Head Strong: Meehan, Katz and 'the bug'
7.13.2008
En route to the Phillies game Monday night, I turned on the radio for "traffic and transit on the twos" and caught the local news headline: Patrick Meehan had resigned as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
A half-hour later, at the ballpark with two of my sons, I recognized another man, seated three rows in front of me and two seats to the right. I just wasn't used to seeing him in a purple polo shirt with his hair tousled, enjoying a beer and some baseball.
My image of Sam Katz, gleaned from the television news, is of a man in business attire suitable for a policy wonk. We chatted briefly. He told me he was enjoying life in the slow lane.
These two men have an ironic connection that says a lot, perhaps too much, about this city. The high point of Patrick Meehan's career may have cost Sam Katz arguably his best shot at the mayoralty of Philadelphia.
Meehan's tenure will be best remembered for the Oct. 7, 2003, discovery of a small electronic listening device in then-Mayor John F. Street's City Hall office. The FBI confirmed it had planted the bug but would not immediately elaborate on its purpose. Neither would Meehan.
In the ensuing weeks, supporters of Street's reelection bid filled in the blanks. The bug, they argued, was the latest in a long line of Republican "dirty tricks." Or racism. Richard M. Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover were invoked. Some said this was a Bush administration effort to change the leadership in Philadelphia in anticipation of the 2004 presidential race.
Street himself set the tone during an appearance on NBC's Today, telling then-coanchor Katie Couric: "I think there will continue to be a huge amount of speculation and concern that some of this is racially motivated. We live in the greatest country in all the world, but it's not a perfect country."
In his first televised debate with Katz, the mayor said: "In the true spirit of candor, there are some people, particularly in the African American community, that believe this is too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence."
Worst of all was Street's friend and contributor Ron White, eventually indicted as part of the investigation. White maintained the outrageous belief that he was involved in the probe because "I am a black man in America doing what I think needs to be done, and people resent that." In the final debate, Street would not even condemn that statement.
The demonization of the federal investigation as a Republican witch-hunt and/or racist plot worked. Street beat Katz by a large margin in 2003, unlike the razor-thin result of their first matchup in 1999. Meehan's office later won almost two dozen convictions in cases related to the investigation.
I spoke to Meehan the morning after I heard the news of his resignation. I wondered what it must have been like for him to withstand accusations of politicizing his office when that federal probe first came to light. He reflected on what he called the hardest part of that corrupt and contented campaign season: keeping his fellow prosecutors and FBI agents poised in the face of the most blatant of political grandstanding.
"I think it was really a question of keeping that group focused and stepping up and giving them a sense of confidence that their back was covered," he said. "Not finger-pointing and saying, 'Who screwed this up?' But saying every decision was made on the right basis. . . . The question was having the courage to stick by the convictions and letting the story tell itself in time."
I wondered how Sam Katz looked back. So the morning after I saw him at the ballpark, I called him.
"The Phils need some pitching," he said.
Katz pointed out that there must have been thousands of listening devices approved by federal courts in 2003. But only one was discovered and made public. "Somebody acted illegally with that information, and no one has been punished for it," Katz said. "That still upsets me." He also told me Meehan had done a "great job" in a difficult circumstance.
"I thought he exercised tremendous discipline," Katz said. "He handled himself with integrity and calm. It had to be the most disheartening thing he experienced, to be put up to this kind of professional attack. . . . But he never got into the politics."
Katz also noted the irony that the presidential candidate running as an outsider and agent of change today has David Axelrod as his chief political strategist. The same David Axelrod guided Street in what Katz called "the now familiar-sounding playing of the race card."
Today, Katz is producing a film project that will showcase Philadelphia's 400-year history. That reminded me of a screening I attended for another movie, Tigre Hill's The Shame of a City, about the federal probe and 2003 campaign.
One night I watched it with one of my sons, then only 10 years old. I was proud of his interest. When the movie ended he asked the appropriate question: "Dad, what would have happened if those guys had gone to jail before the election? Would Mr. Katz have won then?"
I only wish I could have told him, with certainty, "Yes." Instead I had to say: "Philadelphia politics sometimes defies explanation."
Michael Smerconish's column appears on Thursdays in the Daily News and on Sundays in Currents. He can be heard from 5 to 9 a.m. weekdays on "The Big Talker," WPHT-AM (1210). Contact him via the Web at http://www.mastalk.com.