Target: the Senator : A Story about Power and Abuse of Power

As “the Senator,” Vincent J. Fumo reigned for nearly a generation, cutting deals and red tape, and bringing in billions of dollars for Philadelphia. He personified a bare-knuckles, take-no-prisoners style of politics that’s no longer socially acceptable, or as prosecutors successfully argued, legal.

Since he was convicted in 2009 of 137 counts of corruption, he’s served his time and kept a low profile.

Until now, when he finally tells his story with characteristic candor and insight.

Only now, thanks to formerly confidential grand jury transcripts and FBI files, can we see through the distortions that surrounded the frenzied pursuit – by both the prosecutors and the media -- of the “Vince of Darkness.”

Only now can we paint the full portrait of a brilliant but flawed and deeply complicated man -- how he gained power, wielded power, and lost it in spectacular fashion. It’s a tale of excess, by both the hunted and the hunters.

Ralph Cipriano uses “truth as a weapon against raw governmental abuse of power and news media gullibility. [He] deserves our thanks for peeling back the curtain on the epic destruction of Fumo. . . "

From the foreword by Harvey A. Silverglate, author, Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent

“Vincent Fumo, a man who had everything any man could ever want, chose to use other people’s money, OPM as he called it, to advance his personal interests and his political career . . .”

-- Assistant U.S. Attorney John J. Pease

 “I honestly think that people didn’t appreciate the value Vince brought to the city until he wasn’t there any more . . . He was one of the handful of people who could figure out how to get things done in Harrisburg, even with deep partisan divides.”

-- David L. Cohen, senior executive vice president of Comcast

 “Everybody else was playing checkers, and he was playing three games of chess.”

-- Paul Davies, former Philadelphia Daily News reporter