Michael Edmund Shaheen Jr. died seven years ago today.  He was the original head of DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility ("OPR") and served in that capacity under eight Attorneys General. In March 2014, the National Archives preserved his records as a separate collection, because "future OPR counsels were not granted as much latitude as was Mr. Shaheen," making his papers "a unique set." See Shaheen National Archives Records Request.

Reputations in Washington are made of many things, including money, cunning, connections, power, and privilege. Mike's reputation was built on competence, guts, and a towering integrity. In an era before the phrase was fashionable, Mike quietly spoke truth to power.

Reputations can also be fleeting. Mike touched  many lives and because of that I believe that his memory will linger and burnish through the years.  His various obituaries, here, here, and here, detail the myriad officials he was not afraid to piss off and on. But they do not do full justice to the man. 

Above all, Mike Shaheen was a marevelous raconteur. To spend a leisurely lunch in his presence, listening to his stories, relayed in that lilting Como, Mississippi accent, was a rare pleasure. He was Lebanese on his father's side, and it always amused me to see this man with almost Asian eyes tell front porch stories in a mint julep voice. That the stories were true made it all the more memorable. 

 I met Mike by chance, in his post-OPR incarnation, through my work for Ken Starr. We ended up going to lunch one day and struck up a friendship. It was a Washington friendship, for the most part confined to lunches and drinks, with one notable exception. We liked the same people and loathed the same people and there was nothing in it–nothing material to gain– for either one of us. We just enjoyed talking to each other and trading Washington stories.

He has been gone seven years, taken from us too soon. But I will always treasure the memory of his decency and courage. So I raise my glass to Mike. I shall not look upon his like again.

(wisenberg)