Econintersect: The producer of the NPR Frontline program last week “The 
Untouchables” has reported that the U.S. Department of Justice has told him they [DOJ] will “never co-operate with us [Frontline] in the future.” The program, which was reviewed last week on GEI News by GEI Associate Gavin Kakol, focused on the lack of prosecution of criminal financial fraud at high levels in the financial system. The day after the show aired Lanny Breuer, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal fraud division, resigned. Breuer had appeared on the show.
The Web site StopForclosureFraud has the following Twitter image:
Econintersect has located the two tweets – they are in an online chat hosted by Frontline. And yes, the tweets are still posted.
So it is clear that the Frontline producer has stated that the DoJ more than threatened, they have blacklisted this top investigative reporting program.
Frequent Global Economic Intersection contributor William K. Black has some pointed comments on this situation. He has refereed to the DOJ action as “extortion.” He went on with this summary:
The Justice Department’s shameful, extortionate response to Frontline’s latest act of speaking truth to power is equally eloquent as an admission that its leaders have perverted the department into a source of injustice. The Justice Department did not try to refute the substance of Frontline’s detailed critique. If Frontline had gotten its facts wrong the Department of Justice could have embarrassed Frontline by pointing out its errors. The Department of Justice’s response is instead a classic case of a bully’s ad hominem threat to cripple Frontline’s future ability to expose the falsities that the powerful find so useful.
Black is one of the nation’s foremost financial criminologists and Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri Kansas City.
Sources:
- DoJ “will never cooperate” with Frontline again due to program that highlighted lack of Wall Street prosecutions (StopForeclosureFraud, 23 January 2013)
- PBS: The Untouchables (Gavin Kakol, GEI News, 24 January 2013)
- Breuer Resigns! (GEI News, 24 January 2013)
- Did Wall St. Get Away With It? Live Chat Wed. 2 pm ET (Nathan Tobey, Frontline Chat, 22 January 2013)
- By their responses ye shall know them (William K. Black, New Economic Perspectives, 27 January 2013)
