Who Doesn’t Like Jeff Del Fuoco?

The buzz for months around the Hillsborough County Courthouse and Tampa law offices has been: Who wants to destroy Circuit Court Judge Greg Holder? Corrupt judges? The mob? Or (and this is a zinger) the U.S. Attorney's Office?

Overlooked is another enigma: Who wants to undermine Jeffrey Del Fuoco, the federal prosecutor who played a pivotal — albeit, he claims, unwitting — role in the Holder case? Only in Tampa could you get such a bizarre roster of suspects with reasons to "get" Del Fuoco. Are Irish Republican Army supporters to blame? Or a Plant City phosphate company? Could it be the Manatee County sheriff?

Del Fuoco for years prosecuted public corruption cases. Among his high-profile successes, he has nailed a number of bad cops — six Manatee County deputies and three Plant City police officers.

But he also started running afoul of colleagues, especially a former friend, Robert "Bobby" O'Neill, the criminal division chief in the U.S. Attorney's Office. Del Fuoco has filed a complaint with the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility over O'Neill's part ownership of a popular Hyde Park bar, Four Green Fields, according to Craig Huffman, a Tampa attorney who represents Del Fuoco.

The Irish bar has been the scene for fundraisers for Sinn Fein, the political arm — or front, to use a popular G-man term — for the ultra-violent Irish Republican Army. Events at Four Green Fields have twice featured Gerry Adams, the congenial head huckster for Sinn Fein and the IRA.

The Weekly Planet five years ago disclosed O'Neill's relationship to Four Green Fields at a time when the prosecutor was heading the investigation against Sami Al-Arian, the now fired University of South Florida professor suspected then of having ties to the terrorist Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The irony is that the prosecutor had links to Sinn Fein and the IRA similar to the hazy suspicions then directed at Al-Arian.

Those who have suffered IRA violence regard Adams with about as much love as Israelis feel for Yassir Arafat. There are, indeed, many parallels between the two men and their organizations. The IRA is responsible for killing more than 650 civilians since it began its campaign of violence in the early 1970s.

The State Department's 2000 report on "Patterns of Global Terrorism" says of the IRA: "Terrorist group formed in 1969 as clandestine armed wing of Sinn Fein, a legal political movement." Activities by the Irish bad boys fighting for "the cause" are described by the State Department as: "Bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, punishment beatings, extortion, smuggling and robberies."

The IRA faction that's affiliated with Sinn Fein also has been accused by British and other authorities of aiding terrorists groups from Palestine to Latin America. U.S. law enforcement agencies reported in 2002 that Niall Connolly, Sinn Fein's official representative for Cuba and Latin America, was one of three IRA members arrested in Colombia on suspicion of providing explosives training to terrorist groups. British newspapers reported in 2002 that seven known IRA members, including two top leaders, had trained Colombian drug-running terrorists in explosives and urban warfare.

Those facts about Sinn Fein/IRA bear a striking resemblance to the U.S. Attorney's allegations that Al-Arian's involvement in legal organizations was a front for supporting terrorism. Moreover, there are more than casual similarities between Palestinian and Irish terror groups that may prove embarrassing to Tampa's U.S. Attorney's Office.

In April 2002, the London Daily Telegraph reported: "The IRA has been teaching Palestinian terrorists to build booby-trap bombs for use against Israeli soldiers, according to a British explosives expert working in the Jenin refugee camp."

The State Department has reported that the Irish groups are "suspected of receiving funds, arms and other terrorist-related materiel from sympathizers in the United States." In July 2002, the IRA "apologized" to the families of its non-combatant victims — a move regarded as an effort to boost lagging fund raising among Americans, who after 9-11 were resistant to overtures from any groups with violent agendas.

Prosecutor O'Neill's partner at Four Green Fields, Colin Breen, in 2001 told the St. Petersburg Times: "Am I pro-IRA? Absolutely." Four Green Fields' walls are plastered with virulent anti-British slogans and literature — similar in tone to the propaganda found among, say, anti-American Arab groups in the Middle East.

Washington, D.C., lawyer Bill Moffitt, who represents Al-Arian, says the disparity in how the U.S. Attorney's Office has chased his client while ignoring a similar involvement by one of its own staff "certainly" raises the question of selective enforcement of the law.

O'Neill and Breen also are involved in other ventures, according to documents obtained by the Planet. These include entities called Dublin Investments LLC and DPI Inc. O'Neill did not return a detailed message asking about his relationship to Sinn Fein and Breen. U.S. Attorney Paul Perez — who in the last week has refused to let Del Fuoco and his supervisor, Jeff Downing, testify in a state investigation of Holder — responded to our inquiry about O'Neill and Holder with an e-mail message that stated: "Your questions do not warrant a response or any comment what so ever [sic]."

Del Fuoco would not comment, but Huffman says his client's complaint to Justice officials alleges that O'Neill has failed to disclose his relationship as a Sinn Fein fundraiser, which could be a violation of several federal statutes and policies.

O'Neill never brought an indictment against Al-Arian, and, according to Justice Department and other legal sources, advocated dropping the investigation against the Arab professor. Al-Arian was indicted last year on more specific charges that he was the U.S. financial leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but O'Neill apparently has not been involved in the case in recent months.

Del Fuoco has felt heat since challenging O'Neill. He was moved from the criminal division to the civil division, generally considered a demotion. And, Justice sources say, he has been summoned to Washington to be grilled about his complaint against O'Neill.

Del Fuoco has caused some heat of his own. After he won guilty pleas against six Manatee County deputies, he says he became aware that someone was watching him and his then wife. In a federal lawsuit filed last year, the prosecutor sued Manatee Sheriff Charles Wells, claiming that a deputy, Barry Coleman, used law enforcement databases to obtain personal information about the Del Fuocos "for the purpose of harming, injuring, harassing or invading the privacy" of the family.Here are some additional dots that beg to be connected. Attorneys representing Holder have other clients who would benefit if Del Fuoco is discredited.

In recent weeks, Del Fuoco has been heading an investigation of Coronet Industries, a Plant City phosphate-processing outfit whose chemical discharges are suspected of polluting wells and making neighbors ill.

One of Holder's attorneys is Virginia Houser. Her firm, Bales Weinstein, represents Coronet.

Another of Holder's attorneys is former federal prosecutor Greg Kehoe. His clients include none other than Coleman, the Manatee deputy who is being sued by Del Fuoco. Kehoe commented: "People wrote a check and hired me. So what?"

Kehoe is also considered close to O'Neill. If Del Fuoco's reputation is destroyed, it will chill future criticism of the prosecutor/barkeep by his colleagues.

"It does seem sort of odd that all of Judge Holder's lawyers have other reasons to go after Jeff [Del Fuoco]," says Del Fuoco's attorney Huffman. "It's kill the messenger, or kill two birds with one stone."

Clues in the Holder case are well known — while definitive answers are elusive. What's clear, however, is that Del Fuoco is smack in the middle of the high-profile dust-up.Holder is an Air Force reservist who in 1998 submitted a research paper as part of the process to gain promotion to colonel. He no longer has a copy of the original paper, nor does the Air Force.

In early 2002, Del Fuoco, an Army reservist, found an envelope that had been slipped under the door of his St. Petersburg reserve center office. The envelope contained a version of the paper allegedly authored by Holder, plus one written by another reservist. A comparison — assuming Holder did pen one of the papers — suggests that the judge plagiarized the work of the other officer.

Del Fuoco held the documents for almost a year, then gave them to his boss in the U.S. Attorney's Office, Downing, who sent them to the Air Force. It's noteworthy that Downing only forwarded the documents after Holder had filed a complaint against the U.S. Attorney's Office with the Department of Justice. To Holder's supporters, that smells of revenge by federal prosecutors.

The Air Force in May suspended Holder as a military judge — but reinstated him last month.

Concurrently, the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commissioner targeted Holder and scheduled a hearing for Jan. 20 that could have removed the judge from the bench. However, based on a mountain of evidence backing Holder's account that the alleged plagiarized document is a forgery, the JQC has indefinitely postponed the hearing. After the Air Force cleared him, and since it was a military matter, Holder has filed a motion with the JQC asking that the case be dismissed.

Factor in that Holder for years has been the nemesis of ethically challenged — and often corrupt — Tampa judges. In 2001 and 2002, Holder was working with federal and Tampa agents investigating courthouse shenanigans including payoffs and case fixing. Tampa Detective James Bartoszak — in an affidavit first disclosed by the Weekly Planet — said he felt that Holder's life and reputation were threatened by targets of the corruption probe.

Bartoszak suggested that corrupt courthouse denizens had the wherewithal to fabricate the allegedly plagiarized paper in order to discredit Holder.

Pointing a finger at the U.S. Attorney's Office, Bartoszak also disclosed that the feds had shut down the corruption probe, and that Holder had filed his complaint against federal authorities in Tampa with the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility. (The embarrassed U.S. Attorney's Office says the probe is still alive, but it hasn't offered any substantiation to counter statements by the Tampa detective and other agents.)

Bartoszak said in his affidavit: "It is more than an 'amazing coincidence' that the allegations against Judge Holder only surfaced after he wrote to complain about the investigation being stopped."

Meanwhile, Holder's lawyers have been trying to undermine Del Fuoco's credibility. They cite the revelation that Del Fuoco had discovered almost 171 pages of military documents that might add perspective to the Holder case, claiming that was very strange. "It affects his [Del Fuoco's] credibility," Holder attorney Houser told the Planet.

But does it? According to lawyers knowledgeable about the case — including two with the government — Del Fuoco had collected the 171 pages while he was preparing for military studies similar to those undertaken by Holder. He had stored the papers in a box and forgotten them.

Not a big deal, Del Fuoco's friends say. But Del Fuoco's attorney, Huffman, concedes: "A lot of very powerful people want to make Jeff look bad."

John Sugg, a former Weekly Planet editor, is senior editor at our sister publication in Atlanta. He can be reached at 404-614-1241 or at john.sugg@creativeloafing.com.

This article appears in Jan 15-21, 2004.