While the movie ”JFK” has renewed demands for the release of secret Warren Commission material on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, another government intrusion on the public`s right to know is being challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court.
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This one involves FBI wiretap surveillances of Jimmy Hoffa, the former Teamsters Union president whose disappearance near Detroit in 1975, presumably at the hands of mobsters, remains a hot topic of what-ever-happened-to conversation.
If Washington lawyer Hayden Silets succeeds in making public the wiretap data on Hoffa-a move vigorously opposed by the Justice Department-it will end an eight-year legal battle he has waged with help from his father, Chicago lawyer Harvey Silets.
The son`s quest was begun as a college thesis in 1983. But last month,dad, named among the nation`s ”10 Top Litigators” byThe National Law Journal, jumped into the fray.
Together, Silets and his father have asked the high court to overturn a decision by the full federal appeals court in Chicago, which upheld U.S. District Judge Marvin Aspen`s denial of access to the Hoffa files.
Harvey Silets said release of the Hoffa material would clear up widespread rumor and speculation that the Justice Department used illegal means as part of its ”get” Hoffa campaign in the 1960s.
A dissent by Judges Richard D. Cudahy and Walter J. Cummings to the appeals court ruling raises the same arguments used by those who have been critical of continued secrecy about some Kennedy assassination material:
”The events themselves,” they said, ”are now so stale that possible risks to sources, informants and the like seem increasingly remote.”
”Needless to say, I am proud of my son,” said Harvey Silets. ”I hope that he will have the opportunity to argue his own case in the Supreme Court.”
`Weed and seed`
U.S. Atty. Fred Foreman, after a Washington chat with Atty. Gen. William P. Barr, said laws against ”street gang racketeering” may be part of the administration`s ”weed and seed” approach to the problem. First, you weed out troublemakers; then Uncle Sam seeds neighborhoods with proven social programs to get the areas to grow back, vibrant and relatively crime free, Foreman said.
Campaign follies
Illinois Appellate Court Judge John Tully has always done well with voters, despite negative evaluations from the organized bar.
In 1990, he was elected to a 10-year term on the state Appellate Court by the same voters who ousted him as a Cook County Circuit Court judge on the separate judicial retention ballot. In the retention election, Tully received one of the higher percentages of ”no” votes ever recorded.
Now Tully is running for the state Supreme Court in the upcoming Democratic primary, but his campaign approach didn`t get much applause a couple of Sundays ago at a meeting of Evanston Township Democrats.
The candidates for the Cook County seat on the state high court were invited to present their qualifications-which is what most did, according to several accounts of the meeting.
Tully, though, launched into an attack on the Chicago Bar Association;
lawyer Michael J. Howlett Jr., one of his opponents in the race; and the Chicago Sun-Times-for a column calling him a ”bozo.”
After several minutes of listening to what one source described as a tirade, lawyer and Evanston Township Democratic committeeman Larry Suffredin Jr. stood up. With his formidable presence-he`s 6 foot 4 and close to 300 pounds-Suffredin strongly suggested that Tully sit down.
”As Democratic committeeman of Evanston Township, I believe in an open and fair process,” said Suffredin, who acknowledged before the meeting that he supports Howlett. ”But I wasn`t going to let the meeting be used to malign other people and other organizations.”
Tully denied he was attacking Howlett and said Suffredin was being overprotective.
– ELECTION EVENTS. With the state high court candidates warmed up and ready to fire away, two lawyers groups have scheduled forums next week to allow them to air their views.
The Chicago Bar Association will hear from the Democrats at 4 p.m. Feb. 11, in the assembly hall on the lower level of the State of Illinois Center, LaSalle and Randolph Streets.
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All of the candidates get a shot at each other at a noon forum Feb. 14, sponsored by the Appellate Lawyers Association at the Chicago Athletic Association building, 12 S. Michigan Ave.
– TAX HELP. Karen V. Kole, a law professor at Loyola University and director of the Loyola Federal Tax Clinic, has been appointed to the Internal Revenue Service Commissioner`s Advisory Group. With the two-year appointment, Kole becomes the only member of the 25-member panel from the Chicago area.
– TRAVELS. Chicago-area election-law expert Michael Lavelle is on a weeklong trip to Albania to inspect preparations for parliamentary elections planned for March 1. Lavelle, former chairman of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners and now a lawyer in private practice in Oak Park, is part of a seven-person international team chosen by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Washington, D.C.
– LAW BRIEFS. Donna Toulmin, former legal adviser to Benjamin Mackoff, presiding judge of Cook County`s Divorce Court, signs on with Gitlin & Gitlin, the Woodstock-based family law practice headed by H. Joseph Gitlin. . . . The state Supreme Court has agreed to reconsider a controversial decision last fall that would have made it more difficult to collect damages from lawyers accused of legal malpractice. . . . The Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, meanwhile, has asked the justices to suspend the law license of defense lawyer William A. Swano, one-time lawyer for El Rukn street gang members and now expected to testify as a prosecution witness against indicted former Cook County Judge Thomas Maloney. Swano pleaded guilty to bribery charges last summer.