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U.S. Bankruptcy Judge George Francis Bason Jr. yesterday ordered the Justice Department to pay Inslaw Inc., a Washington computer software company, a total of $6.8 million in damages for misappropriating one of Inslaw's computer software programs.
In a separate action, Bason filed suit yesterday to seek to block his replacement on the bankruptcy bench by a Justice Department attorney who had worked on the Inslaw case. Bason, who claimed he was denied due process in the selection process, has said he has been told by local lawyers that he was not reappointed in part because of his decisions in the Inslaw case. Bason is scheduled to leave office next Monday.
Bason ruled last September that the Justice Department used "trickery, fraud and deceit" to steal the software program, and that the Justice Department had tried to force Inslaw to liquidate because of a personal vendetta against the company by Justice Department officials.
Inslaw had argued that the Justice Department owed it $6.8 million in damages for the use of 44 copies of Promis software that the department did not pay for under a contract with the company.
Bason's suit seeking an explanation for why he was not reappointed was filed in U.S. District Court against the District's judicial council, a body composed of U.S. Court of Appeals and U.S. District Court judges that selects bankruptcy judges.
At a press conference yesterday, Bason said: "I do not know what charges have been made against me, nor do I know what may have motivated whoever may have made those charges. I do know that the decision to pass me over in favor of a person who is obviously far less qualified and far less experienced than I can only be described as arbitrary, capricious and utterly lacking in any factual foundation."
Questions about the death of Alan David Standorf, a Whitehall High School graduate whose corpse was found at a Washington, D.C., airport 10 days ago, may never be answered because of the highly classified nature of Standorf's Army job, his brother said yesterday.
Standorf's body was found on the back floor of his car, under a pile of luggage and other personal items, by a policeman on regular patrol about 9:45 p.m. Jan. 29 at Metropolitan Washington National Airport. The car was parked in a short-term parking lot next to the North Terminal. The car had been there since Jan. 4, Ford said.
Investigators said Standorf was killed by blunt force injury but would not elaborate, Ford said. The homicide occurred somewhere other than the airport, Ford said. He didn't know how long Standorf had been dead.
Standorf oversaw the repair and distribution of electronic equipment at Vint Hill, which Ford described as a high-security signal-processing station that gathers electronic intelligence from spy satellites and other sources around the world. It operates under the Army's National Security Agency based at Fort Meade, Md.
The release of information has been "toned down," Ford said, because authorities aren't sure of the cause of his death or the circumstances surrounding it.
"This is not strictly a police investigation anymore," Ford said. "The government is involved, too."