Patrick fitzgerald may be the most feared prosecutor in the country, but even as he's racked up headlines for big-name convictions (Scooter Libby) and indictments (Rod Blago-jevich), the hard-charging U.S. attorney from Chicago has been waging a private crusade: trying to kill a book he believes maligns his reputation. In the past year and a half, Fitzgerald has written four letters to HarperCollins-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.-demanding it "cease publication" and "withdraw" copies of Triple Cross, a 2006 book by ex-TV newsman Peter Lance that criticizes Fitzgerald's handling of terror cases in New York in the 1990s. Fitzgerald raised the temperature even more last week, aiming to halt a paperback version. "To put it plain and simple," he wrote in a June 2 letter obtained by NEWSWEEK, "if in fact you publish the book this month and it defames me or casts me in a false light, HarperCollins will be sued."Media experts say Fitzgerald's letters, written on personal stationary and totaling 30 pages, are unusual for a top lawman. "We certainly find it highly offensive that a federal prosecutor would do something like this," says Gregg Leslie of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. But Fitzgerald makes no apologies.
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