Gene Anderson (U.S. Attorney) (1937–2011), U.S. Attorney Washington State 1981 - 1989
Gene Scott Anderson was born in Berwyn, Ill., on Aug. 12, 1937. He attended high school in nearby Wheaton and was a graduate of the University of Illinois, where he also earned his law degree in 1962. Anderson briefly worked for the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C. before being drafted into the Army. He then served three years in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Mr. Anderson became the first chief of the office’s fraud division in King County, WA in 1978. He expanded the unit by creating an environmental-crimes section and formed a task force that tackled bank fraud — moves that forever shaped the office. His pursuit of white-collar cases paved the way for his selection by President Reagan to fill the Washington State U.S. attorney post.
During his two terns, he played an instrumental role in the prosecution of a Northwest-based neo-Nazi group, The Order, that committed two murders, armored-car robberies and other crimes throughout the Western United States in the mid-1980s.
In 1987, Mr. Anderson was featured in a People magazine article for his prosecution of a so-called yuppie cocaine ring, in which his office not only went after dealers but also “silk-stocking” customers.
After leaving the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Anderson worked in private practice for several years, taught environmental-law classes at the University of Washington and spent a year as a visiting professor at the University of California law school at Berkeley.
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