Executive Office for United States Attorneys

The Executive Office for United States Attorneys is the Department of Justice office, established by Attorney General Order No. 8-53 of April 6, 1953, under Herbert Brownell, that provides executive assistance and supervision to the United States Attorneys in the federal districts. It evaluates their performance, coordinates them with other agencies, maintains the United States Attorneys' Manual, runs their legal training, supports the Attorney General's Advisory Committee, sets policy for collecting criminal fines, handles their budgets, Freedom of Information Act responses, congressional liaison, facilities and security. James R. Browning organized the office as its first chief in 1953. Its directors in the years of the INSLAW dispute were William P. Tyson, from 1977 to 1987, Laurence S. McWhorter, from 1987 to 1992, and Anthony Moscato, acting director and then director from 1992 to 1994, followed by Carol DiBattiste.¹

The PROMIS Contract

In March 1982 INSLAW signed a three-year, ten-million-dollar contract with the office to install PROMIS, the case-tracking system it had developed with LEAA funds, in the twenty largest U.S. Attorneys' offices and word-processing versions in 74 smaller ones. The office's project manager was C. Madison Brewer, a former INSLAW employee dismissed by Bill Hamilton; its contracting officer was Peter Videnieks, and Brewer's deputy and technical representative was Jack Rugh. Within a month of the signing the office and INSLAW were disputing whether the enhanced PROMIS delivered under the contract was proprietary, and in 1983 the office withheld payments and in 1985 INSLAW entered Chapter 11. In September 1987 Bankruptcy Judge George Bason found that the department had taken the software "by trickery, fraud, and deceit," a finding the House Committee on the Judiciary endorsed in 1992 and the special counsel Nicholas J. Bua rejected in 1993. In February 1985, days after the bankruptcy filing, Rugh telephoned the INSLAW programmer Gregory McKain to offer him a job and, by McKain's account, told him the department had learned from the trustees that INSLAW would be in liquidation within sixty days. The office's later director Moscato was accused by Hamilton of helping to deny Bason's reappointment, which he denied to Bua.²³