Dick Thornburgh

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Dick Thornburgh

Richard Lewis "Dick" Thornburgh (born July 16, 1932 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania ) is an American lawyer and politician . Thornburgh is a member of the Republican Party . He was the 43rd Governor of Pennsylvania and Attorney General under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush .

Studies and professional career

After a general education, he first completed a degree in engineering at Yale University , which he graduated with a Bachelor of Civil Engineering (BCE) in 1954 . After studying law at the Law School of the University of Pittsburgh , he with a 1957 Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) ended, he was since 1958 Lawyer admitted.

Political career

Activities for the Ministry of Justice

In 1966 he ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Republican Party for the US House of Representatives . He was then a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania between 1967 and 1968.

In 1969 he was appointed United States Attorney and thus Federal Prosecutor of West Pennsylvania by President Richard Nixon to succeed Gustave Diamond . In that position he soon earned a reputation for his relentless crackdown on organized crime . After six years as a district attorney, President Gerald Ford appointed him assistant to the attorney general and head of the crime department. He held this office until the end of President Ford's tenure on January 20, 1977.

Advance to governor of Pennsylvania

After retiring from the Justice Department, he returned to practice as a lawyer before announcing his application for the governor of Pennsylvania in 1978 . In the gubernatorial elections, he then prevailed against the Mayor of Pittsburgh, Peter F. Flaherty , by promising in particular a crackdown on corruption in the state administration. He was re-elected as governor in 1982 and resigned from office on January 20, 1987, after he waived re-election in 1986 after an eight-year term.

Three Mile Island reactor block, which melted down in 1979

One of the main events in his governorship occurred right at the beginning of his tenure on March 28, 1979 by the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg . In doing so, he acquired the reputation of a prudent crisis manager who, in order to avoid panic among the population, ordered an evacuation of the region around the power plant and subsequent extensive reconnaissance measures.

After retiring from governorship, he became director of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1987 .

Attorney General under Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr.

On August 15, 1988, he was appointed by US President Ronald Reagan to succeed Edwin Meese , who had resigned in July, as Attorney General in his cabinet . He held this post after the beginning of the presidency of George Bush on January 20, 1989.

He saw the fight against drug trafficking and white-collar crime as his main activities . One of the most important events was the indictment against the Exxon oil company following the oil spill caused by the Exxon Valdez oil tanker in Prince William Sound , Canada .

On August 15, 1991, he resigned as Attorney General and was succeeded by William Barr .

Unsuccessful Senate candidacy and withdrawal from politics

Even before his resignation as Attorney General, he ran for the Senate seat of Henry John Heinz, who was killed in a plane crash on April 4, 1991 . Although Thornburgh was widely considered to be certain to win, he was surprisingly defeated by then- Democratic Labor and Industry Minister of Pennsylvania, Harris Wofford, in the election .

Thornburgh was then between 1992 and 1993 still Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations . He then withdrew from political life and worked again as a lawyer in the firm, where his professional career as a lawyer began in 1958.

In 2002 the District Court of New York City-South appointed him special investigator in the worldwide stock market scandal sparked by the telecommunications company WorldCom . The report he wrote put a strain not only on WorldCom itself, but also on the auditing firm Arthur Andersen and the financial services provider Citigroup .

Publications

Web links

Commons : Dick Thornburgh  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Thornburgh, Dick
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thornburgh, Richard Lewis (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania