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Law Enforcement & Legal |
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INSLAW's bankruptcy counsel who told the House Judiciary Committee that in July 1987 the former bankruptcy judge Roger Whelan threatened to organize opposition to Judge Bason's reappointment over an unpaid fee petition. | Washington, D.C. | 2026-09-22 | 2026-10-09 |
Charles A. Docter, of the Washington firm Docter, Docter and Salus, was bankruptcy counsel to INSLAW as debtor in possession in its Chapter 11 case in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Columbia, No. 85-00070, alongside Charles R. Work of McDermott, Will and Emery. His partner Stanley Salus handled the company's complaint to the United States Trustee, William White, after the Jack Rugh telephone call to Gregory McKain in February 1985.1
The Whelan Conversation
Docter told the House Committee on the Judiciary that in July 1987, two months before Bankruptcy Judge George Francis Bason, Jr. ruled that the Department of Justice had taken PROMIS by fraud, Roger Whelan, the bankruptcy judge Bason had succeeded and by then a practicing attorney with a fee application pending before Bason in the United Press International bankruptcy, came to his office and threatened to oppose Bason's reappointment because Bason had not ruled on the petition, saying that Senior District Judge Irwin Gasch would organize the opposition. Docter told Bason of the conversation and recommended that he act promptly; Bason ruled on the fee application on July 17, 1987. Docter gave his account to the committee in private session. When the special counsel Nicholas J. Bua sought more, "Docter referred us to his testimony before the House Committee, but refused to provide us any additional information." Whelan denied to Bua that he had ever spoken to Docter about the UPI case or tried to pressure Bason, while acknowledging his friendship with Gasch and his frustration at the delay. Bua wrote that he had "not attempted to resolve this seeming disagreement," which bore only tangentially on whether the department had influenced the merit selection panel, but added that "the possibility of concerted opposition to Bason by district court judges or others might explain why he was not reappointed." The panel, chaired by Judge Norma H. Johnson, had received the transcript of Bason's ruling from Royce Lamberth.1
The Bua report introduces this account with the name "Charles Deeter, an attorney for Inslaw," and refers to Docter in the sentences that follow; the account attributed to each name (Whelan's July 1987 visit, the UPI fee petition and Judge Gasch) is the same, and the records found do not establish whether the report's "Deeter" is a misspelling of Docter or a different person.1
Footnotes
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U.S. Department of Justice. Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc., March 1993, pp. 169-170, 211-214. https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport(the report first names the attorney as "Charles Deeter, an attorney for Inslaw," and thereafter as Docter). The firm's role as counsel of record appears in the reporter listings for In re INSLAW, Inc., 97 B.R. 685 and 106 B.R. 331 (Bankr. D.D.C. 1989). ↩︎