lawyers on both sides, on
prosecutor on defense.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Previous to that, they leaded the line.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Officers as prosecutors and they weren't that effective. So there
was an opportunity to really get into the courtroom because
you would have people with law degrees on both sides.
And I did both sides, and it was a tremendous
learning experience where you would study the law. One day,
you may be trying to get a piece of evidence
on a search and caesar. Next day you would maybe
(05:56):
trying to keep that out. So from an academic experience point,
you couldn't get that experience into private practice.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
You have to switch your psychology. I mean, half a
day you're prosecutor half a day you're a defense attorney.
Those are really dramatically different attitudes and dramatically different arguments,
aren't they.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Yes, it was challenging legal wise, and of course the
law was consistent what change would be the facts of
a particular case. And then I also became a chief
of Military Justice, which meant that I reviewed all the
court martial transcripts and did a review for the commanding
General on what action authentity it would take on those.
And that was a very good experience for what later
(06:38):
became a pellic practice when I went into the US
Attorney's office.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
So you really we're getting a remarkable volume of experience
compared to what would have happened if you'd gone into
a normal, big civilian law firm.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Oh correct.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Fort Hood was a pretty active anti war installation. Jane
Fonda would come down there, So we had a lot
of difficult cases involving disobeying orders and things of.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
That particular case.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
And I mentioned one particular one in the book where
I was a defense attorney for an individual who was
charged with disobeying orders, and I had to go into
the Olio Strut coffee house, which was the hotbed of
the scent, to meet my client in full uniform. So
that's another interesting experience. I don't think you could match
the experience that I got at ford Hood.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Both militarily and practically speaking.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
You get a I think remarkable opportunity. First of all,
you're approached by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force,
but that would take you to Detroit. But then luckily
an opening came up in the US Attorney's Office in
the Northern District of West Virginia, which would take you
(07:50):
back home. I mean, was that a pretty easy yes
to decide to be an assistant US Attorney?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yes, it was.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
It was pretty easy, and my background really fit in
perfectly with what the US Attorney's Office was. The Organized
Crime Drug Task Force was obviously more focused on organized
crime criminal prosecution, but the US Attorney's Office, and at
that time, there were only two assistants, and you had
really a broad range of legal actions, not only criminal
(08:17):
but civil action. And that gave me an opportunity to
be familiarized with the full practice of law. But basically
before that, my focus was primarily on criminal cases and
criminal appeals.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
How much do you think that experience made you sort
of approach the courtroom differently than you would have done
without that.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I don't know what I would have done without that,
because when you're trying a case, you can look at
the law, you can look at the books, but you
also have to develop that sixth sense when a person
is a witness, how to handle a witness, how to
do cross examination actually, how to respond to a judge,
and more importantly, how to respond to a jury. And
(09:01):
that's the imasurable experience that I got starting with trying cases.
Even though the military court is a panel of officers,
it's a jury and you're talking to people and you're
trying to convince people one way or the other of
what your position is. So that's the kind of experience
that you cannot get unless you're actually in the courtroom.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
When you become the assistant US attorney, what are your responsibilities?
What does an assistant US attorney do well?
Speaker 3 (09:25):
In our office, I would handle some criminal cases, and
back in the seventies, what we were focusing on pretty
much is the property crimes, bank robberies, stolen cars with
the FBI, some tax cases and things of that nature. Civilly,
we would be doing social Security appeal cases, some Federal
Torque Claim Act cases representing some of the agencies if
(09:46):
they had to go into court, and in civil cases,
we did not have a real heavy civil case load.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Another area was condemnation cases.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Because there was a lot of condemnation cases at the
time because there was dams being built on a high river,
property being taken, and that was a pretty heavy part
of the civil doc and I did not do a
lot of that.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
That was assigned to another attorney.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
But that's the kind of broad kind of cases that
we had in the US Attorney's office.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
You're now out of the army, and the army had
a pretty good rule about not being politically active. But
you have an interesting career as a Democrat and a Republican.
Explain that just a little bit.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Well.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Growing up in West Virginia at that time, as you
would be where West Virginia was a very strong Democratic state.
Senator Berg, Senator Randolph, later on Senator Rockefeller, and also
the state government was controlled. I was not interested in politics,
nor did anybody in my family interested in politics. So
when we become the register, you as a Democrat because
(10:47):
that's the only party that was around, and of course
you couldn't be active in politics in the army, and
I never was really active politically. When I would read
the appointment assistant US Attorney in a Democratic or Republican administration,
as a courtesy to the US Attorney, I changed registration
as a Republican. It really didn't have anything to do
with any political activity, of course, which I couldn't do anyway.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Then life changes in you end up as a Republican
and Ronald Reagan nominates you to be US attorney.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yes, what happened there is in the Democratic administration there
the federal judge, there's a chapter on how he would
try to manipulate things. Never permitted the presidentially appointed US attorney.
He had a court appointed the US Attorney for I
think it was four years whatever it was there. And
then the Justice Department, the executive director at that time
(12:01):
was Bill Tyson. He said, the administration is not going
to permit a courter point an attorney. We're going to
have a presidentially appointed US attorney. And there were some
candidates that were submitted who for one reason or another,
were not acceptable, but they.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Did not want to take a side one way or
the other.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
So Bill Tyson said, what we're going to do instead
of having the state submit a name, We're going to
submit your name over into the White House and see
what happens. And again, Governor Moore, who was the powerbroker
at the time, was kind of skeptical of me because
I had been a Democrat at one time for reasons
unknown to me why he would think that way. But
(12:39):
then there was the Prizer, Stanley Prizer, who was very
influential in my career. He was one of the big
defense attorneys in some of the corruption cases when I
was a US assistant. He convinced Governor Moore not to
oppose the appointment, and so with no opposition, the appointment
then went to the Congress and I was appointed, confirmed,
and pointed by a president.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Record, Now you are in charge. Hasn't it sort of
surprised you how much West Virginia has shifted from the
most democratic state in the country to the most republican
in our.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Lifetime, Yes, definitely.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
As I say, I grew up with Senator Bird, Senator
Randolph and of course, I'm sure you're very familiar with
the power that they've had. That was very surprising, But
I wasn't really active in politics, and I couldn't be
active being in the US Attorney's office. But it was
really surprising to see the shift and see how it
continues on.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
It's been really much better for the state.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I think the Republican administrations have done an excellent job
in promoting the state.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Now we get down to the sort of the heart
of the book, and you begin your book with a really,
i think incredibly dangerous account of receiving a mail bomb
from an inmate.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Well, some of these inmates who were doing time in
state prisons, and state prisons were at least in their view,
were not a very nice place to be and in fact,
a very bad place to be, and they for some
reason thought that during time in a federal installation would
be much easier. So what they would do is they
would commit a crime, a federal crime, and hoped that
(14:12):
they would be prosecuted, and then once they were convicted
and sentence, they would be transferred to a federal institution. Well,
mister Hamrick threatened the jodge, and we prosecuted him, but
he found out that he was going to have to
finish his state sentence before he started his federal sentence,
and he was very upset with that and said he
wanted to do something to make sure he could get.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Out of state custody.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
So he ended up creating this bomb and sending it
to me.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Luckily, for you, the bomb didn't quite work. This must
have been an unbelievable moment.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It was.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I walked into the offices right after New Year's and
normally my secretary would bring the mail back, but she
wasn't present that particular day, and we didn't have at
that time. There was no running the mail through any
type of device or anything like that, and so I
saw it on her day and I picked it up.
It was in a legal size envelope. It had an
Oak Street address is where the county jail was located,
(15:07):
and we would get petitions from prisoners all the time,
so I didn't think anything of it looking at the address,
and I opened it up. When I saw the bu
teante lighters in there, sew some strapnel fly out of there,
I knew exactly what it was, and I immediately put
it on the desk and left and there was a
long hallway between my office and the Secretary's office, and
went down that hallway and immediately called the ATF in
(15:30):
the FBI.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
How does a criminal in prison make abomb.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
This guy was very inventive and there's a description in
the book about all his activities. He did a lot
of nasty things that he was a white supremacist, and
he was one guy in the speaker that I think
was capable of assassinating a public official, high level public official,
even bus up the president. And he got these items
in the commissary and a bututane lighter, he got a
(15:58):
legal pad, he got the shrap there. The way the
bomb was constructed, he was shaved down the utane lighters,
and then he would have a wire connected to a
nine volt battery and he would put a celerant on
the lightyers and then when the bomb opened up that
a celiant would melt the propane and.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Blow it up.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Well, he didn't use an a celerant that would do that,
and that's what saved me. There were other things that
he could have used as the commissary with which probably
able work, but fortunately he did not do that.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Well that's a close shave though, but I gathered that
you had a number of these kind of threats over
the years.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Yes, but I don't think any of them were serious
as that. And what my concern was that I think
in these organized crime cases, if they're going to do
some damage to the case, they're not going to assassinate
the prosecutor.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
For the most part, They're going to go after witnesses.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
What concerned me most was when we started doing the
crack cocaine cases, that somebody would say, somebody who had
a vendetta against us or me would say, here's you know,
eight ball crack and shoot that guy. That kind of
random type person was a concern. Most of the threats
from the organized crime people, I don't think there are
any of those materialized where we acts and were able
(17:12):
to take some action and do a prosecution.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Do you think that if you're an organized crime it's
just not worth the risk of taking on a federal
law enforcement person.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Yeah, I think so, especially in West Virginia. I don't
think that any of those individuals would want to risk
the repercussions that would come from something of that nature.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
One of the things that makes your career unique is
that you were a genuine pioneer in using the Rico statute.
First of all, for the rest of us, what is
a Rico statute.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Ricos statue was passed in the seventies and was designed
to combat organized crime. And basically what it does is
that permits you to put a group of different types
of individuals who are.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Maybe running a group or a formal group.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Such as maybe a corporation of business something like that,
put those all together, and if those individuals are committing
different types of crimes, which they're called predicats under the
Rico statute, and that establishes what is a pattern of
racketeering activity, you can put that all in one particular case.
You can put all the individuals in one case and
all the crimes in one case. So you have a bribery,
(18:35):
you have extortion, you have murder, all those crimes committed
and then comes under a Rico conspiracy. And there's also
a Rico substantive statute. All the individuals can be tied together,
and all the crimes could be tied together if they
established the pattern of racketeering activity before you'd have to
prosecute those like a murder case individually, a bribery case individually,
(18:57):
with individual defendants, and you could not do that effectively.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Rico in that sense, Was it an important tool for
you in going after organized crime?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Certainly it was the tool because it gave us the
statutory authority to pursue these groups and to combine them
all in one large prosecution.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Your book talks about a lot of interesting, very different prosecutions.
When you look back on it, which case is the
most challenging and what did you learn from it?
Speaker 3 (19:28):
It's hard to single out a particular case. Of course,
Paul Hanke's case in Wheeling had a lot of different
tangents to it.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
The hare Christna case was another one.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Those two prosecutions were probably the most challenging from an
investigative standpoint. And I think the Jamaican case is over
in Martinsburg and what was done when we cleaned all
that out of there and how the community went back
to being the nice sleeping community in the eastern Pananda,
West Virginia.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Emphasized that if you're a US attorney, it's really important
to collaborate with law enforcement, and the law enforcement really
plays sort of an essential role. Can you just talk
briefly about the role of law enforcement from the standpoint
of the US.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Attorney Yeah, one of the good things in the Reagan
administration and Attorney General Meese is what they did.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
They asked us to form what is called law.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Enforcement coordinating committees and to bring in all the different
law enforcement agencies. Before that concept was being brought about.
I won't say this trust, but one of the examples
was nobody wanted to work with the IRS because the
IRS has all the red tape and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Nobody wanted to work with the FBI because.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
If we gave them a case, the FBI would take
credit for it and things like that. We dispelled all
those rumors and stuff when we had the first grand jury.
We had the IRS working. Of course they would do
the financial part. We had the state police, and then
we had the federal investigative agencies doing the other types
of crimes. The first case we'd was the marijuana Moonshiner case,
and it worked. We had support from the supervisors of
(21:05):
the RS, the SAC of the FBI, the superintendent of
the West Virginia State Police, and then some local law
enforcement and once they saw the concept that worked, they say,
this is great, we now can trust one another. We
dispelled all those rumors and everything, and we've been successful.
And the other thing the speaker was, when forfeitures came
(21:26):
into play back in the seventies, there wasn't a lot
of forfeiture law. There was a federal what it's called
drug law continuing to throw an enterprise law which was
similar to the Rico Statute, but limited drugs. It did
have a forfeiture provision and we used that in some
of the earlier cases. Then Congress passed a lot of
good forfeiture laws and money monitoring laws, and that permitted
(21:48):
us to do forfeitures. And of course those proceeds were
distributed to the agencies who worked in the case, so
there was a little extra incentive from that aspect.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
When you look at all of the efforts time we
put into trying to protect Americans from drug cartels and
what have you, and you look at the fact that
in the last couple of years we've had more than
twice as many young people die every year from things
like fentanyl has died in the entire eight years of
the Vietnam War. From your perspective, with your extraordinary experience,
(22:22):
what do you think we have to do to defeat
drugs in America.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I think we have to form effective task forces. Once
this concept was made prominent, there were everybody the local.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Form of task force. Here.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
What you need is a strong leader to put all
this together. You have to have one person making a decision.
And I always told my agents that you can tell
me anything you want, I'll consider it. But I got
one more vote than you do. And you've got to
have that cooperation. If you don't have the cooperation, you're
not going to be successful. And I think we cite
a couple cases in the book there where that cooperation
(22:57):
was not there.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
I think one of the gaudy case. And that's what
you need now.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
In the international situation, there are other interests involved, I guess.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I mean we got into that a little.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Bit with prosecuting the Jamaicans. There were some politics involved
down in Jamaica, and the Department of State came in,
so on.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
And so forth.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
You know, I don't know how, and you're much more
experience than I am, how you remedy those types of conflicts.
You've got to take me a hard charger and you
just got to keep going and knocking things down. That's
what President Trump appears to be doing and hopefully he'll
apply that to the cartels and ag Bondi also, I think.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Is going to be very effective.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
When you think about your experience and you see what's
happening today. Are there any kind of major changes you'd
like to see in the way law enforcement and US
attorneys work.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yes, I'd like to see more cooperation.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
You know, we've got to have that cooperation between the
Justice Department and the local US attorneys. And I say
the prime example of that is Attorney General mess He
let the US attorneys do their jobs. We didn't get
a lot of inner afferent from a Department of Justice,
and you can't have that oversight from the people sitting
in the apartment in DC try to second guest US
attorneys out there.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
So I think that's going to common with saj Bondi.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
She's got all the experience and she certainly has President
Trump's support behind her.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I think that's absolutely right. And Bondi is a very tough,
very smart person. Bill. I want to thank you for
joining me. Your new book, Justice Never Rests, A US
Attorney's battle against murderers, drug lords, mob kingpins, and colls,
is available now on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere. And
we're going to feature a link to buy it on
(24:37):
our show page.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Thank you, I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Thank you. To my guest, William Klabash, you can get
a link to buy his new book, Justice Never Rests
on our show page at neutraorld dot com. NEUTRALD is
produced by Gangwi three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer
is Guernsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork
for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks
(25:07):
to the team at gingridh thwreet sixty. If you've been
enjoying news World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts
and both rate us with five stars and give us
a review so others can learn what it's all about.
Right now, listeners of newt World concerned for my three
freeweekly columns at ginglishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter, I'm
(25:28):
new Gingrich. This is newts World
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