Patrick Fitzgerald tells UW audience public must fight corruption

The federal prosecutor behind the conviction of former vice-presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and the indictment of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich says the public has to take more responsibility for corruption in government and private business.

"The answer to corruption is not necessarily at the end of handcuffs," said Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, speaking Thursday evening at the University of Washington's Evan's School of Public Affairs.

The public, Fitzgerald said, needs to stand up when it knows something is rotten, not simply accept graft, bribery and greed as a cost of doing business.

"People can't do this stuff without someone else knowing about it. The metric of whether or not you're doing a good job is not whether or not you get indicted."

Fitzgerald, a career federal prosecutor whose other cases include the first World Trade Center bombing and the conviction of former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, delivered remarks and participated in a panel discussion on ethics.

The panel also included Mark Bartlett, the first assistant U.S. attorney in Seattle; Egil Krogh, a former Seattle lawyer who went to prison for his role supervising a burglary by the Nixon White House "plumbers;" and Lynn Brewer, a former Enron executive and self-described "whistle-blower" who operates a for-profit institution she says can predict corporate viability.

Fitzgerald said corruption in business or government can exist only if people who know about it do nothing. He said that during a sweeping corruption investigation into the Secretary of State's Office in Illinois — which ultimately resulted in nearly 70 indictments and the conviction of Ryan — workers told him over and over that the payoffs and bribery he was investigating "was just the way it is in Chicago."

"My response is, 'That's the way you're allowing it to be,' " he said. "We need people to stand up."

The solutions he and the others offered were as simple as they seem unachievable at a time when the public's trust in corporate America is at a low: a cultural change that rewards honesty, where leadership encourages transparency and where loyalty is to an ideal, not to a person.

Indeed, Krogh said his unquestioning loyalty to Nixon overshadowed the oath he had sworn to uphold the Constitution.

"You have to get those loyalties straight," he said.

Bartlett said people have let money and power become the "gradient of their success," pointing out the Department of Justice has not been immune to these shortcomings.

Witness, he said, the firings by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, or the recent decision to dismiss the charges against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens because of apparent misconduct by the public-corruption prosecutors.

"We can only hope that the high good that we all know about will come to the fore," he said.

Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com