Weekend Break for U.S. Marshal Trial Jury

Jurors will resume deliberations next week in the trial of a deputy U.S. marshal accused of leaking information about a witness to the mob.

The jury in John Ambrose's trial deliberated nearly seven hours before adjourning Friday afternoon. Deliberations will begin again Monday.

Ambrose, a veteran fugitive hunter, is accused of leaking confidential information about Nicholas Calabrese, whom he had been assigned to guard while the mobster was in Chicago talking to federal prosecutors in the "Family Secrets" mob trial. Ambrose denies he ever broke the law in handling secret information.

Ambrose is the only person in the 39-year history of the government's Witness Security Program to be accused of deliberately violating its security safeguards.

Thanks to AP

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US Marshal's Office and FBI's Relationship is Icy at Mob Leak Trial

Deputy U.S. Marshal John Ambrose sat in federal court on Thursday to hear lawyers portray him two ways:

An honorable screw-up hoping to impress an Outfit-friendly father figure, or a criminal conduit to reputed Chicago mob boss John "No Nose" DiFronzo.

Either way the jury decides, the relationship between the U.S. marshal's office and the FBI is at best icy these days, though they won't formally admit it. But you could see the two tribes in the gallery in U.S. District Judge John Grady's courtroom, sitting stiffly as if in church at a wedding, the in-laws glaring, already at war.

The marshals in their street clothes, shoulders hunched, not happy, sitting behind their man Ambrose. The FBI agents and prosecutors impassive, across the aisle, sitting behind their team.

The cause of the deep freeze? Ambrose himself.

Ambrose has been charged with leaking extremely sensitive information to the mob about the most important federal witness in Chicago's history -- turncoat Outfit hit man Nicholas Calabrese. And with lying about it to federal agents until he later confessed to the FBI about what he'd done. But according to his lawyer Frank Lipuma, all Ambrose really confessed to was screwing up, bragging to a family friend that he was protecting a major Outfit witness.

Ambrose's friend was William Guide, a former crooked cop with Outfit connections, who spent time in prison, convicted with Ambrose's father, Thomas, in the Marquette 10 police drug dealer shakedown scandal.

What Ambrose said about Calabrese ended up in recorded prison conversations beginning in January 2003 between Mickey Marcello and his Outfit boss brother Jimmy.

What also came out during the trial is that Ambrose apparently thought that by leaking a little information, he could win favor from the Outfit and use their street network as a source of information to find fugitives.

At least, that was his story as told to senior FBI agents Anita Stamat and Ted McNamara when they finally caught him in 2006.

The International Olympic Committee might not know this, so don't tell them, but Chicago has a history of law enforcement conduits to the mob. The job has been held by many -- a patrol officer in the evidence section, hit men in the Cook County Sheriff's office, even the chief of detectives of the Chicago Police Department.

Since the time of Paul Ricca, the Outfit has had puppets, in politics, on the bench, in business and law enforcement. That's how it survives, while politically unsophisticated street gangs suffer legal troubles. And what was so unique about Ambrose is that he was a federal law enforcement officer guarding a federal witness.

"He screwed up ... shot his mouth off," said Lipuma, a former federal prosecutor himself, in a riveting closing argument, full of passion, trying to poke holes in the case. "John Ambrose admitted he broke policy. He broke procedure. It may have been a violation of policy. ... But he's an honest man."

Prosecutor Markus Funk was once the new guy on the federal organized crime team. But now he's the veteran, with the most significant convictions in Chicago history under his belt: Jimmy Marcello, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo and others from the Family Secrets trial.

"This is straightforward theft," Funk told the jury. "The defense is throwing up these vast smoke screens to confuse you. He confessed. Not once, not twice, but three times. He shot his mouth off? There was no criminal intent? He admitted it. That's not a legal defense. That's a crime."

The defense also brought my column up again, the one of Feb. 21, 2003, that broke the story that Nick Calabrese had disappeared from prison and speculated (correctly) that he was in the witness protection program.

Lipuma said the column was the "linchpin" of the defense because after it ran, Calabrese's cooperation was common knowledge. But a month before the column was published, Jimmy and Mickey Marcello were already talking about Calabrese's federal "baby-sitter" funneling information to them.

If Ambrose were, say, a plumber, you might excuse him for screwing up and talking about a federal witness to an Outfit messenger boy.

A plumber might be excused, because a plumber wouldn't be expected to know about witness protection. But Ambrose is no plumber, is he?

He's a deputy U.S. marshal.

For now.

Thanks to John Kass

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Deliberations Begin in Mob Leak Trial

As federal jurors began deliberating Thursday in the trial of Deputy U.S. Marshal John Ambrose, one of many questions they faced was the value of a revealed secret.

In their final pitches of the nine-day trial, attorneys argued over whether Ambrose shared minimal information while bragging to a family friend or spilled sensitive details that might have crippled the Family Secrets mob investigation in its infancy.

Ambrose is charged with leaking details about the secret cooperation of hit man-turned-witness Nicholas Calabrese that ended up in the hands of the Chicago Outfit. Calabrese's crucial testimony in the 2007 Family Secrets trial resulted in murder convictions and life sentences for several Chicago mobsters.

In a series of FBI interviews in 2006, Ambrose admitted telling family friend William Guide about Calabrese's cooperation after twice working on his witness protection security detail in 2002 and 2003.

"Any release of information is critical. It puts people at risk," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Diane MacArthur. "A person doesn't know the world into which that information is being released. There's no way to judge its impact and what harm it may cause."

But Ambrose's attorney, Francis Lipuma, argued Thursday to the jury that his client had no criminal intent in telling Guide about "the big OC guy" he was guarding and had merely "shot his mouth off" to impress a man he looked up to as a father figure. "Police officers are humans like the rest of us," Lipuma said. "They make mistakes."

Criticizing the investigation as full of "major holes," Lipuma attacked the trial's highest-profile witnesses -- U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald and FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Robert Grant -- for inconsistent testimony about Ambrose's initial, unrecorded FBI interview.

Thanks to Robert Mitchum

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Pizza King Phone Call Highlights Testimony in U.S. Marshal Mob Witness Protection Program Trial

A 14-minute phone call by Deputy U.S. Marshal John Ambrose to a pizza restaurant owned by a family friend with reputed organized-crime ties highlighted the final day of prosecution testimony at Ambrose's trial Tuesday.

FBI Special Agent Edward McNamara testified that phone records showed Ambrose placed a call to The Pizza King, a South Side restaurant owned by his friend William Guide, hours after his second secret detail protecting mob witness Nicholas Calabrese ended. But Ambrose told agents in two 2006 interviews that he didn't speak to Guide until he happened to bump into him weeks after that detail ended, McNamara said.

Ambrose is accused of leaking Calabrese's secret cooperation early in the Family Secrets investigation to Guide, knowing organized crime would learn the details.

McNamara testified that Ambrose admitted telling Guide about Calabrese's visits to Chicago in the hope that Guide would help him track organized-crime fugitives in the future.

At a 2002 wrestling meet, Ambrose told agents, he "boasted" to Guide about protecting a prominent organized-crime witness, McNamara testified. On the second occasion, he told Guide that investigators had driven Calabrese to sites of several decades-old mob slayings.

The first two defense witnesses, Ambrose's colleagues in the Marshals Service, said they had used The Pizza King as a "staging area" for operations while Ambrose served on the fugitive warrant unit. Both praised Ambrose's honesty. "I would trust my life with him," said Supervisory Deputy Marshal Matt Block.

Thanks to Robert Mitchum

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The Mafia Has Been Replaced by Mexian Drug Cartels as the #1 Organized Crime Threat to the United States

Mexican drug cartels have displaced the mafia as the "number one organized crime threat" in the United States, Sen. Joe Lieberman said Monday as his Senate committee heard testimony in Phoenix on border violence.

Lieberman, an independent Democrat from Connecticut, and Sen. John McCain, a Republican on Lieberman's panel, told FOX News that the United States needs to step up the fight against the drug cartels. The two senators were in Arizona, McCain's home state, to hear from local officials on their advice for dealing with the drug-fueled violence many fear is spilling across the border.

"This is literally a war," said Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "They're fighting for the turf."

Lieberman has said he plans to seek $380 million in additional funding to help law enforcement stop the flow of guns and drugs across the border. On Monday, he praised Mexican President Felipe Calderon's campaign to fight the cartels, but said cartels have already taken root north of the border -- driving a kidnapping surge in Phoenix and operating, he said, in at least 230 U.S. metropolitan areas.

"The Mexican drug cartels have become the number one organized crime threat in America, displacing the mafia," Lieberman told FOX News.

McCain said the federal government needs to approve border states' requests for more National Guard troops, something Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said is under review.

"I think we can have significant control of our border," McCain said. "We should heed the governors who are having to fight this ... all the time."

But Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said the Department of Defense has effectively denied her request to send 250 additional National Guard troops to the Arizona-Mexico border to help authorities battle immigrant and drug smuggling and related violence.

The governor told Lieberman's committee meeting Monday that she was disappointed with the denial of her request to bring the number of troops at her state's southern boundary up to 400. One hundred fifty troops are already there as part of a long-standing border assistance program.

The Bush administration sent thousands of Guard troops to the border to perform support duties so that federal border authorities would be freed up to focus on border security. Bush's buildup began in 2006 and ended last year.

Thanks to Fox News

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