Wily federal prosecutor calls it a day; Bruce Carter foiled fraud, corruption
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For three decades, whenever he was sniffing out bribery or embezzlement, phony aircraft parts or crooked piping contracts, Bruce Carter made a federal case out of it.
Now the prolific federal prosecutor with an aw-shucks personality is retiring, and federal courts in the Western District of Washington will never be the same.
"I got to the office in 1972, and Bruce was there," said Harry McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney who has, himself, retired. "He had so many major cases, and he was so good at them. He really had a sense of fraud and corruption cases like few people I've ever known."
Carter is, in fact, the longest-serving prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle. He started in 1971 and his last working day will be April 3.
Even the 58-year-old Carter makes fun of himself for lasting that long, saying: "I'm the only person in the office who was here the day I arrived."
Those who know him say it's partly that relaxed attitude that's helped him gain the cooperation to prosecute complex national cases. "He's 6-foot-8 and yet he has this disarming personal manner," said McCarthy. "He's a Jimmy Stewart, `aw-shucks' kind of guy."
He's also persistent, said Bill Omaits, a former Internal Revenue Service special agent who worked on many of Carter's biggest cases. "Bruce has a nose for fraud. No one digs like Bruce. When he leaves that office, there's going to be a special talent that retires. His wealth of knowledge and the intuitiveness is just going to be gone."
That admiration even extends to the other side of the courtroom.
Defense attorney Dan Dubitzky, who has opposed Carter in more than 20 major cases, including one involving counterfeit aircraft parts, chuckles about how diligent he was in preparing responses to government charges - and how his work backfired at the hands of Carter:
"He took the submissions home and weighed them on the bathroom scale and used them in his opening statement."
The effect was to turn Dubitzky's work into an object of amusement - even preparing 7 pounds of paper wouldn't be enough to acquit his client.
Dubitzky laughs about it now, though he was upset at the time.
"I was mad at him for three years and he was mad at me for five," said Dubitzky, adding that now he sees what happened as typical of the innovative thinking Carter brought to his work. "He sees beyond the four walls of the cubicle."
After graduating from Centralia High School in 1961, the University of Washington in 1965 and Stanford Law School in 1968, Carter began working with white-collar crime, corruption and environmental law.
By 1972, he was prosecuting oil-pollution cases. In 1998, he won a conviction against Tom Stewart, a Seattle businessman, and his company, Services Group of America, for making illegal campaign contributions. The ensuing $5 million fine was the third-largest penalty ever brought in a federal criminal election-fraud case.
Between those years, he got convictions for cases ranging from mortgage fraud and embezzlement on a state ferry contract to price-fixing on state nuclear power-plant jobs and bribes paid for awarding contracts for the construction of one of the West Seattle bridges.
The benefits to the public totaled hundreds of millions of dollars. The defense-contracting cases involving phony aircraft parts alone brought in more than $14 million in fines. The nuclear-power cases resulted in $42 million in fines and penalties.
"We, the taxpayers, have absolutely gotten our money's worth out of him," said Dubitzky.
Carter says he's loved his work. "It was sorting out the way people had cheated when they'd gone to great lengths to cover their tracks," said Carter. "It was such a great challenge."
Carter has faced personal challenges, as well, including his late wife's eight-year battle with cancer. Mary died in 1998.
He has since remarried, and in April, he and his wife, Betty Sanders, will go to Guatemala to work on a low-income-housing project.
He's been active in the Municipal League since 1978, the Magnolia Community Club since 1985, plus other community organizations, and he has received national legal awards.
Carter wasn't present when one accolade was delivered, though. It came in 1987 during a UW business class, where the former vice president of a Philadelphia piping company talked to students about his conviction for fixing prices on nuclear contracts.
U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour had incorporated such speeches in the businessman's sentence, cutting his jail time so he could instead talk about the benefits of honesty.
"I commend you for what you are doing," Coughenour told the businessman. "If God gave me the power, I'd fill this room with businessmen and businesswomen and let them see what you look like. You look like a truck hit you."
Later, a UW student asked the businessman what led him to such contrition.
Bruce Carter had talked him into it, the businessman said.
Peyton Whitely can be reached at pwhitely@seattletimes.com.