[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 147 (Tuesday, November 29, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
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[Congressional Record: November 29, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
           KEY DOCUMENTS PROVE INNOCENCE OF JOSEPH OCCHIPINTI

                                 ______


                      HON. JAMES A. TRAFICANT, JR.

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, November 29, 1994

  Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Speaker, as part of my continuing efforts to bring 
to light all the facts in the case of former Immigration and 
Naturalization Service agent Joseph Occhipinti, I submit into the 
Record the transcript of an interview my chief of staff, Paul Marcone, 
conducted last February with William Slattery, district director of the 
Immigration and Naturalization Service's New York City Office.

   Interview of William Slattery, District Director Immigration and 
          Naturalization Service, New York, February 22, 1994

       Mr. Marcone. We're concerned over a number of things. We 
     don't think that Joe Occhipinti got a fair trial, all that 
     transpired with his attorney. We're not so sure that the INS 
     here in Washington really went to bat for him the way that 
     they should.
       I guess, just to start off, where you Joe's supervisor 
     during operation Bodega?
       Mr. Slattery. No.
       Mr. Marcone. What was your position with INS during Bodega?
       Mr. Slattery. I wasn't in New York when Bodega took place. 
     I had been in New York previously, but I returned to New York 
     in May of 1990.
       Are you going to have this transcribed or?
       Mr. Marcone. If I can. If not, I'll send you a copy of the 
     audio tape.
       Mr. Slattery. Okay.
       Mr. Marcone. You were there in 1990?
       Mr. Slattery. I returned to New York in May of 1990.
       Mr. Marcone. And at that time, Bodega was still going on 
     though, wasn't it?
       Mr. Slattery. I can't remember with certainty, but I 
     believe not. I believe the issue was, had already been 
     stopped.
       Mr. Marcone. And that was right after April, I believe, was 
     the rally that was a city hall.
       Mr. Slattery. Yes.
       Mr. Marcone. Were you Joe's supervisor, though, when you 
     came back?
       Mr. Slattery. Well, I was the Acting District Director in 
     May of 1990, so I supervised everyone in the district. I 
     think there were probably about 1200 employees, and Joe would 
     be there.
       But if you're asking if I was his immediate supervisor, the 
     answer is, no. There were probably at least three or four 
     supervisors between Joe and me.
       Mr. Marcone. But had you worked with Joe in any capacity 
     prior to May 1990?
       Mr. Slattery. In the early 1980s, I supervised Joe. As a 
     first line supervisor, not a second----
       Mr. Marcone. Did you ever witness him or have any reports 
     of anything illegal?
       Mr. Slattery. No. I never saw Joe I think to do anything 
     illegal.
       Mr. Marcone. What type of agent was he when you worked for 
     him?
       Mr. Slattery. Joe was a--well, I never worked for him. He 
     worked for me.
       Mr. Marcone. Right.
       Mr. Slattery. When I first met Joe, Joe was a journeyman 
     agent, and he had just been upgraded. At that time, 
     Immigration had different rankings for journeymen. He was 
     just upgraded to the higher journeyman rank.
       He came to work in the Fraud Investigation Bureau and he 
     was the senior man, and Joe was involved in many prosecutions 
     of cases.
       I'm trying to think of the type of work he was doing. There 
     was a project he ran that was called Project Shepherd. That 
     was a rather large case, and I'm trying to think what was 
     behind Shepherd. It might have been the manufacturing of 
     false documents or something.
       Mr. Marcone. And what was your evaluation of his work 
     product?
       Mr. Slattery. Joe was dedicated, Joe was committed, Joe was 
     driven. Joe was a very ambitious agent. Joe often times 
     required a lot of support in the office in order to complete 
     his case.
       I can remember on some occasions we would have to hold 30 
     or 40 special agents to go out and pick up witnesses at the 
     very last minute because somebody's life was threatened, or 
     when Joe was about to execute arrest warrants, it required a 
     substantial number of other agents dropping everything they 
     were doing to kind of support him.
       So he was the type of agent who, although he was effective 
     in what he was doing in terms of case accomplishment, he 
     wasn't able to control the case within his own resources. He 
     always wound up bringing everybody and their brother involved 
     in completing the case.
       Mr. Marcone. But did his work result in convictions?
       Mr. Slattery. His work resulted in convictions.
       Mr. Marcone. He wasn't going on long-shot cases?
       Mr. Slattery. He was making cases, that's correct. He was 
     making cases and if there was any type of controversy in the 
     office, it was over the fact that it wasn't going smoothly. 
     It was a very disruptive way of doing business. Had there 
     been a little more planning, a little more fine-tuning, a 
     little more biting off only what you could handle, you know, 
     to use a metaphor, you go out and shoot an elephant, you're 
     by yourself, and you decide gee, how am I going to get the 
     elephant out of the woods.
       All of a sudden, you have to hire a hundred people to come 
     into the woods to help cart the elephant.
       So Joe was successful. He was getting his game, but in the 
     process of doing it, always involving other people to help 
     clean it up.
       Mr. Marcone. Did that cause resentment among his coworkers?
       Mr. Slattery. Exactly, exactly. It generated some 
     resentment.
       Mr. Marcone. But you never witnessed him doing anything, or 
     you didn't get reports that he was going out and going above 
     and beyond in terms of legality?
       Everything he was doing was legal in terms of the people 
     was going after, the methods that he used to get convictions 
     and get evidence and arrest people were legal?
       Mr. Slattery. Yes. Yes.
       And when he began, Joe was a journeyman and based upon his 
     journeyman record, he was promoted into supervision. He 
     applied for a job in supervision. It was a competitive 
     promotion. There were several people on the selection 
     certificate and Joe was selected as the supervisor.
       And the position was for the Anti-Smuggling Unit. That's 
     how Joe went into the anti-smuggling. So he competed for that 
     and he received the promotion.
       And although I wasn't the selecting official, I was 
     certainly involved in providing my assessment of Joe. I don't 
     remember my exact words, but obviously it was somewhere 
     between favorable and very favorable.
       And Joe got the job. I think the evidence is there that if 
     Joe were suspected or identified with illegal tactics or 
     doing things improperly, that the district director would not 
     have promoted him into a management position.
       Mr. Marcone. So there is good reason to believe that the 
     accusations against him stemming from operation Bodega was 
     the first time he was accused in such a forthright manner 
     of actual illegal activity?
       Mr. Slattery. There were, I wasn't there at the time, but 
     there were some other operations that weren't executed in a 
     manner that the U.S. Attorney's office wanted them executed. 
     I understand that the U.S. Attorney's office was concerned 
     with Joe over past operations.
       A case in point----
       Mr. Marcone. Illegal searches? Is that the main issue?
       Mr. Slattery. No, but issues about statutory authority or 
     exceeding that authority came up. A case in point would be an 
     operation called Operation Red Eye. I don't know if you're 
     familiar with it, or you've heard about it.
       I wasn't in New York at the time. But what I understood the 
     situation to be was that the Assistant U.S. Attorney David 
     Lawrence was the head of the unit that created this Operation 
     Red Eye, and they were interested in intercepting narcotics 
     that were being transported into New York by unconventional 
     means, i.e., people coming in on the Amtrak train, People 
     coming in on buses, and avoiding state police in New Jersey 
     and what-have-you.
       Red Eye David Lawrence had called the branch chief, the 
     Assistant District Director of Investigations, to participate 
     in a meeting for INS to be a member of a task force and Red 
     Eye was going to work these public transportation hubs to 
     look for drug couriers.
       The Assistant District Director at that time, Walter 
     Connery, assigned Joe onto the case since he was the head of 
     the Anti-Smuggling Unit, to represent INS.
       My understanding is that there was a large operational plan 
     and it had a target date to kick off. And that Joe jumped the 
     gun on it. He left a day or two days earlier and conducted an 
     operation at the Port Authority Bus station before that plan 
     was to go. And that that operation, in essence, shut down 
     Project Red Eye.
       And not only did it shut down Project Red Eye but David 
     Lawrence, who was in charge of Red Eye, lost that position in 
     the U.S. Attorney's office and indeed was changed to head the 
     public corruptions unit, a unit which eventually prosecuted 
     Joe.
       Mr. Marcone. So there was a lot of bad blood in the U.S. 
     Attorney's office?
       Mr. Slattery. Well, that's, you know, I don't know if there 
     was a lot of bad blood or not. I'm just telling you what's 
     been represented to me.
       Lawrence ran Operation Red Eye. Red Eye collapsed because 
     Joe jumped in prematurely.
       I understand--one would have to look into it--but as a 
     result of that, Lawrence was reassigned to head the public 
     corruptions unit, a much less important position within the 
     office. And that's the unit that eventually prosecuted Joe.
       So when you asked me the question before, were there any 
     problems with Joe, I'm hearing that, yes, there were 
     problems, and they dealt with Joe's ambitiousness and Joe's 
     being somewhat uncontrolled.
       Mr. Marcone. But there were never any indications that he 
     was racist, that he was going in and breaking the law and 
     forcing people to sign consent forms?
       There was no, you never got any reports or witnessed him 
     ever intimidating people he was investigating, doing any 
     thing illegal other than maybe he was being guilty of being 
     over-zealous and a bit of a pain in the butt in the office 
     because he was such a go-getter?
       Mr. Slattery. Exactly.
       Now I had left New York in November of 1986. As a matter of 
     fact, I left investigations in July of 1984, so I was not 
     supervising Joe after July of 1984.
       I stayed in the examinations branch which administers the 
     benefits and takes care of the airport until July of 1986.
       During that period of time, I commuted with Joe, and we 
     shared the same car coming in off and on, depending upon 
     schedules.
       Then, in November of 1986, I came to Washington, and I ran 
     the legalization program. I was the Assistant Commissioner 
     for Legalization.
       I stayed here for 18 months. I went back to New York in May 
     of 1988 for six months, and I was the Deputy Assistant 
     Director, and then I was transferred down to Washington, and 
     I came back to Washington in November of 1988 as the Acting 
     Commissioner of the Border Patrol.
       And I didn't get back to New York until May of 1990, see, 
     so there was a lot of years there that I wasn't supervising 
     Joe.
       Mr. Marcone. You could talk to me about, you were there 
     when he was on trial?
       Mr. Slattery. Yes, I was there when he was on trial.
       Mr. Marcone. Now, a week before his trial, or in that time 
     frame, were you aware that the U.S. Attorney's office was 
     intimidating INS officials?
       Did you get the impression that they wanted to get Joe at 
     all costs?
       Mr. Slattery. The U.S. Attorney's Office, when they 
     indicted Joe, they were out to convict him.
       Mr. Marcone. Did you witness them or hear that they were 
     trying to intimidate INS officials to testify against 
     Occhipinti.
       Mr. Slattery. I know that many of us went over. I myself 
     was one of the people that went over to the U.S. Attorney's 
     office. The U.S. Attorneys, the prosecutors in the case, were 
     very aggressive in pursuing--. And it was pretty clear to me 
     that if you were going to testify anything to the positives 
     for Joe, that the U.S. Attorney's office would challenge the 
     credibility of your testimony, that they would come after 
     you.
       Mr. Marcone. They would try to impugn your integrity?
       Mr. Slattery. Absolutely, absolutely.
       Mr. Marcone. And that was known?
       Mr. Slattery. Yes.
       Mr. Marcone. So you would say that INS people who may have 
     been inclined to testify in support of Joe were hesitant to 
     do so because of that attitude on the part, and that 
     knowledge that they would try to destroy people's integrity?
       Mr. Slattery. I can't speak for other people, but what I 
     can say is this.
       Mr. Marcone. But that's the impression that you personally 
     had?
       Mr. Slattery. People were aware of the fact that the U.S. 
     Attorney's office was prepared to impugn us if we got on the 
     stand.
       Now Joe, Joe was free to call any of us as witnesses that 
     he wanted to.
       And let me give you a case in point.
       Joe did call Walter Connery, the head of investigations, to 
     testify for him. When Walter went, Walter came into that 
     courtroom with tremendous credentials. Prior to being the 
     Assistant District Director for Investigations for New 
     York, Walter had many years as the head of the INS OPR 
     Unit.
       He was in charge of professional responsibility. OIG within 
     INS. In fact, Walter--for the INS. He was the only head that 
     INS ever had.
       And prior to that, Walter retired from the New York City 
     Police Department. He retired as a ranking inspector. And he 
     was an attorney and his job there was to oversee the legal 
     work done by the internal affairs unit in the City of New 
     York.
       So Walter had an entire career of the internal affair type 
     operations, both from a content and a legal prosecution 
     experience and one with many years with INS.
       Mr. Marcone. How do you spell Walter's name?
       Mr. Slattery. C-O-N-N-E-R-Y.
       Mr. Marcone. Okay.
       Mr. Slattery. So Walter went over and testified, and in his 
     testimony for Joe, I guess the defense attorney asked him, 
     have you ever seen a prosecution like this before, and Walter 
     said no. He said these type of infractions always start or 
     were handled administratively. I've never seen an individual 
     go through prosecution for this, especially since there's an 
     absence of violence.
       Mr. Marcone. I don't want to get off track, but was that 
     your impression, in the past, in your experiences in the INS, 
     if someone is accused of forcing someone to sign a consent 
     form or there's a problem with the consent form, that's 
     usually handled administratively?
       Mr. Slattery. I've never seen another case where there was 
     a problem with a consent form. I've never heard of another 
     case that either dealt administratively or criminally.
       Mr. Marcone. So have you ever been confronted with a case 
     where someone was arrested as a result of a consensual search 
     and that individual claimed that the arresting agent forced 
     him to sign the consent form?
       Mr. Slattery. No.
       Mr. Marcone. No one's ever filed a complaint about that?
       Mr. Slattery. I've never seen one in all the years of 
     service.
       But let me finish with Walter here.
       Walter testified he'd never seen that in all his 
     experience. The U.S. Attorney's office came back to Walter 
     and basically inferred and tried to claim that Walter was 
     testifying in that way because I was the rating and reviewing 
     official for Walter in his performance evaluation, and 
     implying that I was a personal friend of Joe's and if Walter 
     didn't testify in that manner, that Walter's ratings would 
     be, it would be reflected in Walter's ratings.
       Mr. Marcone. Was that true, that allegation?
       Mr. Slattery. Absolutely not.
       And Walter said as much in court. As a matter of fact, 
     Walter was planning on retiring in the near future and I'm 
     sure he wanted a good rating, but you're not talking about a 
     man who needed a good rating.
       He was retiring from his second career from the city and he 
     had another one coming from INS and he was not the kind of 
     guy, if you spend your entire career running an OPR or OIG 
     type operations, is one that's not easily intimidated by 
     anybody.
       Mr. Marcone. How much of the trial did you personally 
     witness, the actual trial?
       Mr. Slattery. I went over for the sentencing. That was it.
       Mr. Marcone. Did you have a chance to observe Mordkofski, 
     Occhipinti's attorney?
       Mr. Slattery. No.
       Mr. Marcone. So you wouldn't have any first hand knowledge 
     if he was mentally incompetent?
       Mr. Slattery. No.
       Mr. Marcone. Did you testify at the trial?
       Mr. Slattery. No.
       Mr. Marcone. Were you present at Connery's testimony?
       Mr. Slattery. No.
       Mr. Marcone. Okay. So you----
       Mr. Slattery. What I'm giving you here is in the 
     transcript.
       Mr. Marcone. But did you notice in the transcripts that 
     Occhipinti's attorney was less than satisfactory in terms of 
     his questioning and his line of questioning?
       Mr. Slattery. The transcripts could fill a shopping cart.
       Mr. Marcone. Yes.
       Mr. Slattery. I'm aware of the Connery comment because it 
     involved me.
       Mr. Marcone. Right.
       Mr. Slattery. But looking for other evidence of competency 
     of Joe's counsel, I never did that.
       Mr. Marcone. Okay, I'm going to be jumping around.
       Mr. Slattery. Sure, go ahead.
       Mr. Marcone. Stafford Williams was one of the unindicted 
     co-conspirators?
       Mr. Slattery. Yes.
       Mr. Marcone. Did anyone from the U.S. Attorney's office or 
     the Justice Department prevent you from taking disciplinary--
     you or the INS, from taking disciplinary action against him?
       Mr. Slattery. Well, in a simple yes/no question, the answer 
     would be no. We did take disciplinary action against him.
       Mr. Marcone. Did they discourage you from doing that?
       Mr. Slattery. From taking disciplinary action, no. Did they 
     encourage me to take less action than what I did take, yes.
       Mr. Marcone. They didn't want you to take any severe action 
     against him?
       Mr. Slattery. The thought that, you know, we--the INS--and 
     let me explain the way the process works.
       The Deputy District Director, my deputy, is the proposing 
     official in disciplinary action.
       Based upon Stafford Williams' testimony and nothing else--
     --
       Mr. Marcone. His testimony was definitely against 
     Occhipinti.
       Mr. Slattery. Well, but it was hard, when we dealt with 
     Stafford Williams, we didn't deal with Stafford Williams in 
     terms of his relationship with Joseph Occhipinti. We dealt 
     with Stafford Williams in terms of what he admitted to doing 
     on the stand.
       The difference between Joseph Occhipinti and Stafford 
     Williams is Joseph Occhipinti said I didn't do anything 
     wrong. Stafford Williams, on the other hand, came in and, 
     under oath, admitted to doing a series of things.
       And those things warranted his removal from the Immigration 
     Service.
       My memory may miss a couple of things, but as I remember, 
     Stafford Williams admitted under oath and under 
     questioning by the U.S. Attorney, Not Joe's defense 
     attorney, which seemed odd if they didn't ask him we 
     wouldn't have had the material to discipline him----
       Mr. Marcone. Right.
       Mr. Slattery. But he admitted to falsifying his time and 
     attendance sheets, so basically stealing from the Government. 
     He admitted to violating the civil rights of individuals. He 
     admitted to stealing from Bodegas, things such as coca cola 
     cans, pornographic films, Spanish fly.
       What else did he admit to--I'm not sure if that was it or 
     there was more, but there was enough there in terms of 
     stealing and lying and cheating on his attendance records 
     that the standards we use, you've got a higher standard than 
     law enforcement officers, and what caused us to take a look 
     at Stafford Williams was that one of the Assistant U.S. 
     Attorneys in the Eastern District of New York, not the 
     Southern District, had a case where Stafford Williams was 
     supposed to testify, and basically they communicated back to 
     us to say we can't use your agent. If we use your agent, we 
     have a legal responsibility to inform the jury of the things 
     your agent has admitted to.
       Mr. Marcone. Right.
       Mr. Slattery. Now, what they're telling you then is you've 
     got an employee who is, to a great extent, useless because 
     special agents are supposed to go out, uncover violations and 
     present them from prosecution.
       And the U.S. Attorney's office is telling us that this man 
     can no longer present a case for prosecution without 
     jeopardizing the whole case.
       Mr. Marcone. So you took action against him.
       Mr. Slattery. So the Deputy District Director proposed that 
     he be removed from the Immigration Service based upon his 
     admissions on the stand.
       Mr. Marcone. Right.
       Mr. Slattery. Then Stafford came back to me, and there's a 
     long process where one could--see the proposing official 
     proposes, and the normal letter says you have 30 days to 
     respond to the deciding official, but there's provision to 
     ask for extensions. And when people ask for extensions, they 
     normally get them.
       I think Stafford asked for a 60-day extension, which we 
     gave him, so that gave shims about 90 days.
       The U.S. Attorney's office called me and the deputy over 
     and asked us what was going on. And they wanted us to do 
     something less drastic.
       Mr. Marcone. Was this Jeh Johnson?
       Mr. Slattery. I don't believe Jeh Johnson was in the room. 
     I think it was David Lawrence and it was Staniford.
       Mr. Marcone. Staniford.
       Mr. Slattery. Staniford, okay.
       And there were some of the special agents who worked with 
     the U.S. Attorney's office that prosecuted the case.
       They approached it that there ought to be something less 
     dramatic than with Stafford because Stafford's been 
     cooperating with the Government, and couldn't we give him a 
     different job, a different special agent position.
       Mr. Slattery. I said, we don't have a special agent 
     position that doesn't prosecute cases. You can't justify the 
     grade, you can't justify the position.
       And, you know, there's nothing else we could do.
       They were interested in providing a different position for 
     him.
       At that time, I had an INS employee assigned to their 
     office, and still do, and we've had one over there full 
     time. I said to them, I said, if you want him, you can 
     have him. Give me my guy back, and you've got him.
       And they didn't want him.
       But I said, you know, I can't use him.
       Mr. Marcone. So what ended up happening to Stafford 
     Williams?
       Mr. Slattery. Well, they said, they asked us not to take 
     any action until they wrote a letter. And we, you know, we're 
     all in the Department of Justice, and we're going to 
     cooperate. We said, fine, you know, we'll give you an 
     opportunity to write a letter before we take any action.
       And I said to him. there was still this belief somehow that 
     many of us in management were in Joe's camp.
       Mr. Marcone. A belief within the U.S. Attorney's office?
       Mr. Slattery. Yes. Yes. And that Stafford wasn't getting a 
     fair shake. So as a strategy, when my deputy and I returned 
     back to our office in Manhattan, we communicated with our 
     regional office in Vermont, and we offered to remove 
     ourselves from the disciplinary process for Stafford 
     Williams, if they wanted to replace us with somebody who was 
     perceived to be more impartial or someone totally 
     unassociated with the case.
       Our regional office came back and said, no, they wanted us 
     to do it as we do all the other cases.
       I said, fine.
       Stafford Williams also filed an EEO complaint about it, on 
     or about the same time, and we now had two issues going; an 
     EEO issue and the removal process.
       We waited quite a while for the letter from the U.S. 
     Attorney's office. We put jack up calls on to them saying 
     where is your letter, where is your letter, because we were 
     going to communicate their letter to Washington and say, 
     here's the information we have on Stafford, here's his 
     testimony, here's the disciplinary action, and here's a 
     letter from the U.S. Attorney's office and, you know, we'll 
     wait for your advice and guidance, but this is what we 
     propose to do.
       And we're on board with it, and we're going to do it right. 
     It might take a little longer, but we would do it right. 
     Months went by and the letter never came. I don't believe 
     they ever sent us a letter.
       So after----
       Mr. Marcone. All this time. Stafford Williams has continued 
     to work as a special agent?
       Mr. Slattery. Continued to work, continued to work. So then 
     we went through with the, I don't know if we served a 
     proposal on him that we were going to remove him or not.
       Stafford came with his attorney and we entered into 
     negotiations, and they agreed, I think the negotiations wound 
     up to this effect. Stafford Williams would immediately resign 
     from the Immigration Service, okay. That accomplished our 
     objectives, and that we would give him a period, a six-month 
     temporary employment with us while he sought other 
     employment.
       And that six-month employment could be extended for three 
     months and then three months for a total of one year. At the 
     end of that, it would not be extended again.
       That would solve the EEO complaints, that would solve the 
     disciplinary process in terms of arbitrating the case before 
     an arbitrator, and we thought it was the best way to go.
       It accomplished our objective and Stafford was gone, and it 
     identified some dates specifically that he would be gone.
       Six months went and Stafford couldn't find a job. He asked 
     for an extension.
       Part of the requirement was that he submit a letter 
     identifying everything he did to find a job. That letter was 
     a little light in specifics.
       We gave him the extension and we gave him a warning that if 
     he's got to come back to us for another three-month 
     extension, he'd have to give us a much more extensive report 
     on his attempts to find a job.
       In three month's time, he came back. The initial submission 
     was weak and we denied the last three-month extension, and 
     his attorneys came off, they generated a lot of paper work, 
     they came in with a whole series of job applications. They 
     gave us what we should have had in the first place. And we 
     did give him a second three-month extension.
       At the end of one year, he was gone. And he was seeking 
     federal employment elsewhere. Whether he's ever achieved it 
     or not, I don't know.
       But the bottom line was----
       Mr. Marcone. The U.S. Attorney never got back with you 
     after saying he'd send you a letter. They never gave you any 
     additional pressure not to take action against him?
       Mr. Slattery. No.
       Mr. Marcone. Okay.
       There's some question about whether or not the U.S. 
     Attorney subpoenaed a training tape that featured Occhipinti 
     teaching agents the Reid and interviewing techniques and how 
     to secure consent searches.
       Were you aware of that?
       Mr. Slattery. No.
       Mr. Marcone. You're not aware of the training tape?
       Mr. Slattery. No.
       Mr. Marcone. What about the INS consent search form that 
     was in Spanish? Are you familiar with any problems with that? 
     There was a word that the U.S. Attorney claimed did not exist 
     in Spanish.
       Mr. Slattery. No, I'm not familiar with that. I'm not even 
     sure that's an INS form.
       Mr. Marcone. Okay.
       Was there an INS internal affairs investigation that proved 
     that Project Bodegas was lawful?
       Mr. Slattery. I don't know.
       Mr. Marcone. You weren't aware of an internal affairs 
     investigation?
       Mr. Slattery. They don't share their----
       Mr. Marcone. You aren't aware through secondhand 
     information that such a report exists?
       Mr. Slattery. No.
       Mr. Marcone. Okay.
       Joe maintains that you were never interviewed or called by 
     his attorney, Mordkofsky. Is that true?
       Mr. Slattery. I was, oh, you mean to prepare for trial?
       Mr. Marcone. Right.
       Mr. Slattery. That's true.
       Mr. Marcone. He never called you or interviewed you?
       Mr. Slattery. He never interviewed me. Early on, I did get 
     a call from Mordkofsky said he was going to stop by, and he 
     never showed up. No date, no appointment or anything.
       Mr. Marcone. How did he sound over the phone, professional, 
     or you don't remember?
       Mr. Slattery. I really don't remember but this was early 
     on, way before the trial.
       Mr. Marcone. Right.
       Mr. Slattery. And then I was subpoenaed to testify at the 
     trial. And I honored the subpoena, I showed up.
       Mr. Marcone. Was subpoenaed by who?
       Mr. Slattery. By Joe.
       Mr. Marcone. Okay.
       Mr. Slattery. But the thing was that Mordkofsky had never 
     prepped me and the trial was getting ready to start, and they 
     elected not to go with me.
       Mr. Marcone. But you don't have, can you attest to the fact 
     that his attorney was unprepared and exhibited unusual 
     behavior?
       Mr. Slattery. Oh, I can attest to the fact that it's 
     unheard of, if you're going to subpoena someone as your 
     witness, not to get with them ahead of time and say, hey, 
     Paul, I'm going to send you a subpoena to come, and these are 
     the issues I want to talk to you about.
       It's not the way to do business just to subpoena someone 
     and have them show up cold and then hope that they testify to 
     what you want to say on the stand.
       Mr. Marcone. were you in New York as District Director from 
     July 1992 to December 1992? Were you in New York at that 
     time?
       Mr. Slattery. Well, I was the District Director of New 
     York.
       Mr. Marcone. During that period.
       Mr. Slattery. I travel.
       Mr. Marcone. Were you aware that the FBI was undertaking an 
     investigation into the Occhipinti case?
       Mr. Slattery. Yes.
       Mr. Marcone. Did they ever come and interview you?
       Mr. Slattery. No.
       Mr. Marcone. They never interviewed you?
       Mr. Slattery. No.
       Mr. Marcone. Did they ever interview anyone at the INS?
       Mr. Slattery. Not that I know of.
       Mr. Marcone. During the 1992 investigation?
       Mr. Slattery. Not that I know of.
       Mr. Marcone. Do you find that to be unusual.
       If you were going to conduct an investigation, let's say 
     they assigned you to the FBI to do an investigation of the 
     Occhipinti case. As an investigator, would you talk to the 
     people who worked with Occhipinti?
       Mr. Slattery. Well, they may have talked to some of those 
     people----
       Mr. Marcone. But they didn't talk to you?
       Mr. Slattery. They certainly did not talk to me.
       Mr. Marcone. Are you aware of, we were told that the report 
     was completed in December of '92, and we were told in a 
     letter from the Justice Department, we'd written them three 
     times in the last year, that there was an extraordinary and 
     comprehensive review done from July to December of '92, but 
     the reports haven't been published and we can't seem to get a 
     hold of that report.
       Have you ever seen the report or the file?
       Mr. Slattery. No.
       Mr. Marcone. Have you ever heard about the report?
       Mr. Slattery. No.

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