U.S. attorney closes door McCloskey proud of 8 years at job, local drug battles

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BANGOR – With Saturday’s swearing-in of George W. Bush as president, Maine’s U.S. Attorney Jay McCloskey is preparing to move on.

McCloskey, 53, built his reputation aggressively prosecuting drug smugglers trying to bring shiploads of marijuana from South America to Maine. He has prosecuted tobacco smugglers, members of a Medellin cocaine cartel and a former Bangor mayor for fraud. Most recently he has devoted much of his time to trying to combat the growing infusion of heroin into the state.

Now he’s looking for a job, and three Republican lawyers from the southern part of the state are hoping to take his place.

During a recent interview from his office in downtown Bangor, McCloskey said he was disappointed to leave the office in which he has worked for 21 years, the last eight as U.S. attorney.

“You know when you take a job like this that it’s not permanent,” he said. “I’m going to miss the work and the people, but it’s par for the course,” he said.

Cumberland County District Attorney Stephanie Anderson, Assistant U.S. Attorney Paula Silsby and House GOP Whip William Schneider are vying for the position that will be appointed by Maine senior Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe.

A Bangor native, McCloskey graduated from John Bapst High School in 1965 and received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maine. He won a Democratic seat in the Maine House of Representatives in 1970, but lost his bid for a Senate seat in 1972. He worked in George Mitchell’s unsuccessful campaign for governor, then got his law degree from the University of Maine School of Law.

He then worked for Sen. William Hathaway in Washington and joined a private law firm. In 1980, he was appointed an assistant U.S. attorney by then-Sen. Mitchell.

As an assistant U.S. attorney, McCloskey made a name for himself as a tough prosecutor, specifically in the area of cocaine and marijuana smuggling and trafficking. In 1993, Mitchell appointed McCloskey the state’s top federal law enforcement officer.

Since then, McCloskey has made a concerted effort to break down decade-old turf battles among state, local and federal law enforcement agencies.

“I think I’m as proud of that as anything,” he said. “I was able to get more resources from the state’s [office] of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency, and coming from a small state with a low crime rate that’s not easy. I was lucky to get the help from Bill Cohen and George Mitchell to do that.”

McCloskey also created violent crimes task forces in Bangor and Lewiston.

“You look around the country and those are two very successful [task forces], as well-run and productive as any operation in the country. The task forces in Maine have produced literally hundreds of convictions for serious violence offenders,” he said.

The task forces consist of federal, local and state law enforcement officers who take on the most serious criminal investigations in the state, using federal resources and jurisdiction.

Bangor Police Chief Donald Winslow said local police departments and the residents of the state have benefited directly from McCloskey’s leadership.

“Boy, I’m really going to miss him,” Winslow said. “We have been so fortunate. I think what stands out most dramatically is his ability to foster a spirit of cooperation amongst police agencies.”

Noting that many crime sprees transcend city and county lines, Winslow said the development of the Violence Crimes Task Force has allowed and encouraged agencies to conduct investigations that otherwise would have been fragmented and hampered by a lack of resources.

“He brings such energy to that office over there and he really does what he thinks is in the best interest of communities and the state, not what he thinks is in his best political interest,” Winslow said.

National responsibilities

U.S. District Court Judge D. Brock Hornby has known McCloskey since Hornby was appointed a U.S. magistrate judge.

“He is very professional and has done an excellent job representing the government,” Hornby noted. “As U.S. attorney he has become good at delegating and has assembled around him an excellent staff. He has had significant management responsibilities as well as significant national responsibilities. I think it’s very clear that he is held in very high esteem by his peers around the country as well as in Washington.”

On a national level, McCloskey was tapped to chair the attorney general’s committee on sentencing guidelines. Federal sentencing guidelines can be very rigid, and McCloskey was able to revise those guidelines to build in a clause that allows for limited flexibility in certain cases.

“It allows for some leniency in limited conditions. Federal drug sentences, for example, can be extremely high, and prior to the changes those sentences were non-negotiable. From time to time you have a defendant and a case that warrants some flexibility, and we were able to get that built into those guidelines,” he said.

Two years ago, when Attorney General Janet Reno was looking for an acting assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division she again turned her sights to Maine. But with a wife and two young children, McCloskey turned it down.

“It was tempting in that it is the third-highest position in the Department of Justice. If circumstances had been different I would have jumped at it, but I had one 4-year-old and another daughter in the first grade and the timing just wasn’t very good. I was honored to be asked,” he said.

Even in his large office that overlooks the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building, surrounded by volumes of law books and legal documents, McCloskey’s conversations often turn to his children. When first named U.S. attorney he had one young daughter. He and his wife, Nancy Torreson, who works as an assistant U.S. attorney assigned to the Attorney General’s Office, have since had another daughter and a son.

Fighting illegal opiates

For what turned out to be his last year as the state’s top federal prosecutor, McCloskey has devoted a lot of time fighting the influx of heroin and illegal prescription opiates to the area.

Last spring he formed the law enforcement and community initiative in eastern Maine to help fight the heroin and opiate problem. The group developed a powerful drug program that McCloskey personally takes on the road for parents and high school students to see.

“I think so far we’ve been in 20 high schools and shown this program to about 7,000 high school students and 3 [thousand] or 4,000 parents. We are getting positive feedback from that, and on the law enforcement side we have managed, through arrests of dealers, to double the price of heroin in six or seven months. Now pharmacists and doctors are working together to come up with ways to prevent prescription forgeries and abuses. I am hopeful that those efforts will continue after I’m gone,” he said.

McCloskey came under fire last summer for his strong and vocal opposition to a proposed methadone clinic in Bangor. As the State Office of Substance Abuse and Acadia Hospital lobbied for the treatment center, McCloskey launched an aggressive campaign against it, saying such facilities can attract more drug dealers than they deflect.

His opposition in his role as U.S. attorney drew public criticism from the nation’s drug czar, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who supports methadone treatment for opiate addicts.

“I fought hard against the clinic, because I truly did not think it was the best thing for Bangor at this time. It’s coming anyway, but we were successful in delaying it for more than a year and that enabled us to get some law enforcement and community programs going,” he said.

“A lot of things have changed since I started working in this office,” McCloskey said. “Drugs are still a major problem, but the types of drugs have changed. We had marijuana and then cocaine in the ’80s. Today it’s heroin.”

McCloskey also has seen a major surge in cases involving child pornography.

“There was a time when child pornography cases didn’t hardly exist other than a very occasional case. This has jumped off the map with the Internet. There are probably 20 to 30 cases currently under investigation by this office right now. The Internet has really offered these people a venue that to them appears to be irresistible. This is an incredible problem that is only getting worse,” he said.

McCloskey’s office also was called upon several times during his tenure to uphold the Americans with Disabilities Act and McCloskey said his goal was to try to settle many of those disputes without going to trial.

In 1998 McCloskey’s office filed suit against Maine Medical Center for failing to provide sign language interpreters to a deaf patient who had been in the hospital for more than three days. The lawsuit ended with a settlement in which the Portland hospital agreed to improve services for people with impaired hearing. Another action resulted in a settlement with fast-food restaurants agreeing to provide hearing-impaired customers with picture menus.

“The point isn’t always for someone to pay, the point is to make these services available for those who need them, and if we can get that result without the costs involved in a long legal court battle then everyone is better off. I’ve worked hard to make that happen as often as we can,” he said.

McCloskey is unsure exactly where he will be practicing law next. He hopes to stay in the Bangor area, but realizes he may have to move to Portland.

“I would have preferred to stay here, but it’s time to move on. I can only hope that I’ve made a difference in the past eight years and I hope that the programs we started here will continue,” he said.

As he prepares to clean out his office and wonders about his next job, McCloskey recalls the words of his friend George Mitchell.

“He always told me “do a good job at the job you’re doing and then the next job will take care of itself.'”