As Carter’s last attorney general, he fought for the release of Americans held by Iran and investigated allegations against two aides and the president’s brother.
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Benjamin R. Civiletti being sworn in as attorney general by Chief Justice Warren Burger in August 1979 as President Jimmy Carter looked on.
Benjamin R. Civiletti, President Jimmy Carter’s last attorney general, who helped navigate the troubled final 17 months of a Democratic administration besieged by the Iranian hostage crisis and a series of politically damaging scandals, died on Sunday at his home in Lutherville, Md., a suburb of Baltimore. He was 87.
The cause was Parkinson’s, his wife, Gaile Civiletti, said.
An outstanding trial lawyer and a former federal prosecutor in Baltimore, Mr. Civiletti joined the Justice Department soon after Mr. Carter assumed office. He served nearly four years — first as a top assistant in charge of the criminal division (1977-78), then as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 post (1978-79), and finally as the attorney general (1979-81), succeeding Griffin B. Bell, who had resigned.
Mr. Civiletti was known for prosecuting racketeers, public corruption, white-collar crime and drug trafficking. He was an advocate of civil rights enforcement, environmental protections and prison reform. He also handled sensitive high-profile investigations into the conduct of Mr. Carter’s budget director, Bert Lance; his chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan; and his brother, Billy Carter.
Three months after Mr. Civiletti became attorney general, a growing confrontation over United States support for the deposed shah of Iran exploded on Nov. 4, 1979, when Iranian revolutionaries invaded the United States Embassy in Tehran and seized 52 American diplomats and citizens.
The crisis — in which billions in Iranian assets were frozen by the United States, American warships patrolled Iranian waters and an attempted American helicopter rescue cost eight lives — was a pivotal episode in the history of deteriorating United States relations with Iran, and a major factor in Mr. Carter’s landslide loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election.
As anger against Iranians spread in the United States, Mr. Civiletti urged Americans to act with restraint “despite our justifiable anger,” and to refrain from violence or acts of discrimination. Assaults on Iranian Americans were reported. A technical college in Greenville, S.C., suspended 104 Iranian students, and Mr. Carter ordered a check on 50,000 Iranian students to see if any had expired visas.
Acting under a peacetime emergency-powers law and court orders obtained by Mr. Civiletti, Mr. Carter ordered the seizure of what amounted to $12 billion in Iranian assets in the United States. In an executive order, the president also halted Iranian oil imports.
At the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Mr. Civiletti argued for the hostages’ release and the embassy’s return. No representatives of Iran appeared in court. Iran’s Islamic revolutionary government called the case “marginal and secondary.” The court later upheld the American claim, although it had no authority to enforce its order.
The hostages were finally released on Jan. 20, 1981, the day — indeed, the moment — of Mr. Reagan’s inauguration as president. They were flown to an Air Force base in West Germany, where Mr. Carter met them as a private emissary.
ImageMr. Civiletti with President Carter at the White House in 1979. Mr. Civiletti argued for the release of American hostages at the International Court of Justice.Credit…Ira Schwarz/Associated Press
During his Justice Department years, Mr. Civiletti investigated sensitive cases involving a few men close to the president, starting with Mr. Lance, a banker whose friendship predated Mr. Carter’s years as governor of Georgia. A key adviser in the Carter campaign for the White House, Mr. Lance was named director of the Office of Management and Budget, the first cabinet officer chosen by Mr. Carter.
Within months, questions were raised by the news media and in Congress about corruption when Mr. Lance had been chairman of a Georgia bank. Facing possible indictment for trading on his ties with the president, Mr. Lance resigned and returned to banking in Georgia. It was an embarrassment to Mr. Carter and the first major scandal of his administration.
In 1979, Mr. Carter’s chief of staff, Mr. Jordan, 35, whose partying lifestyle made grist for the gossip columns, was accused of using cocaine and engaging in anonymous sex at the Studio 54 disco in New York City. Mr. Civiletti’s investigation found no credible witnesses or evidence of a federal crime. A special prosecutor was also appointed, but no case was brought to trial.
Another embarrassment for the president later arose in disclosures that his younger brother, Billy, had visited Libya three times in 1978 and 1979 and received $220,000 in what he called a loan from Libya’s government at a time when he had a brokerage arrangement with an American company seeking to buy Libyan oil. The problem was that Billy Carter had not registered as a foreign agent.
Testifying before a Senate committee in 1980, Mr. Civiletti said that he had told the president that his brother was under investigation by the Justice Department but that he had not discussed details of the inquiry. Doing so would have been a conflict of interest. But he told Mr. Carter that his brother had been “foolish” not to have registered earlier as a Libyan agent, although failing to do so, he said, did not appear to be a prosecutable offense.
That was not quite correct. Failing to register as a foreign agent was a crime, although courts had been lenient in relatively harmless cases, imposing only fines. Billy Carter eventually registered, and was not prosecuted.
Mr. Civiletti was criticized by some in Congress for even mentioning the Justice Department inquiry to the president, and for publicly denying, inaccurately, that he had discussed his brother’s case with the president.
Far from repentant, Mr. Civiletti returned to the Senate and testified that he was proud of his handling of the Billy Carter case. He said that his conversation with the president had conveyed nothing substantive about the investigation and had taken no more than a minute. He also said he did not believe that there were serious foreign policy implications in Billy Carter’s dealings with the Libyan government.
“I think that any time a relative of the president is involved in a questionable situation, it makes headlines and becomes a big deal,” Mr. Civiletti told the DC Bar website in an interview years later. “The foreign agents registration question was made to be a much bigger deal than it should have been simply because Billy was the president’s brother.”
ImageMr. Civiletti in 2008. After serving as attorney general, he returned to his private law practice and later led a Maryland commission on capital punishment.Credit…Brian Witte/Associated Press
Benjamin Richard Civiletti was born in Peekskill, N.Y., on July 17, 1935, one of two children of Benjamin C. and Virginia (Muller) Civiletti. His father was a grocery store manager. Benjamin and his sister, Pamela, grew up in Lake Mahopac and Shrub Oak, N.Y. He graduated from the Irving School in Tarrytown, N.Y., in 1953, and earned a bachelor’s degree at Johns Hopkins University in 1957 and a law degree from the University of Maryland in 1961.
In 1958, he married Gaile Lundgren. In addition to her, he is survived by their three children, Benjamin and Andrew Civiletti and Lynne Civiletti Mallon; his sister, Pamela Civiletti; nine grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
After a year as a law clerk for Judge W. Calvin Chesnut of the United States District Court in Maryland, Mr. Civiletti was an assistant federal prosecutor in Baltimore from 1962 to 1964. He then joined the large law firm of Venable, Baetjer and Howard in Baltimore (now Venable LLP). He became a partner two years later, in charge of civil and criminal litigation.
His work on an antitrust case impressed Charles H. Kirbo, a former law partner of Attorney General Bell’s and an adviser to Mr. Carter when he was governor of Georgia. After Mr. Carter won the presidency in 1976, Mr. Kirbo recommended Mr. Civiletti for a top Justice Department post.
As attorney general, Mr. Civiletti successfully argued before the Supreme Court for the government’s right to denaturalize Nazi war criminals.
After leaving the government in 1981, Mr. Civiletti returned to his former law firm in Baltimore. He was its chairman from 1993 to 2006, and retired as chairman emeritus in 2014. He received The American Lawyer’s lifetime achievement award in 2009.
He also had a home in Ocean Ridge, Fla.
In 2008, Gov. Martin J. O’Malley of Maryland named Mr. Civiletti chairman of a state commission that recommended the abolition of capital punishment in the state, a goal that Mr. O’Malley signed into law in 2013.
Alex Traub contributed reporting.
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Source: nytimes.com
