OUR TOWNS: AMNESIA RUNS RAMPANT IN TESTIMONY

TRENTON -- It's a minor miracle that Peter G. Verniero remembered to show
up yesterday to testify about all that he had forgotten about his role in
New Jersey's racial profiling debacle.

He was on time, carefully coiffed and neatly dressed. The moment was
pregnant with expectation that the former attorney general would reveal
what he knew about racial profiling and when he knew it.

But then he simply couldn't remember. He had forgotten memos, meetings,
numbers, legal proceedings, his thoughts at the time, conversations, dates,
times.

An informal survey conducted by Democratic legislative aides counted 158 "I
don't recalls," 21 "I don't remembers" and 38 "I don't knows." And those
were the totals at the 5 p.m. break.

At one point yesterday, Michael Chertoff, the special counsel to the State
Senate's Judiciary Committee, reminded Mr. Verniero that he had just
referred to the controversy over racial profiling in the late 1990's as "a
historic time" and yet "you don't have much of a recollection of any
circumstances of this."

Mr. Verniero responded, "It was historic and unique and I'm doing the best
I can with all the human frailties of memory and otherwise to answer your
questions."

Yesterday was billed as the climax of the State Legislature's hearings on
racial profiling, the day Mr. Verniero, now a State Supreme Court justice,
would be confronted over why it took Gov. Christie Whitman's administration
so long to face the reality of profiling.

But Mr. Verniero exhibited signs of Post- Profiling Stress Syndrome, an
affliction of New Jersey politicians that hampers the ability to confront
the issue.

Mr. Verniero had a bad case yesterday. The Whitman administration
acknowledged racial profiling as a practice by the state police two years
ago, but hard information showing that the problem was severe existed at
least two years before that.

One memo that went to Mr. Verniero showed that 62 percent of the motorists
searched on one part of the New Jersey Turnpike were members of minorities.
What did Mr. Verniero have to say about that yesterday? "I don't recall
specifically wading through this document," he said.

Another memo had statistics about turnpike stops that could have shown a
serious profiling problem. "Did you ask anyone what this means?" Mr.
Verniero was asked. "I don't recall," he said.

In case you don't recall, Mr. Verniero was a longtime aide to Mrs. Whitman.
When he joined her administration after her 1993 victory, he was named
chief counsel. He told a reporter, "She is my one and only client."

He explained his stance toward racial profiling by saying that as attorney
general, the state police was his client and that his job was to defend the
police against accusations of profiling.

YESTERDAY, Peter Verniero was representing a new client. Peter Verniero.

On his own behalf, Mr. Verniero was contrite. "I wish I had done more," he
said.

He appealed for sympathy. "It was a lonely place at that point in time," he
said of the attorney general's office. "I gave it my best shot."

He was understanding. "Reasonable minds may differ regarding the timeliness
of my actions," he said.

But Peter Verniero the lawyer couldn't stop Peter Verniero the client from
revealing some of the past. He portrayed the Whitman administration as
trying to manage the appearance of the racial profiling problem.

In 1999, Mr. Verniero indicted two white troopers in the falsifying of
records, even though some aides warned it could have jeopardized a larger
investigation of the same troopers in the shooting of three unarmed
minority men. Yesterday, Mr. Verniero said he went ahead with the
indictment partly to answer criticism of his office's ability to police the
police.

He called it "a time of great public cynicism and skepticism of my office."

When the federal government began an inquiry into racial profiling in New
Jersey, Mr. Verniero requested the federal government not to put the fact
of the investigation in writing. Why? he was asked yesterday. To "avoid
having New Jersey stigmatized" by an unfair investigation, he said.

It was left to Mr. Verniero to point out that he eventually did issue a
report acknowledging the reality of profiling. It happened just as he was
facing a bruising battle to win confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1999.

He told the senators, "I would like to think that we made significant
accomplishments during my 34-month tenure."

None of the senators rose to agree. They probably meant to. They just forgot.