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Conrad Black's U.S. prosecutor has built a reputation for going after the influential

When Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald walked into the federal court house here in January to begin the high-profile trial of Lewis (Scooter) Libby on perjury charges, juror Denis Collins sized up the prosecutor immediately.

"My first impression when I saw him was he reminded me of a light-heavyweight boxer," Mr. Collins said. "He kind of approached things that way, you know, straight ahead, no rhetorical flourishes, just sort of straight right hands."

And those steady hands have meant that Patrick Fitzgerald scores a knockout almost every time he steps into the judicial boxing ring. For onetime newspaper magnate Conrad Black, who goes on trial tomorrow in Chicago on a series of criminal charges, that's bad news.

"He never loses and Mr. Black is in for it," said Paul Green, director of policy studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago and one of Mr. Fitzgerald's numerous fans. "He's thorough and incredibly inner- and outer-directed. He's very tenacious. He's the best U.S. attorney we've ever had."

At 46, the unmarried Mr. Fitzgerald has reached the pinnacle of his profession. The self-made son of an Irish immigrant family from Brooklyn -- his father was a Manhattan doorman -- he has built a reputation as a smart and hard-working prosecutor, first in New York and, since 2001, as the top U.S. prosecutor in Chicago. He's unlikely to be impressed, let alone intimidated, by Lord Black's pedigree and his intellectual airs.

"He's an equal-opportunity prosecutor," Prof. Green continued. "Party affiliation makes no difference to him."

Although the prosecution will be handled on a day-by-day basis by four of Mr. Fitzgerald's deputies, nobody doubts the boss will be watching the case closely. And from all accounts, he's tireless.

"He worked like a demon," said Frederick Cohn, who represented one of four men convicted in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, a case prosecuted by Mr. Fitzgerald when he was assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York.

"I used to show up at 7 in the morning at court and he was already there," Mr. Cohn said of his adversary. "I think he slept there."

Mr. Cohn has only good things to say about Mr. Fitzgerald. "He was fair. He was thorough. He was everything you like to have in an adversary," except he was too good. "What you see is what you get. I can't speak too highly of him."

As a teenager, Mr. Fitzgerald won a scholarship to a Jesuit high school in New York, working as school janitor and as a doorman in the summers to help pay for his education. A brilliant and disciplined student, he earned a degree in math and economics at Amherst College before attending Harvard Law School.

He spent three years in private practice before taking up a position in the New York prosecutor's office. As chief of the organized-crime and terrorism unit, he led the prosecution of 12 defendants charged with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and prosecuted the Gambino crime family on drug and murder charges.

Since moving to Chicago, Mr. Fitzgerald has not hesitated to go after the powerful and influential, indicting former Illinois governor George Ryan and a Chicago businessman and lobbyist in a massive bribery scandal. Both men were found guilty. The former governor was sentenced to 6 ½ years in prison.

Mr. Fitzgerald also indicted top associates of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley on fraud and corruption charges and is investigating the current administration of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

But it's his pursuit of Mr. Libby, former chief of staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney, that has given Mr. Fitzpatrick a national profile. In December of 2003, he was appointed as special prosecutor to look into allegations that top administration officials had leaked the covert identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame in an effort to smear her husband, a former diplomat and outspoken critic of the Iraq invasion.

In the end, nobody was ever charged with the actual leak. Rather, Mr. Libby was charged with lying to a grand jury and to the FBI when he testified about the affair.

Mr. Fitzgerald's dogged pursuit of the case, including his insistence on getting journalists to testify about their sources, attracted considerable criticism. New York Times columnist William Safire called Mr. Fitzgerald a "runaway Chicago prosecutor" and called his pursuit of journalists "this generation's gravest threat to our ability to ferret out the news."

Hard-core Republicans were also upset by the charges, which led to Mr. Libby's conviction last week on four of five counts. "This is a trial that never would have been brought in any other part of the world," said Fred Thompson, the onetime U.S. senator who has resumed an acting career. "This is a miscarriage of justice."

Not surprisingly, Mr. Fitzgerald was unmoved by criticism that the pursuit of the perjury charges was a waste of public money and that the case should have been dropped once nobody was charged with the actual leak. He is certainly not the kind of man to express any regrets. And he showed no sign of it at a news conference after the Libby verdict, in which he was asked whether the prosecution was worth it, even though he had failed to prosecute anybody for leaking secret information.

"If someone knowingly tells a lie under oath during any investigation, it's every prosecutor's duty to respond by investigating and proving that if you can," Mr. Fitzgerald told reporters. "The nature of any person telling a lie under oath to a grand jury is a serious problem. Having someone, a high-level official, do that under oath in a national-security investigation is something that can never be acceptable."

With his reputation as a winning prosecutor and a straight shooter, everybody is wondering what is in store next for Mr. Fitzgerald.

"I don't think he has any political ambitions," said Mr. Cohn, the New York defence lawyer, "But if he went into politics, I'd vote for him."