Theodore Kovaleff Interview with Anne K. Bingaman

• Published date: 01 June 1997
• Date: 01 June 1997
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0003603X9704200206
• Subject Matter: Domestic Antitrust

The Antitrust Bulletin/Summer 1997

Theodore Kovaleff interview

with Anne K. Bingaman

457

On October 16, 1996, the last full day of the tenure of Assistant

Attorney General Anne K. Bingaman, I had the opportunity to

interview her again to reflect on her term. As in my earlier inter-

view when we discussed her hopes and plans,' what follows is a

complete record of our conversation; minor changes have been

made to remove repetitions or to correct structure. Where the tape

of the transcript was unintelligible, I have done my best to supply

the missing portions. In these cases, the AAG had an opportunity

to edit her comments. Otherwise, they are unchanged.

THEODORE P. KOVALEFF: Before we even begin, I would like to con-

gratulate you on what I consider to have been a very positive and

innovative tenure.

ANNE

K.

BINGAMAN:

Thank

you

very

much,

I

appreciate

that,

I really do; there are a lot

of

wonderful people here and it's been

great.

KOVALEFF: When you leave tomorrow, while you will have not set

arecord for longevity, you will certainly have been one

of

the

much more longer lived assistant attorneys general. Iguess that

took quite a bit of stick-to-itiveness. So, why leave now?

BINGAMAN: We finished the NASDAQ

case

in late July. To my

great surprise, I had not expected it to end so completely . . . ,

I never knew exactly what would happen, I

didn't

know if no one

Theodore P.

Kovaleff

Interview with

Anne

K. Bingaman, 39

ANTITRUST

BULL.

929 (1994).

© 1997 by Federal Legal Publications. Inc.

458

The antitrust bulletin

would settle, half would settle. . . . I never conceived that every-

one would settle, but they did. I knew that the food and feed addi-

tive situation was in good shape and in good hands and so as

events turned out it was just anatural breaking point in the work

of

the Division. These cases have a life

of

their own; the next

series coming up were in their early stages and I felt

if

I stayed

and got into them and directed them and had a lot

of

meetings

...

, met with counsel, then I shouldn't leave. I began to think

you know I could go another couple of years . . . it

just

seemed

all at once that there was this window. . . . And so I figured,

given my family situation

...

we've got a wonderful son, he is

the greatest boy in the

world.

. . he's 16 almost 17, he will have

just

two more years at home; the Department has been a wonder-

ful time, but hectic. So I just considered everything and thought

well this is some sort of signal, some sort

of

opportunity. . . .

It's

here for me to take it, and so I did.

KOVALEFF:

Would

you

identify

what

you

consider

to be

your

biggest

triumph-if

you had to pick

one

case

...actually,

it

doesn't

even have to be something that

was

filed, it may be

something that

didn't

need to be filed. What would you say was

your greatest achievement?

BINGAMAN: I would have trouble picking one case. I have to tell

you though that I think our greatest achievement in the last 31/2

years has been to ratchet up the level of enforcement across the

board:

criminal,

merger, and

civil

nonmerger. We had avery

express goal of increasing the importance of the cases, increasing

the quality

of

the criminal cases, improving our merger capability,

and

filing important civil nonmerger cases. Ithink

we've

suc-

ceeded. We have record corporate criminal fines; Archer Daniels

Midland

and the food and feed matter

concluded

recently are

proof

of

what

we're

doing in that area. We have

filed

major

merger cases;

we've

increased our merger litigation capability sig-

nificantly;

we've

had Microsoft/Intuit, the Bell operating com-

pany mergers, radio mergers, a number of other significant merger

matters, on the civil nonmerger side; we have

NASDAQ-a

very

innovative settlement of a very difficult case and

I'm

very proud

of

that. Also there is Microsoft, American Bar Association, so