Tuesday, Sept. 30, 1997 | 10:14 a.m.
BAD GUYS, BEWARE. U.S. Attorney Kathryn Landreth is turning her Criminal Division into a lean fighting machine.
Landreth has reorganized the division into three new sections to maximize resources in the war on crime.
Veteran prosecutor Kurt Schulke has been tabbed to head the division. He reports to Landreth's first assistant, Howard Zlotnick.
Schulke also will head the Organized Crime Strike Force Section, which now handles sensitive political corruption cases.
Tom O'Connell has been promoted to chief of the Narcotics and Violent Crime Section, and Dan Schiess supervises the new Economic Crimes Section.
Strike Force prosecutors are continuing to make headway in the stepped-up campaign against the mob.
New indictments aimed at the Los Angeles crime family's attempt to muscle in on Las Vegas street rackets are expected soon. The new charges should sting L.A. mob bosses there even more.
The Narcotics and Violent Crime Section, meanwhile, has been coordinating efforts with local police to take repeat offenders and felons with violet histories off the streets.
Federal penalties involving firearms charges and felons who commit crimes are much tougher than in state court.
More than a dozen cases have been handed over to the U.S. attorney's office so far in this new spirit of cooperation.
On the white collar front, the new Economic Crimes Section under Schiess has been assigned all telemarketing cases, as well as fraud in the health care and banking industries and Bankruptcy Court.
Schiess recently returned from Washington, D.C., where he received a national outstanding service award from Attorney General Janet Reno.
More help also is on the way as the reorganization takes hold. Landreth has been given the green light to create positions for three new prosecutors, and she plans to fill two vacancies.
Call it bad news for the bad guys.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., means business in 1998.
Reid has hired Paul DiNino, a Democratic heavyweight in Washington, as his national campaign finance director.
DiNino, former finance director of the Democratic National Committee, will help Reid raise money across the country.
The association of the two men is being viewed as another sign of Reid's growing stature on Capitol Hill.
If he's re-elected, Reid, who has become a Clinton favorite, plans to run for party whip, the No. 2 leadership position for Senate Democrats.
DiNino has worked for the likes of Democratic Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and former Sens. Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio and Tim Wirth of Colorado.
DiNino joined the DNC in March after the party had come under fire in the current fund-raising scandal. He left last week.
Charles Muth doesn't think much of the AFL-CIO's committee to investigate the six-year strike at the Frontier hotel-casino.
Muth, a Republican political consultant and the communications director for the state GOP, charges the panel is stacked with "liberal Democratic has-beens."
Among those named to panel are such well-known Democrats as, Metzenbaum, ex-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and NAACP President Kweisi MFume.
Says Muth: "The AFL-CIO's new kangaroo court is just one more in a long line of schemes that do nothing to further resolution of this dispute."
Word on the street is that morale may be slipping at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
"Everyone's walking on eggshells," says one insider. "People don't know when the ax is going to fall."
The LVCVA's main goal is to promote tourism here. But that's tough to do if its employees aren't wearing their happy faces.
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