The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ronald LeGrand.md

category	tags	summary	relations	updated
Law Enforcement & Legal	Person PROMIS CIA DoJ INSLAW	Ronald LeGrand was the Senate Judiciary Committee's chief investigator who in May 1988 relayed to INSLAW a Justice Department source's allegations that the source later denied.	type with role start fn employed_by Senate Judiciary Committee chief investigator 1988 4	2026-10-12

Ronald LeGrand was the Chief Investigator for the Senate Judiciary Committee. In late April 1988, he telephoned Bill Hamilton, president of INSLAW, to request a full briefing on the disputes between Inslaw and the Department of Justice. Hamilton and his Nancy Hamilton subsequently briefed LeGrand at Inslaw on the morning of May 11. Two days later, LeGrand telephoned Hamilton with information from a trusted senior Justice Department career official. According to Cheri Seymour, this source had been in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department since the Watergate scandal under President Richard Nixon; the source told LeGrand to convey to the Hamiltons that "What you think happened, did happen. You are not crazy. But you do not know squat about how dirty the INSLAW case really is. If you ever learn even half of it, you will be sickened. INSLAW is a lot dirtier for the Department of Justice, in its breadth and depth, than Watergate. The Justice Department has been compromised at every level on the INSLAW case."¹

The source also stated that Lowell Jensen engineered Inslaw's problems and relied on Miles Matthews, James Knapp, and James Johnston. Miles Matthews allegedly stated in the presence of LeGrand's source that "Lowell [Jensen] wants to get INSLAW out of the way and give the business to friends." The source further indicated that John Keeney, Mark M. Richard, and Philip White knew "all about" Jensen's malfeasance, and that while Richard and White were "pretty upset," they would not disclose what they knew except under subpoena and oath. The source also believed that documents related to Project Eagle were shredded inside the DOJ, but suggested Inslaw should subpoena paperwork prepared by a Jensen subordinate regarding the purchase of large quantities of computer hardware for which senior DOJ career staff saw no justification.²

The source also informed INSLAW through LeGrand that the Criminal Division had served as the nerve center for the scheme to drive INSLAW out of business by engineering sham contract disputes. LeGrand's communication was a significant turning point for the Hamiltons, as it provided internal corroboration of their suspicions regarding the theft of the PROMIS software.¹ However, in a sworn statement to House investigators LeGrand provided, in the words of the House report, "little corroboration" of Hamilton's allegations.

LeGrand informed House investigators and the Special Counsel that, as far as he knew, none of the information provided to him by his source was obtained first-hand.²

Later Accounts

LeGrand, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent, was asked by House Judiciary Committee investigators to identify the trusted source so that they could contact that person, and he declined. He said he would consider giving a sworn statement if the committee made a request to Chairwoman Cardiss Collins of the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Government Activities and Transportation, to which he had moved from the Senate committee; the committee's chairman wrote to Collins on July 20, 1990. Investigators then made numerous attempts to schedule the statement, LeGrand left the Washington area without informing the committee, and the committee wrote to him again on November 20, 1990. On February 14, 1991, he gave a sworn statement in which, in the House report's words, he provided "little corroboration" of the Hamiltons' allegations. He attributed the discrepancy to "the unintentional merging of comments from different persons" that the Hamiltons had credited to the trusted source, and said that he had gathered information from several individuals during his inquiry.³ Asked whether the source had said that the INSLAW case was "a lot dirtier" than Watergate "both in its breadth and in its depth," he answered that the source had said there was more to the matter than people were aware of and had made a comparison to Watergate, but that he did not recall those words. He again declined to name the source.³

On October 11, 1988, Elliot Richardson, counsel to INSLAW, had sent a memorandum summarizing LeGrand's statements to Robin Ross, an assistant to Attorney General Richard Thornburgh.⁴ Hamilton's December 22, 1989 affidavit states that LeGrand had confirmed what he told Hamilton on several occasions after May 1988.⁵ LeGrand told House investigators and Special Counsel Bua that, as far as he knew, none of the information from his source was obtained first-hand, and he confirmed to both that he believed the source had given him some of the information reflected in Hamilton's affidavit.⁵ When Bua's team contacted LeGrand, who no longer worked for the Senate, he said he would describe the source's information but would not disclose the source's identity.⁶

LeGrand later gave a different account. At the Department of Justice's request, he submitted an affidavit, filed as a declaration in INSLAW's bankruptcy case (Case No. 85-0070), refuting INSLAW's claim that he had conveyed "highly specific" allegations to the Hamiltons. He stated that he had told them of "general allegations, rumors," and of information heard from different sources about various persons in the department. The House report describes the affidavit's assertion that the source had no personal knowledge of the department's handling of the matter as "striking," coming after several years of LeGrand's statements to William Hamilton, to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and to the House committee. His sworn statement of February 14, 1991 to House investigators, his acknowledgment to House investigators and to Bua that the source had given him some of the information in Hamilton's affidavit, and the October 11, 1988 memorandum remain in the record beside the affidavit. The House report adds that Hamilton later alleged to the committee that Roger Pauley, a Justice Department official, was LeGrand's contact within the department.³

The source gave a further account on February 7, 1994, to the Justice Department review team that Attorney General Janet Reno ordered to examine Bua's report. The source had refused to be interviewed by Bua and by the House investigators; the review's report states that he agreed to be interviewed by the review team because of his respect for and confidence in Reno. The interview took place in a private dining room at a local club, with LeGrand and Morgan Frankel, Assistant Legal Counsel of the United States Senate, present. The source identified himself to the team, which stated that it verified that he is a long-time career employee of the department, and said that he had known LeGrand for about 20 years (Hamilton's affidavit gives 15). He told the team that he had no first-hand knowledge of any misconduct by anyone in relation to PROMIS or INSLAW and had heard no rumors he would consider credible; that the subject of INSLAW came up in a friendly conversation with LeGrand in 1987 or 1988; that he suggested LeGrand contact Miles Matthews because Matthews was responsible for procurement in the Criminal Division and the source disliked or distrusted him; and that he never mentioned Lowell Jensen, Mark Richard, Philip White, James Johnston or James Knapp to LeGrand and did not believe any of them would be involved in any type of cover-up. When the review team read him the passage from Hamilton's affidavit, he said that none of the statements or beliefs attributed to him were accurate, and that he had no reason to believe that documents relating to Project Eagle were improperly shredded.⁵ The review team wrote that it had concluded there was no credible evidence of a conspiracy involving Jensen or other senior department officials. In its own account Bua's report had recorded that Matthews, Knapp, Johnston, White, Keeney and Richard each denied knowledge of the wrongdoing described in Hamilton's affidavit.⁵ INSLAW's rebuttal to the Bua report had criticized the special counsel for not investigating the allegations attributed to the source.⁵

Footnotes

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1. Seymour, Cheri. The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010. ↩︎

2. 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. ↩︎

3. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report, H. Rept. 102-857 (1992), section 7, "Ronald LeGrand Denies INSLAW's Assertions," pp. 62-64. https://archive.org/stream/InslawAffairInvestigativeReport/TheInslawAffair_djvu.txt ↩︎

4. Bua report (March 1993), section 10, "Ronald LeGrand," pp. 113-114, quoting Hamilton's December 1989 affidavit, including the October 11, 1988 Richardson memorandum. ↩︎

5. U.S. Department of Justice, Report on the Review of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua's Report on the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc., September 27, 1994, section IV.B.1, pp. 22-28, citing Bua Report 113-120 and INSLAW Rebuttal 44-46. Bound with the Bua report: https://archive.org/stream/InslawPROMISBuaReport/Inslaw%3APROMIS%20Bua%20Report_djvu.txt ↩︎

6. Bua report, section 10, p. 114: "we contacted LeGrand, who no longer works for the Senate. LeGrand said he would tell us about his source's information, but would not disclose his source's identity." ↩︎