MR. MELSON: Thank you all very much. Good morning.
It‘s certainly my pleasure to welcome you to the 24th Annual Directors Awards ceremony. You know, it is such a privilege and very humbling experience for me to be here today after 24 years in the U.S. Attorney‘s Office as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, to be able to congratulate and present awards to my colleagues in the field. It‘s a very personal privilege for me.
And it‘s also great to see that there are so many of our honorees who have come here today and who have brought their friends and families. Thank you all for coming.
I would now like to introduce and welcome our distinguished guests. First, the Acting Attorney General, Peter Keisler. Thank you very much for coming this morning. I know that you have a very busy schedule and it‘s great that he could be with us to share some thoughts with us later on in the program.
And I also want to thank the other agency heads and their representatives and members of the Department of Justice who join us here today to honor our honorees and to participate in this ceremony with us. Thank you very much.
Lastly, it‘s my great pleasure to introduce the United States Attorneys who are here with us today. As you know, they are the frontline leadership of the Department of Justice and they‘re with all of us in the field to guide us, support us and facilitate all the great work that the U.S. Attorneys do in our great country.
So it‘s been my real pleasure working with all of you and thank you for taking time out of your schedules to come and join us to honor the Assistant United States Attorneys, the administrative support and the law enforcement officers that are here today.
So I would like to introduce them and if you would please stand briefly as I introduce you, that would be great. I‘m not sure where we‘re starting.
I think we‘re starting with Kevin O‘Connor from the District of Connecticut who also shares his talents as the chief of staff to the Acting Attorney General. Jeff Taylor from the District of Columbia; Alex Acosta from the Southern District of Florida; Pat Fitzgerald from the Northern District of Illinois; Matt Dummermuth from the Northern District of Iowa; Tom Moss from the District of Idaho; Amul Thapar from the Eastern District of Kentucky; Mike Sullivan, the District of Massachusetts and he is also, as you know, the Acting Director of ATF.
Rod Rosenstein, the District of Maryland; Steve Murphy from the Eastern District of Michigan; John Wood from the Western District of Missouri; Ben Campbell from the Eastern District of New York; Mike Garcia from the Southern District of New York; George Holding from the Eastern District of North Carolina; Drew Wrigley from the District of North Dakota; John Richter from the Western District of Oklahoma.
Pat Meehan from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania; Bob Parente from the District of Rhode Island; Martin Jackley from the District of South Dakota; Richard Roper from the Northern District of Texas; Don DeGabrielle from the Southern District of Texas; Brett Tolman from the District of Utah; Chuck Rosenberg, my friend and former boss, from the Eastern District of Virginia; Tom Anderson from the District of Vermont, James McDevitt from the Eastern District of Washington, and Steven Biskupic from the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
Today we honor a hundred and thirty-two of the nation‘s finest public servants. They are the prosecutors, the paralegal specialists, the law enforcement agents and a variety of administrative support and personnel who have worked tirelessly and with the utmost dedication to keep our country safe and to further the cause of justice for the people of this great nation.
The successes that we are about to celebrate required great teamwork and the teamwork of so many in our office. We‘re not alone when we make these cases or try them. So as we congratulate our honorees this morning, we also thank all of our colleagues, those who are also diligently supporting the work of the United States Attorney‘s Offices and the Department of Justice and the law enforcement community.
Today‘s honorees are committed to not only excellence but to the mission of the United States Attorney‘s Offices they serve. They are willing to not only accept challenges that are known to them, but they also accept those unexpected challenges that arise during a case or an investigation. They are willing to serve the greater good, often at personal sacrifice and they are willing to serve their community and this country.
Since 1983, the Director of EOUSA has been recognizing and honoring the superior work of the men and women in the United States Attorney‘s offices. Today, at the 24th Annual Director‘s Award Ceremony, we again take this opportunity to formally commend and acknowledge the outstanding work of our colleagues.
Our award recipients are being recognized for their work in many important
areas such as litigation, management and enhancing the core missions of EOUSA,
the U.S. Attorney‘s Offices, and the Department of Justice. The cases being
recognized reflect the priorities of the Department of Justice. They demonstrate
the exceptional and often courageous work that has been accomplished across
the country to prevent acts of terrorism, to dismantle gangs, to curb gun violence,
and to restore the public‘s trust by combating corporate and other types of
fraud.
To the recipients, we thank you. We thank you for your personal sacrifice,
perseverance and hard work. Thanks to your efforts, our streets and our neighborhoods
are safer. Your contributions have made a real difference in the lives of your
communities. And I want to say thank you in particular to your friends and
families without whom you could not have achieved these successes. As we made
extraordinary demands on our staffs in our offices, we know at the same time
we made extraordinary demands on their friends and family as well, and we want
to thank you.
On behalf of the entire United States Attorneys community, I‘m honored to have the opportunity to recognize your outstanding and remarkable efforts.
Congratulations to you all.
(Applause.)
MR. MELSON: It is now my privilege to introduce the Acting Attorney General.
On September 17 of 2007, President Bush named Peter Keisler as the Acting Attorney General of the United States. Prior to that, Mr. Keisler was sworn in as the civil division‘s Assistant Attorney General on July 1, 2003 and before that he served as Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General and Acting Associate Attorney General. He joined the Department in June of 2002.
Prior to joining the Department of Justice, Mr. Keisler was a partner in the Washington, D.C. firm of Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood where he specialized in general and appellate litigation and telecommunications law and he has argued cases both in the Circuit Courts of Appeals and also the United States Supreme Court.
Mr. Keisler has also served as associate counsel to the President of the United States during the Reagan Administration and as law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Robert Bork of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Mr. Keisler has been nominated by President Bush for a position as a federal judge with the D.C. Circuit.
So please join me in welcoming Acting Attorney General Peter Keisler.
(Applause.)
MR. KEISLER: Thanks, Ken, and good morning. It‘s a very special honor for me to be able to welcome all of you here today, in particular to be able to welcome the recipients of today‘s awards and also to welcome the families who have supported the recipients in their work in all these years and who come here today, along with many of the recipients, friends and colleagues, to support them once again. Thank you all for coming and welcome.
Today is the day we honor extraordinary achievement and for those of you who are guests of the Department and may not have been to one of these ceremonies before, please know just how extraordinary these achievements are.
There are a little more than 100 people here in the audience today to receive these awards. There are approximately 11,000 employees of the United States Attorney‘s Offices nationwide, all doing important work and the very small fraction of that wonderful pool that is here today represents an especially outstanding set of contributions to public service by an extraordinary group of people; the best of the best.
And the contributions that we‘re honoring take a variety of forms. Some people here today are being honored for winning cases that were among the most difficult, important and sensitive cases pending anywhere in the Department. Some people are being honored not for their work in a specific case but for their contributions over a period of years to countless numbers of cases. Some people are being honored because the work they did in their area served as a model that was then replicated in other U.S. Attorney‘s Offices because of its success.
And while many of the people who are being honored today are litigators, many are not. Many of the awards go to people on the investigative or managerial or administrative or support side of the offices whose work is equally critical to the achievement of the office‘s missions and objectives. And all of these people have done this work at a time when we are facing serious budget constraints, which makes both the success and the quality reflected here all the more remarkable.
We are also honoring some of our most highly valued colleagues and partners from outside the Department but within the larger law enforcement community and we‘re grateful for your presence, too, and for all the collaboration.
What all of these recipients today have in common is that their work reflects the very highest levels of accomplishment in what they do. And there are just a few points I‘d like to make about the nature and content and quality of that work.
First, as to its significance. I don‘t think you can sit here and listen to the descriptions of the accomplishments being honored today without being struck by their breadth and their importance. Breaking up gangs that in some instances have terrorized their neighborhoods literally for years. Prosecuting a company that dumped toxic levels of copper into the drinking water and then lied about it. Going after massive fraud, sometimes frauds by con artists against individuals, sometimes frauds by nationally known brand name corporations stealing from the government.
Going after smugglers of illegal aliens who turn from being smugglers to kidnappers and then hold the people they‘ve smuggled, including the minors among them, at knifepoint and gunpoint to extract ransom from the victims‘ relatives. Public corruption cases, domestic violence, murder, meth, human trafficking, terrorism, child predators; the list goes on and on.
This is work of the utmost seriousness and importance. It‘s work that responds to injustices that in many instances have ruined the lives of many people and would have ruined many more lives, but for the efforts of the people in this room. I think everybody who works on these matters thinks it‘s a great privilege to be able to work on things that really matter, to have that be your job.
And the recipients of the awards today have returned the favor many times over by doing work at an exceptional level of skill and dedication and professionalism that‘s commensurate with the exceptional importance of the work that‘s involved, so thank you for that.
The second thing I‘d like to say is that in addition to the importance of this work, it bears emphasis that this is very difficult and challenging work, often very much uphill and, while you‘re going through it, before you get to the point of the award ceremony, very uncertain as to outcome.
And I say this because I think once you‘ve had a success and a little time has passed and you‘re looking back on it, a success tends to acquire a false retroactive sense of inevitability. It starts to seem as if, you know, only one outcome was possible because we all know how it came out. Military historians I think sometimes write this way because they have the luxury of writing after the battles and the wars have been resolved.
And I think people can forget, while you‘re going through these cases and they‘re developing, how contingent and uncertain the outcome can seem and how much the success really did depend on hard work and on creativity and on the aggregation of countless sound judgments by very talented people confronting sometimes agonizing questions along the way about how to proceed.
And in that regard, there is one thing about these ceremonies that sometimes makes me feel just a little bit uneasy and that‘s this. We honor successes, almost exclusively successes, which we define as victories in cases. And there‘s some logic to that. Results matter, particularly when the subject matters are as important as these.
But the line between a success and a victory, on the one hand, and a defeat in court, is often very thin. And some of the best lawyering that I‘ve ever seen has come about in cases that we ultimately lost simply because at the end of the day the judge or the jury saw close questions of facts or law differently than we did. That‘s why these cases are uncertain as to outcome, even when you passionately believe that we have the right position.
I know that everyone receiving an award today has lost his or her share of cases and I also know that in the cases you lost, you didn‘t employ one ounce less of skill and dedication and professionalism than in the cases that you won.
And I mention this because I think it is important to emphasize that we‘re not simply honoring results here. We‘re honoring the quality of work that led to the results and that‘s something that is worth honoring, regardless of the outcome in a particular case.
And I think that‘s important for a variety of reasons but perhaps most importantly because you are all representing the Department in everything you do, win or lose. And, win or lose, when work is performed at the quality that is characteristic of the people in this room, you do the Department great credit and that‘s something we all benefit from.
I remember something former Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey said when I was watching him address a group of new attorneys at I think it was some orientation session. And he spoke about the thrill that everybody feels when you can stand up the first time in court or, for that matter, the fiftieth time, and say my name is so-and-so, your Honor, and I‘m here representing the United States.
And what Jim said was that when that‘s your first sentence, your second sentence, whatever it is, automatically carries with it some special additional presumptive measure of weight and credibility.
But it doesn‘t carry that additional credibility necessarily because of who the person is who‘s saying it. It may be someone in his or her first ever appearance in court. It carries that weight and credibility because of the work of all the people that came before who established high expectations and a high degree of confidence in people that the Department would perform its mission well and professionally.
And at this point in time, you are those other people. You were once the new people who came in and were riding on the backs of others who had earned the credibility and weight that you were employing. But for the people who are entering the Department now, they are benefiting enormously from the reputation and confidence that has been established by the wonderful work that we‘re honoring today and the other work that you do that might not be the subject of a particular award today and the work of your top colleagues. So thank you for that.
The only other point I would like to make is one about sacrifice and it‘s one that Ken referenced as well. And these jobs can be a strange mix of highs and lows in that regard.
I remember -- I think it was at the same set of remarks -- Jim Comey said something like if you can‘t have fun being a lawyer at the Department of Justice, you can‘t have fun being a lawyer anywhere. And in some ways, that might seem like an odd thing to say since the work we do is so serious, but I think everybody who heard it understood instantly what he meant. These jobs are exhilarating, they are highly stimulating, you‘re doing something for your community and your country that are very satisfying.
But the flip side is, you know, that there is sacrifice. Leaving aside the financial sacrifice, everybody who is doing these jobs could have made different choices which would have had different financial results for them personally. But the sacrifice in terms of missed soccer games and lost other time with the family and always being on call and the phenomenon of, you know, even when he or she is home, they‘re not really at home because part of their mind is wrapped around something they‘re dealing with at work.
These aren‘t the Academy Awards. People aren‘t going to come up here and give acceptance speeches but I know that the first thing that every one of the recipients would want to say if they had the opportunity is to thank all their families for the love and support that made the work possible. And so I‘d like to thank you all on their behalf.
(Applause.)
MR. KEISLER: And, finally, there‘s something I said at another event a couple of weeks ago which, in thinking about it, fully applies here as well. And in trying to think about how to sum up the meaning of a ceremony like this, there‘s an obnoxious expression that came to mind. It‘s a phrase that‘s always irritated me whenever I‘ve heard it; maybe some of you have heard it.
The phrase is “good enough for government work” and it‘s generally said by somebody who is outside the government who has just produced something that‘s kind of substandard and wants to explain why it really shouldn‘t need to be redone or made perfect. And it‘s always said with a smug and false air of superiority; false both because the person has no idea what the standards in government really are and false because, you know, by definition, they‘ve just produced something really shoddy and they have no business feeling superior to anybody.
But I started wondering what the origins of the phrase were. Did it come out of some big government snafu? And so I did some research and here‘s what I found. And I‘ll paraphrase the encyclopedic reference that I located.
The phrase “good enough for government work” came out of World War II. It arose out of the country‘s massive push to supply vehicles and weapons to our soldiers overseas. And when something was good enough for government work, it meant it was good enough to satisfy the most exacting, demanding rigorous standards. It meant it was good enough to be relied upon by your loved one; your parent, your child, your sibling, your neighbor operating in the most dangerous of circumstances. Somehow over the decades the phrase became unhitched from its original meaning and came to mean the opposite.
I would like to thank all of you for doing work that has been good enough for government work in the original and proper sense of the term. Exceptional performance in an extraordinarily significant mission. Thank you for everything you‘ve done and continue to do.
Congratulations on the awards. It‘s an honor for all of us on the stage to be able to serve with you.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
MR. MELSON: Thank you for those inspiring words, Mr. Keisler. We appreciate you being here and joining us, again.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is now time for the awards to be presented. As each award recipient is introduced, I ask that the recipient‘s United States Attorney or other supervisor who is here to come forward and join the Acting Attorney General and myself for the award presentation and photograph.
Assisting me in announcing the award recipients are Chief of Staff Terry Derden, Deputy Directors at EOUSA, John Nowacki and Paul Suddes, counsel to the Director, Norm Wong, the Assistant Director for our EEO staff, Rita Sampson.
It is now my pleasure to introduce again Mr. Terry Derden.
MR. DERDEN: I encourage all of you to read along in the program and note the breadth and depth of the work that we recognize today in our recipients.
As we go about bestowing the awards, I would ask that you hold your applause until all of our recipients have been acknowledged.
The first category of awards recognizes the great work of our federal prosecutors, each of whom represents the interest of our nation honorably and professionally and with great personal sacrifice as Assistant United States Attorneys.
These awards reflect outstanding litigative accomplishments in the areas of violent crime, organized crime, including crime by gangs, drug trafficking organizations, public corruptions, child pornography and various forms of fraud. This category also highlights the very important work of civil litigators and recognizes the outstanding work of our attorneys in the appellate courts around the nation.
The recipients for superior performance as an Assistant United States -- are, from the District of Alaska, Audrey J. Renschen; from the District of Arizona, Kimberly Hare; from the Central District of California, Elizabeth R. Yang; from the Northern District of California, Garth Hire; from the District of Connecticut, Eric J. Glover; from the District of Connecticut also is Henry K. Copa; from the District of Columbia, John P. Dominguez; also from the District of Columbia, Darlene Michelle Soltis; next, from the District of Columbia, Sharon I. Marcus-Kearn; from the Southern District of Florida, Janice McLash.
From the Northern District of Georgia, David E. McLernan; also from the Northern District of Georgia, J. Russell Phillips; from the Northern District of Illinois, Daniel Rubenstein; from the District of Maryland, Michael A. DiPietro; from the Eastern District of Michigan, John C. Ingstrom; from the Eastern District of Michigan, Katherine A. McCarthy; also from the Eastern District of Michigan, Leslie Matusha Weissner.
From the Western District of Missouri, Linda P. Marshall; from the District of North Dakota, Nicholas W. Chase; from the District of New Jersey, Robert Frasier; also from the District of New Jersey, John Gay; from the Eastern District of New York, Kathleen A. Mahoney; from the Western District of Oklahoma, Sanford C. Coates; also from the Western District of Oklahoma, Rosia McKenney Foster.
From the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Paul L. Gray; also from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Richard J. Zack; again, from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, David E. Troyer; from the Western District of Pennsylvania, Christy Criswell Wegan; from the District of Rhode Island, Donald C. Lockhart; from the District of South Dakota, Michael G. Hanson.
From the Northern District of Texas, Denise Williams; from the Southern District of Texas, Andrew A. Bobb; also from the Southern District of Texas, Diana M.H. Song; from the District of Vermont, William B. Darrow; also from the District of Vermont, Steven D. Kelly; from the Eastern District of Washington, Russell E. Smoot; from the Western District of Washington, Yi Ting Wu; from the Southern District of West Virginia, R. Booth Goodwin, II.
And the final recipient in this particular category is from the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Matthew L. Jacobs.
It is now my pleasure to introduce Norm Wong who will continue with the presentations.
MR. WONG: The next category of awards recognizes the important partnerships with our state and local agencies and their service as Special Assistant United States Attorneys.
The recipients for superior performance as a Special Assistant United States Attorney are, from the United States Coast Guard, and nominated by the District of Alaska, Todd S. Michelob. Joining Lt. Michelob, is Rear Admiral Bill Baumgartner, Judge Advocate General and Chief Counsel, United States Coast Guard.
From the Environmental Protection Agency and nominated by the District of Connecticut, Peter W. Kenyon. Joining Mr. Kenyon is Michael Hubbard, Special Agent in Charge, Criminal Investigative Division of the EPA.
From the West Valley Prosecutor‘s Office and nominated by the District of Utah are three individuals: J. Eric Bunderson. Joining each recipient on stage is J. Richard Canton, City Attorney, West Valley Prosecutor‘s Office. Also from the West Valley Prosecutor‘s Office, Clint Gilmore and from the West Valley Prosecutor‘s Office, Brian D. Robinson.
The next award is the first of two categories that recognizes the outstanding achievements of a group of individuals whose contributions to the same case or project resulted in a successful outcome.
The first group award is for superior performance as a litigative team. This award recognizes prosecution teams whose collective efforts in a case demonstrated outstanding teamwork, efficiency and effectiveness and which resulted in a favorable outcome to the United States.
The recipients in this category are, from the Special District of California, Susan J. Dewitt; from the Central District of California, Robert E. Dougdale; also from the Central District of California, Karen I. Myer; and from the Central District, Carol Peterson.
From the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and joined by Donald Peckham, Executive Assistant Director of the FBI, James S. Davidson, and from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Louis Perez.
From the Internal Revenue Service, Aaron Goughly. Joining Mr. Goughly on stage is Victor S.O. Song, Deputy Chief, Criminal Investigations at the Internal Revenue Service. From the Southern District of Florida, Matthew S. Axelrod; from the Southern District of Florida, Lisa A. Hirsch; from the Southern District of Florida, Allison W. Lehr; from the Southern District of Florida, Edward R. Ryan; and also from the team from the Southern District of Florida, Wanda Y. Hubbard.
And on the team from the Kings County District Attorney‘s Office, Patricia W. McNeil. Also from the Kings County District Attorney‘s Office, Dennis J. Ring. From the Internal Revenue Service, Santiago Aquino. Joining Mr. Aquino, again, is Victor S.O. Song from Criminal Investigations, Internal Revenue Service.
It is now my pleasure to ask Rita Sampson to the podium to continue the awards.
MS. SAMPSON: We will continue in the same category.
From the Northern District of Illinois, Phillip Genter; Barry Miller; Melissa Ann O‘Donnell; Julie B. Ruder; Mannish Shaw.
From the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Brian Eachem; Angela Hahn. Joining the FBI agents today is Donald Packman, Executive Assistant Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Now, from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, David Hodeff. Joining Mr. Hodeff on stage is Debra Harris, Assistant Inspector in Charge, U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
From the Internal Revenue Service, Vickas Aurora. Joining Mr. Aurora on stage is Victor S.O. Song, Deputy Chief, Criminal Investigations at the Internal Revenue Service.
From the District of Massachusetts, Jack P. Firolza; Thomas J. Zapalla. From the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Brian D. Hendricks. Joining Mr. Hendricks on stage is Debra Harris, Assistant Inspector in Charge, U.S. Postal Inspection Service. From the Southern District of New York, Marcus A. Asner; Jessica A. Fasella.
From the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Russell Castro Giovanni. Donald Packman from the FBI is joining us for the presentation.
From the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, James Antonino. Joining Mr. Antonino on stage is Debra Harris, Assistant Inspector in Charge, U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
In a second case from the Southern District of New York, Victor L. Hue, Jenna Kidney, Carl Metzner, Jennifer G. Rogers.
From the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert Fuller, Kevin Reinieri; John White. And Donald Packman, again, joins the FBI agents on stage.
The final team we are recognizing in this category is from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Mary Katherine Frye; Sonya F. Lawrence; Michael L. Levy; James G. Shihab. From the civil division, Meredith L. Verell; Michael Tingle.
It is now my pleasure to ask John Nowacki to the podium to continue with the awards.
MR. NOWACKI: The next award category is for superior performance in a litigative support role. These are the sometimes-unsung heroes of our offices who support the investigation and prosecution efforts of their Assistant United States Attorneys.
The recipients in this category are, from the District of Columbia, David Foster; from the Middle District of Florida, Beverly Williams; from the Southern District of Texas, Linda A. Evans; from the Western District of Washington, Franklin T. O‘Hera.
Our next awards category for superior performance in a managerial or supervisory role recognizes our U.S. Attorney and EOUSA office staff whose skill and style have produced dramatic, positive results for the offices they serve.
The recipients in this category are, from the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Jay Macklin, and from the Eastern District of Virginia, Roseanne C. Hainey.
The next category of awards is the appreciation award for contributions that enhance the missions of the Executive Office of United States Attorneys and United States Attorney‘s Offices. This award recognizes the extraordinary efforts of individuals upon whom the United States Attorneys and EOUSA rely in achieving goals and enhancing the major programs and interests of the Department of Justice. We recognize the following recipients in this category.
From the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Ana Evans; Joseph Welch; and Peter T. McSwain.
Today we are especially pleased to recognize our career executives who have demonstrated throughout their tenures with the Department of Justice significant and sometimes remarkable accomplishments through personal initiative, innovation, leadership and hard work.
The recipients of the Director‘s Awards for executive achievement are, from the Northern District of California, Scott N. Schools.
(Applause.)
MR. NOWACKI: and for the Eastern District of Kentucky, James A. Zerhusen.
It‘s now my pleasure to introduce Paul Suddes who will continue with the presentations.
MR. SUDDES: Thank you. Today we also acknowledge the outstanding achievements in administration. These men and women work tirelessly behind the scenes to support the mission of the U.S. Attorney‘s Offices.
The recipients for superior performance in administration are, from the Executive Office of United States Attorneys, Kerry E. Mudd; from the District of Maryland, Kathleen M. Rosier; and from the District of Massachusetts, Paul Habe.
Our next category is the second of our group awards and recognizes superior performance by an administrative team. The collective efforts by these teams demonstrated outstanding teamwork, efficiency and effectiveness and resulted in an outcome noted for particular value in supporting the mission of the United States Attorney‘s Offices or EOUSA.
From the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, Timothy J. Carrier; Timothy L. Gaskin; Sandy Jeffries; Patty Ostrosky; Kevin Parsons; and from the University of South Carolina, Ann Helms. And joining Ann on stage is Bill Bynum from the University of South Carolina. Also from the University of South Carolina, Dennis Moore.
From the Northern District of Georgia, Lola Grant; from the Northern District of Georgia, Terry Kohler; also from the Northern District of Georgia, Smeeda Patel. From the Northern District of Illinois, Clark Christopher. From the Southern District of Mississippi, Annie F. Austin; Donna McAlpin; Marsha Shaw; and Edith Wimberly.
The final award category that we are recognizing today is for superior performance in terrorism prevention and national security protection. This award recognizes the extraordinary efforts in the Department‘s number one priority prosecution area.
From the Eastern District of Michigan, Kenneth R. Chadwell; and from the Eastern District of North Carolina, James Candelmo.
Please join me in a round of applause for all the recipients today.
(Applause.)
MR. SUDDES: It is now my pleasure to welcome back Director Ken Melson to the podium.
MR. MELSON: Thank you. You know, I must note as an aside that the efforts and the contributions that were recognized today are just a small part of all the great work that the United States Attorney‘s offices do, and there were many, many nominations that we had to sort through to pick out the very, very best. I wish everybody in the U.S. Attorney‘s offices that work on these cases and other cases could be here today with us.
You know, it‘s a real privilege to be part of such a great team as we have in EOUSA. I‘ve been honored to work with them for the last six months and I see each day, as I come to work, the hard work that they do to support the mission of the United States Attorney‘s offices and each of the offices individually.
So before we conclude today‘s ceremony, I‘d like to thank the team of individuals within the EOUSA that helped go through and evaluate the many nominations that were submitted for these awards and also the EOUSA employees that helped make today‘s ceremony so memorable and run so smoothly.
Now I want to invite everyone to come up to a reception sponsored by EOUSA on the honorees‘ behalf at Room 2266, twenty-two sixty-six, of Main Justice, here in this building. You‘re going to ask now how do I get there. It‘s easy. You walk out the back door and our staff will be there to guide you to that particular room, and we hope that you will all join us.
One other note: just a reminder that when you leave the building today, you have to exit through the door via the Constitution Avenue exit which is where the visitor center is. You came into this building through another entrance which was opened just for today and just for you all, but that is closed now. So please go through the Constitution Avenue exit.
Again, congratulations to all the recipients. We honor you today and hope to see you up at the reception.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
(Whereupon, the ceremony was adjourned at 11:17 a.m.)
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