THE MIAMI CONNECTION

There was a time in the not too distant past when Miami and the Dade State Attorneys office was one of the premier prosecution offices in the nation. 

And there was a time when, as a nation teetered on the brink of a constitutional crisis and a president was facing impeachment, the Miami SAO was in the middle of the biggest political investigation of the 20th century. 

Watergate is synonymous with all political scandals. When the democratic national committee's (DNC)  offices in the Watergate hotel were burglarized by five men- four of them from Miami- Frank Sturgis, Bernard Baker, Eugenio Martinez, and Virgilio Gonzalez, a Miami connection arose that needed investigation. 

Enter Legendary Miami State Attorney Richard Gerstein and his equally legendary chief investigator Martin Dardis. 

Dardis learned that the burglars had sequentially numbered one hundred dollar bills on them. Dardis traced the bills to a bank in Miami, where he learned that Bernard Baker- one of the burglars- had cashed a check drawn on the account of Kenneth Dahlberg. Who was Dahlberg? Only the 1972 Midwest Finance Chairman for the aptly named CREEP- Committee to re-elect the President. 

All of the sudden Dardis had linked the burglars to the committee to re-elect the President and we had on our hands a full blown national political scandal that brought down a president. 

And at the beginning of it all, and in many ways in the middle of it all, was the chief investigator of the Miami State Attorneys Office, back when the office had a national reputation for investigative and prosecutorial excellence. 

From Occupied America, where we are waiting for the next shoe to fall in the current administration, Fight The Power!