Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Monday, November 14, 2005

 

Page 1

 

Former Federal Prosecutor Here Named to New Post At U.S. Department of Homeland Security

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

President Bush Thursday nominated former Los Angeles attorney Uttam Dhillon to be the first director of the Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security.

Dhillon, a Boalt Hall graduate admitted to the State Bar of California in 1987, currently serves as associate deputy attorney general. He previously served as majority chief counsel and deputy ataff director for the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, under then-Chairman Christopher Cox, R-Newport Beach, who now chairs the Security and Exchange Commission.

Dhillon is a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, but left the office to become investigative counsel to the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, where he worked on the investigation of Johnny Chung, among others.

Chung, who ran on information technology firm, pled guilty to funneling contributions from undisclosed donors to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign, and claimed that he received money to give to that and other Democratic campaigns from an executive of an aerospace firm owned by the Chinese government.

The congressional investigation focused on what critics called the unusual access Chung had to the White House.

Dhillon left Washington for a time to work in the Los Angeles office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCoy. He returned to Washington after Cox became chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and unsuccessfully sought appointment as U.S. attorney for the Central District in 2002.

He also served as vice president of the Capitol Hill affiliate of the Federalist Society, an organization of conservative lawyers and law students.

Dhillon is a graduate of California State University, Sacramento and has a master’s degree from UC San Diego in addition to his law degree from Boalt.

The president Thursday also nominated Leo M. Gordon, clerk of the Court of International Trade, to be a judge of that court.

 

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