Pete Slover

Pete Slover worked for two decades as a Texas journalist, including 17 years at The Dallas Morning News, producing high-impact stories that won  awards, changed public policy and got people arrested. In 2006, he left the news business to apply his reporting acumen to the practice of law, where he has used his writing, investigative and management skills to the betterment of his clients, employers and the public.
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  • Clips 1-2: The 60 Minutes  Controversy: Shoe-leather reporting shed light on the CBS/60 Minutes controversy concerning George W. Bush's military record (the subject of the Robert Redford film Truth, which chronicled Dan Rather's downfall). These stories won the Medill School of Journalism’s Mongerson Award of Distinction for Investigative Reporting on the News.
  • Clips 3-5: The Electricity Grid Regulator:  My colleague Sudeep Reddy and I broke a series of stories regarding financial improprieties at the state electricity grid regulator, untangling a web of sham companies set up by insiders to rip off the agency. The stories won the Thomas L. Stokes Award for Best Energy Writing from the National Press Foundation. And, they proved to be a roadmap for subsequent felony indictments and numerous convictions.
  • Clip 6-7: The International Trade Center:  An expose of deception and wrongdoing in a state program, including self-dealing, resume padding and concealed criminal history. The executive director of the program quit when confronted with the goods, and the state shut the entire program down based on the story’s revelations.  
  • Clip 8: The Bomber Bush Biographer:  Following my gut, I checked out the fishy smell surrounding the author of a Bush biography who, virtually unsourced, alleged the future president had, with the help of his father, suppressed a cocaine arrest. In fact, I discovered and quickly reported that author James Hatfield was himself a felon, convicted of a failed attempt to kill his boss with a car bomb. St. Martin’s Press recalled all 100,000 copies of the book. The New York Times followed the story on page 1. This story led to my appearance on 60 Minutes (click to watch) where I explained my reporting. Hatfield later killed himself.
  • Clip 9: The Would-be Governor from S&L Land: The story of how fiscal excesses ruined Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez’s savings and loan -- the debut business venture of a man who was running for governor on his business acumen. This article revealed a formerly confidential $1 million settlement paid by Sanchez to settle regulators’ claims against the failed thrift. The report relied on thousands of pages of bank exams and other sensitive documents wheedled out of federal agencies, withheld from earlier FOIA requestors.
  • Clips 10-14: School District Corruption: We broke the news of audacious and brazen corruption in the Dallas School District: in exchange for steering business to a vendor, the district's technology chief had been given -- among other lavish gifts -- exclusive use of and the right to name a 59-foot, $789,000 yacht,  with a full-time captain. Our initial source had contacted the FBI and been ignored before reaching out to the newspaper. Eventually, the FBI, a DOJ Antitrust task force and the U.S. Department of Education, joined the hunt `and -- FBI agents confided -- tacked our stories to their bulletin board as a roadmap to indictments. Ultimately, a vendor and the technology chief were convicted and sentenced to federal prison for 10 years. The feds froze E-rate computer funding to the district, based on our report and follow-up probes. And, two non-indicted top administrators at the district were forced to resign, based on the facts we revealed.


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