June 26, 2017
By Craig R. McCoy, Chris Brennan, and Mark Fazlollah
For more than a year, FBI agents wiretapped the cellphones of Philadelphia labor leader John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty and City Councilman Bobby Henon as part of an ongoing investigation into union corruption, according to a disclosure letter by federal prosecutors.
Prosecutors recently sent what are known as “intercept letters” to scores of people whose conversations were picked up on the court-approved wiretaps. In the letters, prosecutors also disclosed that the FBI also obtained court approval to intercept calls from the cellphones of Marita Crawford, political director for Dougherty’s Local 98 of the Electricians union, and Joseph Ralston, until recently a veteran investigator with the Attorney General’s Office.
The disclosure marks the first public word that months of conversations of Dougherty and his associates are now in prosecutors’ hands. The labor leader has dismissed the investigation as a groundless attack on “our union’s good name.”
Under federal rules, prosecutors are required to notify people that they were picked up on wiretaps of other people’s phone communications. Such intercept letters are typically sent out at a late stage in an investigation, after agents and prosecutors believe they have most of the evidence needed to make their case.
Dougherty’s lawyer, Henry E. Hockeimer Jr., declined comment. Henon and Crawford — still using the phone number that was tapped — did not return calls for comment. Federal prosecutors also did not return calls.
The FBI began listening to Dougherty’s calls on April 29, 2015, and kept listening for 16 months. News of a federal probe of the labor leader broke into public view on Aug. 5, 2016, when agents searched the Local 98 union hall and the offices of Henon and Crawford. The FBI kept the phone taps running until Aug. 26, three weeks after the raid, according to the disclosure letter.
Three and a half months after agents began listening in on Dougherty’s cell phone, the FBI obtained court approval to wiretap the councilman and Crawford.
The FBI ended all four intercepts on Aug. 26, 2016, about the time agents raided Ralston’s workspace at the Attorney General’s Office in Philadelphia and seized his computer.
The search warrant for the raid said the FBI was interested in Ralston’s work moonlighting as a security consultant and his communications with Henon. Ralston was paid for security work by Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
The warrant also said investigators wanted to know about queries Ralston made on closely-held law enforcement databases in the Attorney General’s Office.
Ralston’s employment there ended Friday. A spokesman for the office confirmed Ralston’s exit but would not say why he left.
The recent intercept letter, reviewed by the Inquirer and Daily News, was dated May 15 and signed by the assistant U.S. attorneys in charge of the Dougherty investigation, Frank R. Costello and John Gallagher.
Dougherty has forged the local into a political powerhouse. It supported the successful political campaigns of Mayor Kenney and state Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty, who is John Dougherty’s brother.
In the August 2016 raid, FBI and IRS agents searched John Dougherty’s home and his union office on Spring Garden Street. They carted off more than 100 boxes of documents, along with several computers.
The same day, the agents searched Henon’s City Hall office and his district office on Torresdale Avenue. Henon, Council’s majority leader and a key Dougherty ally, holds a $72,000-a-year post with Local 98.
Agents also searched the home of Crawford, who also lives in Philadelphia.