Blackwater Fraud Trial: Ode to Plaintiff's Counsel Susan Burke

The Blackwater fraud trial begins tomorrow. For the next two weeks or so, my wife and her team will be sequestered within a two-block radius of the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, commuting between their hotel, their temporary office, and the courthouse.

It is a David and Goliath confrontation right out of Erin Brokovich or A Civil Action. If you had attended any of the pre-trial hearings, you would have seen my wife, an associate, a paralegal, and a student volunteer standing on one side of the room. Across the aisle you would have found a phalanx of lawyers and government relations people, all intent on destroying my wife. Polluters, murderers, rapists, and torturers have all felt my wife’s wrath. This time it is the turn of the government defrauders.

This morning I drive her to the temporary office in Alexandria. Normally congested roads are deserted at this time of morning and I am in a particularly contemplative mood as we turn onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway. With the spire of Georgetown University rising to our left over Roosevelt Island, I can’t help thinking back to the pretty undergrad who pulled me aside on the library steps almost 30 years ago for a conversation that has yet to end. I think of the woman with her hair in a French braid speaking to our U.S. foreign policy class about the importance of the United Nations. Even then she believed in the rule of law.

The judge has remarked on the tremendous amount of paper that has been generated by this case. He has also said that this has been one of the most contentious cases he has ever seen. Fortunately, my wife has a remarkable ability to compartmentalize her life. She doesn’t bring it home.

As I have always said about my wife, she sees the world the way it is and likes it anyway. Woe indeed to the other side.