“There are granite blocks up at Fort Indiantown Gap,” my father told me one day. He was mystified. You had to wonder what was going on.
The granite blocks would turn out to be the least of the problems left under the rug by Gov. Thornburgh.
Gov. Bob Casey was sworn into office on January 20, 1987. Only two days later, on January 22, Treasurer Dwyer pulled out his .357 Magnum at his news conference and shot himself to death. (Coincidentally, Coach Joe Paterno died on January 22, 2012, 25 years to the day after Treasurer Dwyer’s death.)
Gov. Casey’s staff was barely in office two days, and was still unpacking. That morning the governor’s staff expected a convicted Treasurer Dwyer to resign. Late in the morning word came that the treasurer had dramatically shot himself to death at the news conference after implicating the Gov. Thornburgh and elected Attorney General Zimmerman in criminal misdeeds.
Moments later, a courier arrived in the governor’s office. The courier handed my father an envelope from the deceased state treasurer.
Needless to say, everyone was rather perplexed. What was going on?
It would turn out that the state’s first elected attorney general, LeRoy Zimmerman, was directly and deeply implicated in the 1980s criminal bribery conspiracy that caused the suicide of state Treasurer Budd Dwyer.
Also involved were Gov. Dick Thornburgh, and his staff.
Treasurer Dwyer, in suicide note, implicates AG Zimmerman and Gov. Thornburgh in criminal conspiracy
State Treasurer Dwyer left behind more than a bullet hole in the wall of the treasury, and a grieving family.
Before shooting himself to death with his .357, Dwyer passed out a suicide note. The letter accused his fellow Republicans, AG Zimmerman and Gov. Thornburgh, of some rather awful things.
The systemic corruption scandal that claimed the life of Treasurer Dwyer was known as the Computer Technology Associates (or CTA) case. It involved a cast of dozens of state officials of both parties, wholesale bribery, and a fraudulent contract ultimately signed by Treasurer Dwyer to seek refunds of Social Security overpayments made by thousands of the state’s schoolteachers.
In his suicide note Dwyer had lots to say about the intersection of politics and the office of the governor and newly elective office of the state attorney general. Now, instead of reading about Pennsylvania governors and AGs in history texts, we were reading about them in a suicide note written by a state row officer, and splattered with hot blood.
Upon taking office as governor in 1979, former federal prosecutor Thornburgh, Dwyer pointed out, had been deeply involved in the patronage practices of packing the state and federal law enforcement offices with his own dependable cronies. This was done both to advance Gov. Thornburgh’s own political agenda, and to protect Thornburgh from investigation by unfriendly (i.e. Democratic) prosecutors, Dwyer charged in his suicide note.
Thornburgh’s patronage practices in the law enforcement community actually began when he was U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania in the 1970s, Dwyer pointed out, and included repeated hirings of a former Thornburgh assistant prosecutor, James West, also of Pittsburgh. West ended up prosecuting Dwyer. Dwyer said moments before his death:
“It is a matter of public record that West’s first job after his judicial clerkship was to be hired by then U.S. Attorney Dick Thornburgh as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Western District of Pennsylvania in August of 1974. It is also public information that West’s second job was to be hired by then Governor Thornburgh as a Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General on April 2, 1979.
“Then after President Reagan took office in 1981, the Thornburgh group tried to take over the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania by having another two-time Thornburgh appointee, Henry Barr, appointed as U.S. Attorney. However, Barr was not recommended by the merit Selection Committee and David Dart Queen was nominated and confirmed as the U.S. Attorney.”
(Henry Barr, mentioned above, later worked as a drug prosecutor for U.S. Attorney General Thornburgh. Barr would himself in 1990 be indicted for years of cocaine use, and lying about his cocaine use to the FBI. In other words, Barr would be putting people in jail for crimes he himself was committing. The Los Angeles Times summarizes, “The grand jury ... charged Barr with conspiring from at least December, 1984, to January, 1988, with unnamed others to possess and ingest cocaine and conceal the use of the drug at various locations in the Harrisburg area, including private residences. The years included the period Barr served Thornburgh as his counsel in Pennsylvania’s capital.”)
Dwyer’s suicide note continues:
“But Assistant U.S. Attorneys do not have to go through the Merit Selection Committee process and in July of 1982 the Thornburgh group succeeded in having none other than James ‘Jimmy’ West named First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania with his office right across Capitol Park from Governor Thornburgh’s office.
“It was well known in campaign circles in the fall of 1984 that Governor Thornburgh and his top staff members were desperately trying to have U.S. Attorney Queen’s announcement of the first CTA indictments delayed until after the November 6, 1984 General Election. They knew, through West, that (state Attorney General LeRoy) Zimmerman’s name would be prominently mentioned in the indictment for the first time. They were afraid a pre-election announcement would cause Zimmerman’s defeat and that (Democrat) Allen Ertel as Attorney General would conduct an investigation of the Thornburgh Administration’s sweetheart, no-bid legal contracts. Queen went ahead with his announcement on October 23, 1984 and Zimmerman almost lost the election. The effort to remove Queen as U.S. Attorney began immediately because he could not be controlled. After a heavy political battle Queen was ‘promoted’ to a position in the U.S. Treasury Department. It was not the Solicitor’s position which he had sought. When Queen departed for Washington in January of 1985, James ‘Jimmy’ West was named as the acting U.S. attorney by a 4-2 vote of the Federal Judges in the Middle District and Governor Thornburgh had his lackey in charge of the CTA investigation and as we now know, my fate was sealed.”
With that, after reading his statement, Budd Dwyer pulled out his .357 and shot himself to death. For good measure, he had another gun, a Derringer pistol, stashed in his boot. The undertaker found it.
The CTA bribery conspiracy meant political contributions for the state’s first elected AG LeRoy Zimmerman
The various CTA criminal trials included court testimony that state Attorney General Zimmerman was offered a $150,000 bribe and/or campaign contribution by the co-conspirators in the scandal.
The perpetrators of the bribery conspiracy were two men with ties to both political parties: Dauphin County Republican co-chairman Bill Smith, and John Torquato, Jr, the son of a former Johnstown Democratic political boss.
Before he signed the CTA contract that led to his prosecution and suicide, state Treasurer Dwyer, according to court testimony, insisted that AG Zimmerman issue an opinion that Pennsylvania’s 500 some school districts had to deal exclusively with CTA for the Social Security funds recovery. (An FBI document explains, “In effect, they desired to obtain an opinion which would give CTA the sole and exclusive right to make recoveries for all the school districts.”)
The court heard testimony that co-conspirator Bill Smith met with two of Zimmerman’s top aides in the AG’s office and asked for the “exclusivity” opinion. Smith testified he finally telephoned AG Zimmerman personally to move things along.
Before he was elected AG, Zimmerman was the district attorney of Dauphin County. Smith, as co-chairman of the Dauphin County Republican committee, was on close terms with the former Republican Dauphin County DA. Smith, records show, had also been a contributor to Zimmerman’s first campaign for attorney general. (During the CTA trial one defense attorney would point out there is “a fine line” between a bribe and a campaign contribution.) AG Zimmerman, Smith testified, said state law prohibited him from issuing such an exclusivit
y opinion and that the Treasury Department’s own counsel should issue the ruling. Smith says he then asked Zimmerman to issue a ruling that the treasurer’s counsel could decide exclusivity.
At trial, as the prosecutor was about to move on to other areas of questioning, Smith volunteered more information about his enlightening phone conversation with state AG Roy Zimmerman. Smith said that at the end of the conversation, “Mr. Zimmerman said to me, ‘Is Torquato going to make a lot of money on this contract?’ And then -- quite shockingly -- he asked, ‘How much is Dwyer getting?’”
What was Smith’s response? the prosecutor asked.
“I told Mr. Zimmerman that Torquato said he’s going to give him (Dwyer) $300,000. If he does give Dwyer $300,000, I’ll get him to give you $150,000,” court documents say.
Smith said Zimmerman responded by saying, “’I love you Trickett,’ and that was the end of the conversation.” Trickett is Bill Smith’s middle name.
Smith further testified that he met with Zimmerman’s press secretary the next day, at which time the opinion and the contribution were again discussed. “I told him I would get Mr. Torquato to put $150,000 in (AG Zimmerman’s) campaign fund,” Smith testified.
FBI documents further implicate elected AG Zimmerman in scheme to receive campaign contributions
Not long after Dwyer’s suicide, a retired state investigator handed me a file folder. The folder was stuffed with FBI documents on the CTA case, as well as an earlier FBI transcript from a late-1970s federal corruption investigation involving LeRoy Zimmerman from his days as Dauphin County DA. The FBI papers document the story behind the cases.
Who had leaked these FBI documents?
FBI agents obviously had leaked them. They were unhappy with the political machinations and cover-ups in both of these cases. By leaking the documents, these investigators were sending a message to the public: Look, there’s more to these cases than these political prosecutors are telling you. Look, the prosecutors themselves are involved in crimes. Look, we in the FBI can’t do anything about it.
So along with strange, telltale lumps under the carpet, another sign of prosecutorial corruption, and corruption in the justice system, would be ongoing leaks from unhappy state and federal investigators.
Look, they’re saying. Look at this:
The leaked FBI documents I received in 1987 from the CTA case explain that Bill Smith’s co-conspirator, John Torquato, told federal investigators “Torquato and Smith hand carried the contract to the attorney general’s office and turned the contract over to Michael Trant, a deputy attorney general. The contract was then approved by the attorney general’s staff as to its form and legality. Smith told Torquato he had been in touch with the Pennsylvania Attorney General Roy Zimmerman by telephone and had asked for a positive attorney general’s opinion concerning the exclusivity of the treasurer’s contract. Torquato says he believes this contact was reportedly made just prior to the contract signing as there would have been no reason for any earlier contacts. Smith told Torquato he had offered Zimmerman $100,000 for Zimmerman’s campaign in exchange for a positive opinion. Smith told Torquato, ‘Roy says he’ll handle it.’”
Raw politics, fund raising, and the elected state attorney general’s office all coalesced in the CTA bribery case. Simply, none of this would have happened when the office was appointive.
The FBI document mentioned above further relates, “Torquato says he believes Smith’s first contact with Zimmerman was before the contract was awarded to CTA because of an experience he, Torquato, had approximately one week prior to the contract signing. Torquato attended the state Republican fundraiser held at the West Shore Country Club in early May, 1984. Torquato was standing near the bar talking with first name unknown) McCartney, an assistant to (state GOP chairman) Robert Asher. Torquato acknowledged he and McCartney were talking candidly about the contract when Attorney General Roy Zimmerman walked up to them. McCartney asked Zimmerman if he knew what they were talking about and Zimmerman acknowledged that he did. Torquato stated at that time he did not know how Zimmerman knew about their efforts to obtain the contract, but indicated he did know. Torquato then told Zimmerman they were having some trouble with Dwyer concerning the contract and ‘you’d think when you bribe the son of a bitch, he’d stay bribed.’ McCartney laughed out loud while Zimmerman smiled and shortly thereafter walked away. Later, Torquato was upset with himself for making that kind of statement in front of (Attorney General) Zimmerman.”
In his lengthy statement delivered to the press on the morning of his suicide, Treasurer Dwyer bitterly complained that elected AG Zimmerman had been deeply involved in the criminal conspiracy but, for political reasons unknown to Dwyer, was protected from prosecution.
Had Dwyer been sitting with the rest of us on the sofa of the U.S. attorney’s secretary, he would have understood that AG Zimmerman was protected by a phone call from U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese.
Leaked FBI documents detail involvement of Gov. Thornburgh’s staff in bribery conspiracy
What do these leaked FBI documents tell us about Gov. Dick Thornburgh, his relationship to Budd Dwyer, and Thornburgh’s involvement with the CTA bribery case? Quite a bit. The bottom line is troubling.
At the time of his suicide, Treasurer Dwyer wrote a letter to the US Senate and House Judiciary Committees to ask for an investigation of the CTA scandal. Dwyer wrote, “bribes had been offered to... members of governor Thornburgh’s staff.”
The leaked FBI documents bear this out.
The FBI documents suggest that Gov. Thornburgh and his top lieutenants knew about the bribery conspiracy from the get go, as they themselves were offered bribes. Rather than report the bribery conspiracy to law enforcement officials to stop the crime from happening, Thornburgh and his minions suggested that the conspirators take their scheme to Treasurer Budd Dwyer, in an obvious effort to set him up.
In the summer of 1983, conspirators Smith and Torquato contacted newly appointed state Republican Chairman Bob Asher for help with landing the Social Security recovery contract from the Thornburgh administration. One FBI document reads:
Asher had only taken office in June, 1983, and was attempting to set up some rules and regulations. Torquato advised he told Asher there was one-half million dollars available for the Republican coffers if CTA could get the contract to do what the state was presently doing.
The next meeting in this regard was a meeting held in the governor’s office attended by Torquato, Smith, Asher, John Pierce of the governor’s staff and another unidentified man. Originally the meeting was to be with Jay Waldman of (Governor Richard Thornburgh’s) staff, but he canceled out of the meeting at the last minute. He recalled Asher was very angry about Waldman’s cancellation. This meeting was a get acquainted and informative meeting and although some indirect comments were made, no direct offers of political contributions were mentioned. Torquato and Smith next met in Asher’s office and they decided to more actively pursue the state employees’ FICA recovery contract. Asher assisted them in setting up a meeting with Ron Charnock.
The FBI documents relate that Ron Charnock was “Director of Data Processing for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Charnock works for the Governor of Pennsylvania in the Budget Office and is also head of the National Political Resources, Inc., in Alexandria, Virginia.” The document continues:
Smith and Torquato met with Charnock in an office located in the Finance Building in the capitol complex at Harrisburg. Torquato stated that this was a definite “pitch” meeting and Smith utilized Asher’s name on several occasions. Torquato had already determined how far along the FICA recovery was. Torquato let Charnock know that he knew how politics were played and would make sure the right contributions were made. Smith was more specific and offered a substantial amount of money to the Republican Party if CTA got the contract. Charnock acknowledged this offer but did not accept or decline it.
So Thornburgh’s man was offered a bribe, which was not reported to law enforcemen
t. But he did pass along the bribe offer to Thornburgh’s staff, documents show.
The Thornburgh administration from the start knew that Smith and Torquato were up to no good, but did nothing until the moment Dwyer fell into the trap. And then they moved fast to ensnare their political enemy, Budd Dwyer, in the criminal conspiracy they’d known about all along.
“Everybody knew what was going on,” former state chairman Robert Asher told me in a 1991 interview for my book Maybe Four Steps. Asher was convicted in the CTA conspiracy along with Treasurer Dwyer.
I first spoke with Bob Asher in 1988, when his appeal was pending. Then he seemed like a man burdened with troubles; then he was cautious about talking. When I interviewed him again in 1991 it was the difference between night and day. The burden clearly lifted from him, he spoke freely, animatedly, emphatically, with the air of a man who’d put much of it behind him.
Asher said he had spoken with many members of the Thornburgh administration about the possibility of Torquato and CTA getting a contract. “They all knew what was going on.” He said he’d told top Thornburgh staffer Murray Dickman about Torquato’s desire for a contract and Dickman told him, “Be extremely careful. The guy’s no good. We prosecuted his father.”
Former state party Chairman Asher said it was also no secret in Republican circles why Dwyer was prosecuted. Thornburgh and his staff “hated Dwyer,” he said. “He embarrassed Dick’s wife and kids.” Asher said that Thornburgh and his staff used to call Dwyer “the fat fuck.” “They said it to everyone. They said it openly. ‘We’re gonna get the fat fuck.’”
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