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Dick Thornburgh, who as governor of Pennsylvania received applause for his cold treatment of the Three Mile Island crisis in 1979 and as a US attorney general restored credibility to a Department of Justice wounded by the Iran-Contra scandal, died. He was 88 years old.
Thornburgh died Thursday morning at a community facility for retirees outside Pittsburgh, said his son David. The cause is not yet known. He suffered a minor stroke in June 2014.
Thornburgh built his reputation as a criminal prosecutor in Pittsburgh and a moderate Republican governor. As the country’s top police official, he sued the savings and loan scandal. He also oversaw the Americans with Disabilities Act; one of his children suffered severe brain damage in a car accident.
After leaving office, Thornburgh became a problem solver who helped CBS investigate its news practices, dissected illegalities at the telecommunications company WorldCom and tried to improve the efficiency of the United Nations.
“I have always had the opportunity to repair a vessel that was somewhat listing and entering the water,” he told the Associated Press in 1999. “I would not object to being characterized as a ‘Mr. Fix it. ‘ I enjoyed the daily governance challenges. ”
President Ronald Reagan appointed Thornburgh’s attorney general in the last months of his administration. Thornburgh succeeded the embattled Edwin Meese III, who was investigated by a special prosecutor for possible ethical violations, and his appointment in August 1988 was hailed on Capitol Hill as an opportunity to restore the agency’s morale and image.
He was asked to remain as attorney general when George HW Bush became president in 1989.
Thornburgh had problems with the press and members of Congress, who were baffled by his imperious manners. He also fought liberals and conservatives in Congress for nominations for the Department of Justice.
Despite the difficulties, Thornburgh had continued support from President Bush and obtained unprecedented increases in Congress’ budget for the Department of Justice to fight crime.
The prosecution against savings and loan operators and borrowers increased during his tenure as the country faced a growing crisis in the savings industry. He set up fraud and S&L task forces in several major cities.
Also under the Thornburgh government, the Justice Department sued deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who was taken to Miami to face drug trafficking charges following an invasion of the United States.
Thornburgh tried to prevent the unauthorized leak of information about criminal investigations, but ran into trouble in the spring of 1989, when CBS News released a story that the FBI was investigating Congressman William Gray’s D-Pa office in Congress. The story produced expressions of outrage among Democrats because it aired when Gray was trying to be elected the majority leader in the House.
An internal investigation later showed that Thornburgh’s own chief spokesman played a role in confirming the story.
As governor of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1987, Thornburgh earned a reputation as a completely clean and reformist executive who cut the state government’s payroll, but his defining moment came just two months ago.
In March 1979, he was faced with the worst nuclear accident in American history, when a routine equipment failure at the Three Mile Island plant turned into a partial collapse, which released radioactive elements.
Thornburgh agonized whether to order an evacuation from the area around the factory. He recalled, years later, that “some people were telling us more than they knew and others less than they knew”.
He ended up ordering pregnant women and young children to leave an area 8 km around the factory, which caused thousands of others to flee near Harrisburg.
His cold treatment of the 10-day crisis was credited with preventing panic.
Years later, he was praised for recognizing that Pennsylvania’s manufacturing industry was disappearing and injecting state money into the economic development of new businesses.
Thornburgh’s career in government services dates back to the 1960s. He served as a United States attorney in western Pennsylvania from 1969 to 1975, prosecuting drug traffickers, organized crime figures and corrupt politicians.
From 1975 to 1977, he was an assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division of the Department of Justice, where he stepped up federal prosecutions for public corruption in the post-Watergate era.
He showed his sense of humor at events during his first campaign for governor in 1978, mocking the generous compensation of the state legislature to the sound of “My favorite things”. “Nice fat paychecks and liberal pensions / Fringes and perks that we didn’t even mention …” As attorney general, he referred to the white collar crime as “crime in suites”, as opposed to the streets.
When Thornburgh left the post of attorney general in the United States in 1991, he ran for the United States Senate, losing to Harris Wofford in the general election.
The election took Thornburgh to a Texas court, where Karl Rove, one of George W. Bush’s closest advisers, sued him to try to recover nearly $ 300,000 in delayed campaign debt. Thornburgh lost in court, appealed and ended the case.
In 1992, Thornburgh accepted an important administrative position at the United Nations to combat excessive bureaucracy and corruption. He quit his job after the end of his one-year contract, expressing frustration at the inefficiency and saying that the UN is “almost completely without effective means to deal with employee waste, fraud and abuse.”
In recent years, Thornburgh has been called upon to investigate irregularities in the corporate world.
In 2002, the Justice Department hired Thornburgh to help investigate WorldCom for mismanagement, irregularities and fraud. He described the company, which filed the biggest bankruptcy in the history of the United States, as “the poster child for corporate governance failures”.
Thornburgh was co-leader of an investigation conducted by CBS when its “60 Minutes Wednesday” program used false documents to support a 2004 story that questioned George W. Bush’s military service during the Vietnam War. The final report of the investigation led to the dismissal of three newspaper executives.
Richard Lewis Thornburgh was born on July 16, 1932 and grew up at Rosslyn Farms, near Pittsburgh. He graduated as an engineer at Yale, seeking to follow in the footsteps of his father, a civil engineer, but went to law school at the University of Pittsburgh.
After graduation, he went to work as a corporate attorney, later joining the Kirkpatrick and Lockhart law firm.
Thornburgh married his childhood girlfriend, Virginia “Ginny” Hooton, in 1955. She died in a car accident in 1960 that left one of her three children, Peter, with severe brain damage.
Three years later, Thornburgh married Ginny Judson, who raised her three children and gave birth to another, William. (He wrote in his memoirs that “Ginny and my first wife shared not only a name, but many characteristics that would undoubtedly make them friends quickly.”)
He said the accident was a turning point that forced him to redirect his life to what his mission and legacy would be.
He and his second wife became active in programs for the disabled. In 1985, the Thornburghs were named “Family of the Year” by the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Citizens.
Five years later, the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted after Thornburgh played a key role in negotiating commitments to Congress.
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