»Heroes Who Never Got a Parade«

Max Cleland
No one is above reproach. While Max Cleland’s record as a senator was certainly open to question, his bravery would seem indisputable given that he went to Vietnam with four limbs and came back with one. Wrong! During the 2002 campaign, opponent Saxby Chambliss ran ads featuring pictures of Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Cleland as the narration declared, “Max Cleland says he has the courage to lead” and then explained why he did not. Today Chambliss (who courageously avoided serving in Vietnam himself) not only has all his appendages, but also Cleland’s Senate chair.

761st Tank Battalion
Like the Japanese-American 442nd Infantry “Nisei” unit, this black segment of General Patton’s Third Army displayed extraordinary courage. Unlike the decorated 442nd, they were almost forgotten. At times used as little more than cannon fodder (yep, just like South Park’s Operation Get-Behind-the-Darkies), they still liberated Dachau and Buchenwald. In 1985 some recognition finally came after a Holocaust survivor wrote to The New York Times about them.

Richard Jewell
What do you call a man who saves dozens of innocent people from exploding? If you’re an FBI agent, the prime suspect. Richard Jewell, a security guard at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, spotted a suspicious bag and cleared the area, limiting deaths from the bomb to one. The FBI rewarded him by leaking that he was a suspect, subjecting him to 88 days of worldwide humiliation (they even revealed he lived with his mom). That’ll teach him to be heroic.

George Rogers Clark
George Rogers Clark believed so deeply in independence from jolly old England that he not only served as a general but mortgaged his own property to support his soldiers himself. His faith was justified, as we won the war and the Virginia legislature repaid Clark for his services. How did they repay him? With a sword… and a secondhand one at that (they described it as “but little used”). Clark soon lost his home and his land, but at least he had a souvenir.

Charles Drew
A black man born in 1904 wasn't a promising pick to head the first American Red Cross Blood Bank, yet that's what Charles Drew did (he also invented a plasma preservation process that continues to save lives). His job ended when he argued the military's classification of blood by race was, scientifically speaking, retarded. In 1977 the Red Cross had a party and named its headquarters the Charles R. Drew Blood Center. He didn't attend, having died in 1950.

John O’Neill
John O’Neill needed to relax. During his time heading the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts, he annoyed his superiors with his fixation on Al Qaeda. When O’Neill left in 2001, they were glad to see him go. So was Al Qaeda. In a bitterly ironic twist, O’Neill wound up heading security at the World Trade Center. On the night of 9/10, he said he thought something big was going to happen on the terrorism front. Hours later it did, killing O’Neill along with nearly 3,000 others.

Patrick Fitzgerald's official biography says he was named special counsel in December 2003 to investigate "the alleged disclosure of the identity of a purported employee of the
Central Intelligence Agency."

That bland description understates the drama and stakes of the investigation. New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for refusing to testify. The inquiry led to interviews of
President Bush and Vice President Cheney and to grand jury subpoenas for White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis Libby and at least a dozen other officials.

Fitzgerald is to meet with Miller today to discuss newly discovered notes on her conversations with Libby. Rove will testify this week before the grand jury for a fourth time.

Fitzgerald wants to know who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame to reporters. Her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, says her cover was blown in retaliation for an op-ed article he wrote in 2003 that accused Bush of "twisting" intelligence to justify the
Iraq war.

[...]

Patrick Fitzgerald, 44, was born in Brooklyn. His Irish immigrant father, Patrick Sr., worked as a doorman at a building in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Fitzgerald went to Regis High School, a Jesuit preparatory school, then worked on its maintenance crew to pay his way through Amherst College. He majored in math and economics, then went to Harvard Law School.

He worked in a New York law firm before joining the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan in 1988. He stayed for 13 years, convicting Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and indicting bin Laden in a conspiracy that included the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

In Chicago, Fitzgerald has indicted two aides to Mayor Richard Daley on mail-fraud charges after an investigation into bribery and hiring abuses. Ryan is on trial on charges of racketeering conspiracy, mail and tax fraud and false statements during his terms as governor and Illinois secretary of State.

Dick Simpson, a former Chicago alderman who teaches political science at the University of Illinois-Chicago, says Fitzgerald is "almost universally admired ... for telling the truth and prosecuting these cases." He isn't suspected of political motives, Simpson says, because he came to Chicago with no ties to its top politicians and keeps a low profile. "He's doesn't do lunches at the important clubs or make rah-rah speeches," Simpson says.

Even lawyers who question Fitzgerald's tactics say they don't doubt his character. "Pat is driven by iron-tight integrity and a tireless work ethic," Mendeloff says.

Safer, who also once worked in the U.S. attorney's office, faults Fitzgerald for "trying to expand the reach of the mail fraud statutes in ways that are unprecedented" in his government corruption cases. Some errors by politicians, Safer says, "are punishable at the ballot box and not in criminal court." He says Fitzgerald "is impervious to political pressure. ... I've seen no evidence that he has anything but the purest motives."

White says it's unfair to suggest that Fitzgerald is too aggressive. "He's going to pursue matters ... with dedication and thoroughness," she says, "but overzealous? Certainly not."

Miguel Estrada, who worked with Fitzgerald in New York and represents Time reporter Matthew Cooper in the leak inquiry, says Fitzgerald, who is single and a workaholic, is "the picture of what the public would think is an earnest prosecutor. He's a boy scout."

Chuck Rosenberg, a Fitzgerald friend who is U.S. attorney in Houston, was asked recently why Fitzgerald is going after reporters. "I said to them, 'Pat isn't going after journalists, he is after the truth,' " Rosenberg says. "He's exactly the kind of person you'd want doing something like this."