Main justice

by Jim McGee

Jim McGee and Brian Duffy take us behind the walls of Main Justice, as the department's headquarters is known to insiders, to show how its awesome powers to investigate and punish wrongdoing are used - and sometimes abused - in the war on crime. Setting their sights on the department's Criminal Division, and on the anonymous career lawyers whose decisions often become the stuff of front-page headlines and congressional hearings, McGee and Duffy show how the Justice Department has marshaled its legal firepower against Colombia's murderous Cali cocaine cartel, violent gangs in Shreveport and Chicago, CIA-agent-turned-traitor Aldrich Ames, and international terrorists. They also expose cases in which U.S. attorneys - whether to further a political agenda or because of excessive zeal - have abused their powers, often with devastating results for ordinary Americans. The story of Main Justice is told from several vantage points: from the streets of America, where FBI and DEA agents employ so