By Michael Miner
These are ringing words, even if they don’t persuade the librarian, whose reply begins, “Your ‘argument’ is specious at best.” And it’s a familiar ring, the ring of the military mind. Trust and integrity are core military values, and politics is outside the perimeter. The military calls its jobs “missions,” and fidelity to a mission is expected from every hand. That would include the editor of a base newspaper, who might have to die for the First Amendment but shouldn’t expect to exercise it.
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One criticism not leveled at Anderson was an inability to act. However heedlessly, he waded into the problems that confronted him. And that fall he must have thought he was solving a big one: he peremptorily fired the chair of the medical school’s department of medicine.
Querry reminded Anderson that he’d never said one critical word to him about Hamburger before lowering the boom. So what was it that suddenly made Anderson decide that–here Querry quoted Anderson’s own words back to him–Hamburger’s “apparent resistance to change generally…make it impossible for [you and him] to work together as administrators with trust and confidence”? And did Anderson not realize that he’d violated the chain of command? “Removal of a department chairperson is a serious act,” an act that must be approved by the chancellor and executive dean.
Anderson isn’t giving interviews, but he did talk to Horton, who allows that “he was steadfast in his view that he had made the right decision.” Anderson might be less political than he is politically tone deaf, and there’s no reason to think 32 years in the air force gave him the hang of press freedom.
“That brings me to my major point. ‘Prosecutorial misconduct’ implies deliberate wrongdoing. The series mentions deliberate wrongdoing that has occurred. But prosecutorial misconduct also covers honest mistakes, honest differences of opinion. So of those eight that I mentioned were kicked back last year, we submit that they were virtually all honest mistakes, differences of opinion, nothing like the heinous kinds of misconduct that the series alludes to.”
In other words, society enables corrupt prosecutors by condoning their excesses and rewarding them. One example of this tolerance is the Tribune itself. As I’ve pointed out before, the Tribune talks the talk, asserting in 1995 that “none of those involved in the [Rolando] Cruz prosecution deserves ever again to enjoy a position of public honor or trust.” But when the chips are down it stops being categorical. The same editorial had placed attorney general Jim Ryan, who’d been state’s attorney in Du Page County for two of Cruz’s three prosecutions, at the top of a list of “those who did wrong or were derelict [and] must be held to account.” Yet last fall the Tribune endorsed him for reelection. Robert Kilander, now a circuit judge, is actually under indictment for his role in the prosecution of Cruz. Stunningly blase, the Tribune endorsed him last year for retention, on grounds that “he is entitled to the presumption of innocence” and, what the hell, would have to leave the bench anyway “should he be convicted.”
