Dick Thornburgh, who won plaudits as governor of Pennsylvania for his cool handling of the Three Mile Island crisis in 1979 and as U.S. Attorney General restored credibility for a justice department hurt by the Iran-Contra scandal , is dead. He was 88.
Thornburgh died Thursday morning in a retirement community outside Pittsburgh, his son David said. The cause is not yet known. He had a mild stroke in June 2014.
Thornburgh built his reputation as a criminal federal prosecutor in Pittsburgh and as a moderate Republican governor. As the country’s leading law enforcement officer, he has prosecuted the savings and loans scandal. He also enforced the law on Americans with Disabilities; one of his sons is seriously brain damaged in a car accident.
After leaving office, Thornburgh became a problem solver who helped CBS investigate his news practices, analyze illegalities at the telecommunications company WorldCom, and try to improve the United Nations’ effectiveness.
“I have always had the opportunity to fix a vessel that is somewhat listed and take on water,” he told The Associated Press in 1999. “I will not object to the fact that I, as’ Mr. Fix It ‘is not featured. I like the day-to-day challenges of management. ‘
President Ronald Reagan appointed Thornburgh as attorney general in the waning months of his government. Thornburgh succeeds the troubled Edwin Meese III, who has been investigated by a special prosecutor for possible breaches of ethics, and his appointment in August 1988 to Capitol Hill is seen as an opportunity to restore the agency’s morale and image.
He was asked to continue as Attorney General when George HW Bush became president in 1989.
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Thornburgh got into trouble with the press and members of Congress who were deterred by his interests way. He also fought liberals and conservatives in Congress over appointments.
Despite the problems, Thornburgh enjoys the continued support of President Bush and wins unprecedented congressional increases in the Justice Department’s budget to combat crime.
Former Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh speaks in Middletown, PA, March 28, 2014. (Associated Press) “/>
Former Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh speaks in Middletown, PA, March 28, 2014. (Associated Press)
The prosecution of savings and loan operators and lenders increased during his tenure as the country experienced a growing crisis in the second-hand industry. He has set up security fraud and S&L task forces in several major cities.
Also under Thornburgh, the Department of Justice has continued the prosecution of ousted Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who was brought to Miami to face charges of drug trafficking, following a U.S. invasion.
Thornburgh tried to stop unauthorized leaks of information about criminal investigations, but he got into trouble in the spring of 1989 when CBS News aired a story that the FBI was investigating the congressional office of Representative William Gray, D-Pa. The story expressed outrage among Democrats because it was broadcast when Gray wanted to be elected to the House’s majority whip.
Later, an internal investigation revealed that Thornburgh’s own chief spokesperson had played a role in confirming the story.
U.S. Senator Pat Toomey said Thornburgh led Pennsylvania and the Department of Justice ‘successfully and with integrity’.
“The steady nature in which he has led Pennsylvania through one of the most dangerous crises – the nuclear accident on Three Mile Island – should serve as an example to all elected officials,” the Republican senator said.
“The steady nature in which he has led Pennsylvania through one of its most dangerous crises – the nuclear accident on Three Mile Island – must serve as an example to all elected officials.”
The governor of Pennsylvania in Pennsylvania, a Democrat, shared Toomey’s sentiment and described Thornburgh during the crash as an “essential and steady voice of calm in the midst of a crisis.”
As governor of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1987, Thornburgh gained a reputation as a squeaky clean, reform-minded executive who cut the payroll of the state government, but his decisive moment came barely two months into office.
In March 1979, he was confronted with the worst nuclear accident in American history when a routine outage of equipment at the Three Mile Island power plant degenerated into a partial collapse, releasing radioactive elements.
Thornburgh was tormented by the evacuation of the area around the plant. He remembers years later that ‘some people told us more than they knew and others told us less than they knew’.
Eventually, he ordered pregnant women and young children to leave an area five miles around the plant, causing thousands of other people to flee near Harrisburg.
His cool handling of the ten-day crisis is attributed to deviant panic.
He was praised years later for acknowledging that Pennsylvania’s manufacturing industry was fading and pumping government money into economic development for new businesses.
Thornburgh’s career in the civil service lasted until the 1960s. From 1969 to 1975, he was a U.S. attorney in Western Pennsylvania and prosecuted drug dealers, organized crime figures, and corrupt politicians.
From 1975 to 1977, he was assistant attorney general in charge of the Department of Justice’s criminal division, where he intensified federal prosecutions of public corruption in the post-Watergate era.
He showed his sense of humor during events during his first governorship campaign in 1978, while mocking the generous compensation of the state legislature on the tune of ‘My Favorite Things’. “Nice big fat salary checks and liberal pensions / fringe benefits and benefits we won’t even mention …” As attorney general, he referred to white-collar crime as ‘crime in the suites’, as opposed to streets.
When Thornburgh left the U.S. Attorney General in 1991, he made a U.S. Senate candidate and lost in the general election to Harris Wofford.
The election landed Thornburgh in a Texas courtroom, where Karl Rove, one of George W. Bush’s closest advisers, sued him to recover nearly $ 300,000 in campaign debt. Thornburgh lost in court, appealed and eventually settled the case.
In 1992, Thornburgh accepted a top-level position at the United Nations to fight bureaucratic excess and corruption. He left the post after his one-year contract expired, expressing frustration over inefficiency, saying the UN “almost lacks effective means to deal with waste, fraud and abuse by staff members.”
In recent years, Thornburgh has been exploited to investigate wrongdoing in the business world.
In 2002, the Department of Justice used Thornburgh to investigate WorldCom for mismanagement, irregularities and fraud. He described the company, which has made the largest bankruptcy case in US history, as “the poster child of corporate governance failures.”
Thornburgh was co-leader of an investigation conducted by CBS when his program ’60 Minutes Wednesday ‘used fake documents to reinforce a 2004 story questioning George W. Bush’s military service in the Vietnam War. The damning final report of the investigation led to the dismissal of three news executives.
Richard Lewis Thornburgh was born on July 16, 1932 and grew up in Rosslyn Farms, near Pittsburgh. He trained as an engineer at Yale and tried to follow in the footsteps of his father’s civil engineer, but went to the right school at the University of Pittsburgh.
After graduating, he went to work as a corporate lawyer and later joined the law firm of Kirkpatrick and Lockhart.
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Thornburgh married in 1955 his sweetheart from Virginia, “Ginny” Hooton. She died in a car accident in 1960 that left one of their three sons, Peter, severely brain damaged.
Three years later, Thornburgh married Ginny Judson, who raised his three sons and gave birth to another, William. (He wrote in his memoirs that “Ginny and my first wife not only shared a name, but also many qualities that would undoubtedly have made them quick friends.”)
He said the accident was a decisive moment that forced him to refocus his life on what his mission and legacy would be.
Both 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 signed after Thornburgh played a key role in negotiating compromises with Congress.