The Cover-Up Defense

GEORGIA LAWYER BOBBY LEE COOK HAS MADE A career of goading government. His latest battle is an eleventh-hour effort to derail the Justice Department's prosecution of Christopher Drogoul, the banker accused of making $4 billion in loans to Saddam Hussein's regime before the invasion of Kuwait.

The case was all but closed. In June, Drogoul, 43, former manager of the Atlanta branch of the Italian Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, pleaded guilty to 60 counts of a 347-count federal indictment that accused him of devising an elaborate "off-books" scheme to hide $4 billion in unbacked loans and unauthorized U.S.-backed credits to Iraq. But on the eve of a sentencing hearing that could condemn him to 390 years in prison, Drogoul replaced his public defender with the wily Cook, who moved to vacate the guilty plea.

"This case is the mother of all cover-ups," Cook thundered. "It is not the truth." Cook, echoing charges by Democrats and critics of the Administration's prewar support of Iraq, portrayed his client as a pawn, a bit player used by the Bush Administration to warm relations with Iraq, only to be discarded when hostilities broke out. Cook presented no evidence to support his theory, other than to claim that his client's confession was forced by government pressure. "It got to where he just couldn't swallow it anymore," the lawyer drawled.

But if U.S. District Judge Marvin Shoob allows Drogoul to change his plea this week, it is sure to re-open questions about the government's awareness of the financial chicanery surrounding Iraq's military buildup. Though a retrial by jury would be months away, the specter of the "Iraq-gate" scandal would surely hang, unresolved, over the Bush White House until well after the November election.