Breaking omerta: before Gerald Shur, godfather of the U.S. federal witness-protection program, took action, those courageous enough to break the code of silence that sheltered organized crime faced the risk of being killed for testifying

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 3, 2002 | by Timothy W. Maier

WITSEC inspectors, as Shur did himself, play multiple roles to keep witnesses alive. Shur says he had to be a marriage counselor, a substitute father and even a priest. He created false backgrounds and personally persuaded corporate executives to hire former mob hit men as delivery-route drivers. He even arranged breast implants for Jimmy the Weasel's wife.

"When I did my review, I found that in the merger of court security and WITSEC, resources that were supposed to be going to WITSEC were being diverted to meet the needs of judges. The result was WITSEC was understaffed" Shur says. The units since have been restored, but WITSEC inspectors complain of being underfunded. Less than 200 inspectors must handle the large numbers of witnesses and family members in the program--only a tiny fraction of the 21,000 have dropped out--with a budget of around $60 million. Funding got so tight that inspectors say they didn't have enough money to put gas in their government cars.

Shur worries that without congressional intervention the two programs could be merged again, putting WITSEC back under political appointees. The district directors in the U.S. Marshals Service, to whom career law-enforcement officials report, are all political appointees with shaky qualifications, Shur says. "I have run into district directors who were trained to be florists and funeral directors" he complains. "We need to depoliticize appointments of federal marshals."

Michael Prout, acting director of WIT SEC, notes the district directors of the U.S. marshals are not told where witnesses are, but reports that through an FBI fingerprint check they are capable of finding out if that witness returns to a life of crime. However, Prout says U.S. marshals only provide support and backup to WITSEC inspectors, and do not direct the specialists.

Today WITSEC inspectors do not provide court security; however, they sometimes are pulled out of their routines to work presidential security such as guarding the "John Deans" and to support the Drug Enforcement Agency, according to sources familiar with the program. The problems come, Shur says, when a hotshot district director bucks the program to take charge. In some high-profile cases district directors specifically called for political pressure to direct WITSEC not to place witnesses in their area. Shut would like to see WITSEC funded so it doesn't have to rely so much on "working with and through the U.S. marshals" and to ensure that these elite WITSEC specialists permanently report to career professionals.

Otherwise problems are likely to occur, such as with Pershing Gervais, a top aide to famed New Orleans District Attorney James "Big Jim" Garrison. Gervais accused Garrison of taking mob money in exchange for going easy on mob-run casinos. He later claimed the government tried to frame Garrison, but only after complaining that the Marshals Service failed to land him a good job, killed his show dog, lost his furniture and fouled up paperwork that prevented his children from attending Canadian schools.