Deputy denounced as mob leak trial goes to jury

Prosecutors denounced a deputy U.S. marshal Thursday as the source of FBI secrets that ended up in the hands of the mob, telling a federal court jury that defense denials were merely "a smoke screen thrown up to confuse you."

A defense attorney told jurors, however, that deputy marshal John T. Ambrose was an innocent man who may have "shot his mouth off" in boasting about his job to a family friend but never betrayed his oath as a lawman.

Ambrose, 42, a veteran fugitive hunter with a sterling track record until now, is the only person in the 39-year history of the government's ultrasecret Witness Security Program to be accused of deliberately violating its security safeguards.

The program was established to protect witnesses against mobsters and terrorists who would want to silence them with threats or violence.

Prosecutors say the secrets Ambrose leaked to a former Chicago police officer ended up in the hands of reputed mob boss James Marcello and his brother Michael.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney T. Markus Funk told the jury that Ambrose would have been breaking the law no matter who he leaked to.

"If he gave it to his mother it would be a crime," Funk said.

Defense attorney Francis C. Lipuma acknowledged that Ambrose had broken the rules of the marshal's service when he associated with two convicted felons.

"But that's not what he's on trial charged with," Lipuma said.

The two men were former Chicago police officers who went to prison in the 1980s for shaking down drug dealers. Ambrose's father went to prison in the same case.

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald and Chicago FBI chief Robert D. Grant confronted Ambrose in September 2006 with evidence he had leaked secret information.

The information concerned Nicholas Calabrese, the only so-called made member of the Chicago mob to cooperate with the government in its war against organized crime.

Calabrese had become a federal witness and Ambrose had been enlisted to help guard him on two visits to Chicago.

When confronted by Fitzgerald and Grant, Ambrose admitted giving information about Calabrese to one of the two former police officers.

Grant testified Tuesday that the former police officer had ties to reputed mob boss John "No Nose" DiFronzo and that Ambrose realized that.

Ambrose told Fitzgerald and Grant that he spoke about the investigation in an attempt to make sources in the mob who would help him in a future fugitive hunt.

"Not all John's sources of information may be all the FBI wanted," Lipuma said. "Many sources of information have felony convictions. You get the information where you can get the information."

He also said the information that reached the Marcellos came from someone else -- not Ambrose. But Funk urged jurors to ignore such claims.

"They are smoke screens thrown up to confuse you and point you in another direction," he said.

The Family Secrets case resulted in 13 convictions including life sentences for three big-name mob bosses.

After hearing closing arguments and instructions from Judge John F. Grady, jurors began deliberating the evidence in the nine-day trial.