Michael Edmund Shaheen Jr. (August 5, 1940 – November 29, 2007) was an American government official and lawyer who served as the first director of the United States Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) from 1975 to 1997.
[2] He lived in Como until attending the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, in preparation for his undergraduate studies at Yale's Davenport College, where he was a political science major and graduated in 1962.
[2] Shaheen started his law career by clerking for a federal judge in Tennessee, after which he practiced as a lawyer in his hometown of Como, Mississippi,[3] where he also served as mayor from May 1970 to January 1973.
Shaheen found that "the entire matter appears to have been handled in a highly professional and discreet fashion", also commenting that sources must feel safe in telling prosecutors about potential criminal activity.
[9] The same year, Shaheen concluded that Attorney General Smith had acted inappropriately when he invested in two tax shelters and by accepting a $50,000 severance payment from a steel company.
Smith returned the money and pledged to limit his deductions from the tax shelter to the amount of cash invested, steps Shaheen found to be "sufficient [...] to cure the substance" of the violation.