JIndal, Louisiana: Keep New Orleans Bernazzani To Fight Crime

by Christopher Tidmore

Bobby Jindal has an opportunity to advance the fight against political corruption and eventually put a potential political ally in the office of Mayor of New Orleans. The Governor could bring James Bernazzani back to the state tomorrow as head of the new head of a new state investigations group—call it the LBI or Louisiana Bureau of Investigations.

Other states have similar plainclothes state organizations dedicated to battling both state criminal activities and concentrating on investigating political corruption at levels beyond those of the local District Attorneys. The Louisiana State Police has a plainclothes division with similar responsibilities, but it has never been given the independent authority or funding to truly target corruption, particularly political corruption, the way other states do routinely, or as James Bernazzani has as the local FBI Chief for the past several years.

It is an offer at which the former head of the FBI’s New Orleans office would likely leap.

The tough talking Special Agent with his thick Boston accent had become a popular figure with locals before being reassigned without warning on Friday back to FBI headquarters in Washington DC. Under Bernazzani's watch, several close associates of former Mayor Marc Morial pleaded guilty to corruption charges, and earlier this month, the feds secured an indictment of Mose Jefferson, the brother of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson.

He would appear on television regularly warning criminals that their days were numbered, and it seemed too often that Bernazzani’s G-Men and Jim Letten’s US Attorney’s Office were the only criminal justice infrastructure still operating in New Orleans. When violent crime skyrocketed, the two men convinced their boss, then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, to send extra personnel to create teams with the NOPD to capture and prosecute gang land violence under the so-called “federal hook” when the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office seemed incapable of keeping anyone in jail.

Bernazzani's transfer at the end of last week came as a shock, concluding a series of events that began less than a week before. On the previous Friday, rumors began to float at a local meeting of the Women’s Republican Club of New Orleans that Bernazzani might be interested in running for Mayor in three years. By Sunday, Gambit Weekly had floated his name as a 2010 mayoral contender. Then, in appearances last week on WWL and WDSU, Bernazzani did not declare his candidacy, but seemed to welcome the speculation.

"This city is worth saving," he told WWL. "Right now it's in the fight of its life. I look around, and I see select dysfunction that really impedes recovery. I think I have the skills set after almost 25 years in the FBI to continue in public service, bring in the right team, turn this city around and make New Orleans the city it used to be."

On WDSU, he said: "I know how to be effective in the FBI. And perhaps, if I so choose, I can transfer that effectiveness and efficiency to City Hall."

The FBI Directorate began to worry if the remarks violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal officials from engaging in "partisan political activity," recalling Bernazzani to the Hoover Building on Friday from his post to avoid any conflict of interest. It was a stand with which the agent disagreed. Before his TV appearances, Bernazzani had consulted with attorneys to make sure his comments complied with the Hatch Act, he later explained.

Bernazzani added to the Times-Picayune that he was interested in returning to the Crescent City, even if he had to potentially resign from the FBI. That was not a light statement for someone who had been one of the agency’s stars internationally less than four years ago.

Not well known locally was that before his latest posting to New Orleans, Bernazzani spent most of the last decade hunting Islamic terrorists in Southeast Asia. He was chief of Iran-Hezbollah operations at FBI headquarters and deputy director for law enforcement at the CIA. Bernazzani was one of the most decorated FBI Agents around, and could have sought a senior post in Washington.

Instead, he requested the posting to New Orleans, hoping to return to the city where he began his FBI career almost three decades ago; the city where he met and married his wife; the city, as he explained to Bayoubuzz.com in an interview several months ago “that I came to consider home”.

“I had hoped that I would end my career in a quiet posting—then Katrina came,” he laughed, and Bernazzani found that with a collapse in the legal structure, tasking his small cadre of agents into law enforcement tasks usually not undertaken by the Federal Government. He took the concept of the “Federal Hook” here locally to another level, using federal RICO statutes, gun laws, and drug crimes, to prosecute repeat violent offenders.

To those who saw him at his weekly press conferences, like the author, the job had turned into a crusade for the veteran FBI Agent. More and more, his comments seemed focused on cleaning up the city, whether they included putting crooked politicians in jail or ending the spree of a repeat murderer.

That kind of dedication gives Gov. Jindal a unique opportunity. At 52, Bernazzani is four years shy of mandatory FBI retirement, but vested as a federal employee in his pension. He can leave at any time.

Offer him a job as either head of the plainclothes division of State Police or as the Governor’s Special Advisor on Public Corruption. Then, any ally of Jindal’s should introduce a bill in the current legislative session to create the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation with an initial budget of capable of hiring the one hundred best investigators nationwide that Bernazzani can find. Paying them equivalent to a federal GS-15, the highest payscale in the federal service, would be less than thirteen million dollars in total, a tenth of a percent of the state budget.

Having appointed Bernazzani as its head, task this agency with two primary responsibilities: investigating political corruption cases (in coordination with US Attorneys and local FBI) and working with Sheriffs’ offices across parish boundaries to bring to justice large scale violent crime cases. These are tasks already done on a small basis by the hardworking, but understaffed state police. Give this agency the resources to pursue.

Bringing a special investigatory agency to the job would send the message nationally that Louisiana is serious about cleaning up its image of corruption, and who better to run it than the man responsible for doing the job effectively for the past several years.

And, in 2010, should he choose to run to succeed the term limited Ray Nagin, who would begrudge Bernazzani. Certainly not the Governor that appointed him to create the agency in the first place.

_____________________________________________
_________________Advertisement________________

______________________________________________