The special grand jury that indicted former El Paso school trustee Sal Mena last week for allegedly taking bribes has been operating quietly in El Paso since June 2007.

Mena was the first of the 10 defendants in the FBI and U.S. attorneys office’s investigation into public corruption to be indicted.

The others have each waived indictment and pleaded guilty to charges outlined by the U.S. attorney’s office in an information document.

It was also in June 2007 that El Paso County Judge Anthony Cobos’ former chief of staff, John Travis Ketner, stunned the community when he became the first person to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery and wire fraud charges. [a href="http://newspapertree.com/news/2438-updated-aug-6-public-corruption-101" target="_blank">public corruption 101, background on the case]

His plea came just a month after FBI agents conducted a highly publicized search of Cobos’ offices and the offices of County Commissioner Miguel Teran and Luis Sarinana.

No one will say whether the Ketner investigation prompted the empanelment of the special grand jury.

In fact, no one close to the investigation will openly discuss the grand jury at all, even when it comes to basic information that is supposed to be available for the asking.

Newspaper Tree was advised by an attorney in July that a grand jury either to convened or begin hearing evidence on or about Aug. 14 regarding alleged federal contract fraud involving the former National Center for Employment of the Disabled, its former CEO Bob Jones and others. [what about bob? grand jury to convene soon, sources say, july 24, 2008]

A grand jury is a group of citizens, more than 12 and as many as 24, who are supposed to be selected at random from the jury pool and sworn in by a state or federal judge to hear evidence in suspected criminal cases and determine whether there is there is enough for a trial and an indictment.

As it happened, the El Paso grand jury handed up its indictment of Mena on Aug. 14.

Subsequent efforts to determine when that grand jury was empaneled ran into one refusal after another.

The spokesman for U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Antonio, Daryl Fields, said he didn’t have the information and directed Newspaper Tree to the U.S. district clerk’s office in El Paso.

There a clerk said there are always two grand juries in session and that they alternate meeting on Wednesdays.

But the information stopped with the question about when the grand jury that indicted Mena began its work, but not before the word “special” was uttered.

Tom Hilburger, who is in charge of the El Paso office agreed the date of empanelment is no secret, but later left a message saying he could not help and that the U.S. attorney’s office would have to provide that information.

Hearing the question again, Fields said, “I can’t help that they sent you back here to me, but we don’t discuss the grand jury, sorry.

“I’m not a spokesman for the clerk’s office. You’ll have to discuss it with them.”

Like U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, the U.S. District Clerk for the Western District of Texas, Bill Putnicki, is stationed in San Antonio.

His office offered to chase down the date of empanelment and promised to call with the information but did not.

Finally, someone close to the grand jury process was willing to confirm that there has been a third grand jury operating in El Paso for 15 months, and that it had been extended after the usual one-year term of a grand jury.

In addition, in its response to the NPT motion to open court documents and hearings, the government wrote that it would be wrong to assume that there was no grand jury in place. [government pledges to open some corruption court documents, sept. 3, 2008]

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To reach David Crowder, write to dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or call (915) 351-0605