Monday, October 15, 2007

FBI's Aiken heads off into the sunset

The ProJo's Mike Stanton offered a well-etched piece yesterday about the retirement from the FBI of W. Dennis Aiken, one of the best sources for whom an investigative reporter could hope.

Although some of the background will be familiar for readers of Stanton's The Prince of Providence, Aiken's departure, after a lengthy career investigating corruption and other crime, is significant in itself, particularly for those following Operation Dollar Bill:

Some people will be happy to see Aiken go. He understands this. Told that others may be nervous, given that his departure may signal that much of his work is done, Aiken says, “They should be.”

Stanton describes Aiken's listening ability as a key part of his success:

Beyond the documents, it’s all about getting someone to tell you what happened.

“People have a desire to tell you the truth,” says Aiken. “You just have to find the common ground. I try to be up front with people and not try to trick them. Though they may be adversaries in the beginning, I look at them as potential witnesses later on, and try to treat them with respect.”

Aiken's conversational ability figured prominently in the source-confidentiality case a few years back involving WJAR reporter Jim Taricani.

As I wrote in 2004:

So there was Taricani, a news veteran familiar with the frequent juxtaposition of local politics and criminality, having a cup of coffee at the Au Bon Pain near Providence’s federal courthouse on the morning of his November 18 trial, when in walks W. Dennis Aiken, the FBI agent who led the effort to nail Cianci.

Taricani, who has known Aiken for more than 20 years and considers him a friend, says the agent "puts his arm around my shoulder, shakes my hand, and says, ‘Good luck today.’ " The two men proceeded to talk, Taricani says, about special prosecutor Marc DeSisto’s attempt to identify the source of the leaked videotape by getting those who had access to it to sign waivers that would release reporters from promises of confidentiality. Taricani, describing how prosecutors can pressure people to sign the documents, allowed that his source had already signed such a waiver, and that DeSisto had shown it to him. Thus, in a move that Taricani says was unintentional, he made it possible for the prosecutor to identify his source as lawyer Joseph A. Bevilacqua Jr., since his waiver was the only one that DeSisto had shown Taricani. "It’s my mistake," Taricani told the Phoenix in a recent interview. "I have to take responsibility for it."

Taricani says Aiken’s "very jovial and very friendly" manner led him to think they were talking "Dennis to Jim, rather than agent versus reporter," adding, "I didn’t think for one minute that he was going to use this information." Aiken, however, thought otherwise, reporting their conversation to US Attorney Robert Clark Corrente (no relation to Frank Corrente, the Cianci bagman caught on tape), setting the stage for DeSisto’s blockbuster December 1 announcement that he had identified Taricani’s source as Bevilacqua.

. . .

There’s the utter irony of how Taricani, after steadily refusing to reveal his source for several years, unwittingly did so during his November 18 coffee-shop conversation with FBI agent Aiken. (Not that you’d necessarily glean this from the local media coverage. The "chance encounter" between the two men, described in a court filing by DeSisto, wasn’t mentioned until the 30th paragraph of Tracy Breton’s December 2 story in the Providence Journal. Breton says the placement reflected a decision to build a chronological narrative based on how Bevilacqua got the tape and how Taricani got it from him.)

Even now, Taricani questions whether his chat with Aiken was truly a "chance encounter." The Au Bon Pain where the reporter was having his coffee is located in the lobby of 50 Kennedy Plaza, which also houses the US Attorney’s Office. "This could be very far-fetched," Taricani cautions. But he saw Richard W. Rose, the lead prosecutor in the Cianci case, come into the coffee shop that morning, and he doesn’t know whether Rose saw him. Within a very short time after Rose left, Aiken turned up, without a coat (the Providence FBI office is located in a different building around the corner). The coincidence leaves Taricani wondering, "Was Dennis Aiken [who could have been upstairs at the US Attorney’s Office, where Rose might have alerted him to Taricani’s presence] cooperating with Marc DeSisto, and did he purposely bring up this thing and try to get me to say something about it? I have questions in my mind." (Aiken did not return a call seeking comment.)