Michael Shaheen

Michael Edmund Shaheen Jr. (August 5, 1940 – November 29, 2007) was an American government official and lawyer who served as the first director of the United States Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) from 1975 to 1997. While director of OPR, Shaheen led inquiries into government officials under five presidents, including multiple U.S. Attorneys General, in some cases leading to their removal or resignation.

Early life and education Shaheen was born on August 5, 1940, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Dorothy Wallace Cameron Shaheen and Michael E. Shaheen, a physician. At age 5, Shaheen moved to Como, Mississippi.

He lived in Como until attending the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, in preparation for his undergraduate studies at Yale's Davenport College, where he was a political science major and graduated in 1962. Shaheen obtained his law degree from Vanderbilt University Law School in 1965. where he also served as mayor from May 1970 to January 1973. He later practiced law in Memphis, Tennessee.

In 1973, Shaheen joined the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) where he worked in the department's Civil Rights Division for two years before becoming United States Attorney General Edward H. Levi's special counsel for intelligence. based on Shaheen's suggestions, Levi created DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) and named Shaheen as its first director.

In 1978, Shaheen and his office released a report detailing the abuse of power by former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who had misused the FBI's resources for personal gain.

In 1980, Shaheen investigated President Jimmy Carter's brother Billy Carter in regards to his status as a registered foreign agent for the government of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The same year, Shaheen concluded that Attorney General Smith had acted inappropriately when he invested in two tax shelters and by accepting a $50,000 severance payment from a steel company. Smith returned the money and pledged to limit his deductions from the tax shelter to the amount of cash invested, steps Shaheen found to be "sufficient [...] to cure the substance" of the violation.

In 1989, Shaheen found that former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese had failed to report nearly $20,000 in capital gains on his 1985 tax return. His report called this "conduct which should not be tolerated of any government employee". By the time Shaheen's report was published, Meese had resigned as a result of the Wedtech scandal.

Shaheen took an early retirement option from DOJ and left his post on December 30, 1997, having served as director of the Office of Professional Responsibility under eight attorneys general for 22 years, leaving him as the longest serving director of OPR .

After his retirement from DOJ, Shaheen was chief counsel and deputy executive director of the Commission on the Advancement of Federal Law Enforcement.

Death Shaheen died of pancreatic cancer on November 29, 2007, at his home in Falls Church, Virginia. Shaheen married Polly Dammann, a lawyer in the United States Department of Justice's Civil Division. Together, they had three sons.