Disband the DOJ

It's more dangerous for ordinary Americans to have a dysfunctional DOJ, which has been corrupted to the core for political purposes, than to have none at all. At least, all Americans will realize that there really is no law left for them to count on.

U.S. dropped Enron-like fraud probe

Prosecutor who built case against Virginia insurer was replaced.

By Marisa Taylor - Mcclatchy Washington Bureau

Last Updated 12:14 am PDT Monday, July 23, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A1

WASHINGTON -- Two years into a fraud investigation, veteran federal prosecutor David Maguire told colleagues he'd uncovered one of the biggest cases of his career.

Maguire described crimes "far worse" than those of Arthur Andersen, the accounting giant that collapsed in the wake of the Enron scandal. Among those in his sights: executives from a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment empire overseen by billionaire Warren Buffett.

In May 2006, he felt strongly enough about his case that he prepared a draft indictment accusing executives from a Virginia insurer, Reciprocal of America, of concocting a series of secret deals to hide its losses from regulators. Although he didn't name anyone from Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiary, he described the company as a participant in the scheme.

But Maguire never brought those charges.

Months after preparing the draft, he was removed as the lead prosecutor on the case and reassigned.

His replacement, a prosecutor who hadn't been involved in the case until then, soon announced that the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, General Reinsurance, would not be indicted. By April of this year, the entire investigation, which the Justice Department once hailed as one of the largest insurance-fraud cases in Virginia history, had fizzled.

Former employees and policyholders of the Richmond-based insurer were astounded. Why had the Justice Department spent upward of $2 million to investigate the case only to decline to prosecute? Maguire and his team of investigators had secured two related guilty pleas, interviewed dozens of witnesses and gathered 7,000 boxes of documents.

At the Justice Department, some whispered that Maguire and his team had overreached and had been knocked down. Others heard that the government needed resources for terrorism investigations.

Lawyers for the two companies had another explanation: Prosecutors realized they didn't have evidence of a crime.

"It was a black and white decision," said Stanley Twardy Jr., one of General Reinsurance's attorneys and a former U.S. attorney. "They just called it like they saw it."

But Tom Gober, a certified fraud examiner who worked on the case, thought investigators had gathered plenty of evidence.

Gober, a government-contracted investigator, concluded that the Justice Department had buckled under pressure from defense lawyers. Shortly before Maguire was removed, his supervisors were urging him to drop the case against General Reinsurance, Gober said.

Gober's suspicions were fanned by allegations of politicization in the Justice Department after nine U.S. attorneys were fired. He took his complaints to the Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates Justice Department misconduct. That investigation is under way.

"It just stinks," he said. "You don't come in out of nowhere and in no time kill three years of sophisticated effort."

Maguire and officials with the U.S. attorney's office and the FBI in Virginia declined to respond to questions about the decision.

Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said he wouldn't comment, either.

Internal documents obtained by McClatchy Newspapers show that Justice Department lawyers in Washington had become locked in an intense debate with Maguire over the case until he was removed from it.

Five years after Enron collapsed and tough measures aimed at white-collar crime were enacted, federal officials struggled with questions of corporate accountability: Who should be held responsible when fraud leads to a company's demise? How far should federal prosecutors go in pursuing corporate suspects? In the Reciprocal of America case, the fallout was clear.

More than 80,000 lawyers, doctors and hospitals in 30 states lost their malpractice coverage. As they couldn't expect new insurers to cover them for past cases, some who were sued have claimed losses of hundreds of millions of dollars.

A company under siege

A team of state insurance auditors arrived at Reciprocal of America's headquarters in January 2003 to launch their investigation. They shepherded the company's 300 employees into a conference room and locked the doors.

Continue reading on next page

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Destroying the DOJ, For Fun and Prorfit

DOJ All But "Operating on Autopilot"
By Brooke Masters
The Financial Times UK

Thursday 19 July 2007

Resignations and the ongoing furor over allegedly politicised hiring and firing at the US justice department have left so many top positions vacant that the department is all but operating on autopilot, the Financial Times has learnt.

Six top DoJ officials have quit since February, when the sackings of at least nine US attorneys prompted an outcry in Congress. Outside Washington, 23 of the 93 US attorneys' offices, which investigate and try most cases, are devoid of permanent political leadership.

The remaining top officials, including Alberto Gonzales, attorney-general, are the subject of multiple investigations by Congress and the DoJ's inspector-general.

That has forced lawyers in the field to make decisions with much less input from Washington than in the previous six years, often on contentious topics such as whether to seek the death penalty in states where it is unpopular. The practical result has been to depoliticise many field offices, giving thousands of career DoJ attorneys freedom to resolve cases the way they see fit.

"There's open contempt between the field and main justice [DoJ headquarters]," said one career prosecutor, who like others did not want to be named lest they attract attention from Washington. "The field is fine. We just do what we do. The department [in Washington] is crippled."

Underscoring the turmoil, Mr Gonzales this week named Craig Morford, a career prosecutor serving as temporary US attorney in Tennessee, as acting deputy attorney-general to replace Paul McNulty, who leaves this month. No permanent replacement for the DoJ's number two job has been nominated.

Democrats in Congress, who want Mr Gonzales to resign, decry the situation. "It's clear that the justice department can't function as long as Gonzales is in charge," said Senator Chuck Schumer, who has spearheaded the Democratic investigations of the DoJ. "US attorney vacancies are at an all time high and, on any issue where there's an element of trust, the attorney-general has no credibility."

Most offices are pushing forward without difficulty and have passed some high-profile milestones, including the indictment of a sitting congressman for corruption; the arrest of plotters alleged to be targeting New York's John F. Kennedy airport and the Fort Dix military base; and record settlements for overseas bribery and exporting military technology.

"The chaos to some degree has been good for us," said one senior attorney in the field. "The big city offices are happy to have Washington chase its tail for a while and leave us alone."

Some DoJ attorneys also worry they might face more scepticism from juries because of the repeated congressional hearings into whether DoJ officials improperly took politics into account in hiring and firing.

Washington officials downplayed the importance of the resignations and the decision by William Mercer, US Attorney for Montana, to withdraw his nomination as the DoJ's number three.

The DoJ has a vacancy rate of less than 3 per cent, which covers law enforcement agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

"The vast majority of the department's roughly 106,000 employees remain in their positions, carrying out duties every day that are vital to the safety of the nation," said Dean Boyd, a spokesman. The DoJ, he added, is "working diligently to identify nominees".

But Patrick Leahy, the Democrat who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, pointed out that the White House has submitted nominees for only four of the 23 open US attorney positions. "The current status is unacceptable," he said. The crisis of leadership at the justice department has allowed the White House to play politics with law enforcement."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

We Are About To Hit The Wall, Folks

Crisis point is within view; we are bout to go critical.

Hang on America! We are in for a very bumpy ride. (h/t) Betty Davis

Monday, July 9, 2007

We Have A Situation.....America

.
What if the worst happens?

What if Bush Defies Congress, which he certainly intends to do, over the Senate Judiciary Committee Subpoenas regarding Attorney-gate?

The whole matter will go to court

Bush intends to claim executive privilege. A claim of executive privilege is moot if a crime is being investigated. All Congress has to do is argue that it is reasonable to believe, given the evidence in the public domain, that Mr. Bush has committed or is committing a crime. The second certainly lends a certain exigency to the matter, eh?

However, if Bush's new Supreme Court rules in his favor, after evidence has been presented that Bush has committed a most egregious abuse of power, by politicizing the DOJ (a crime, under the law), we are, from that moment, a lawless nation.

This goes to the very bedrock of our constitution and founding principles: Three co-equal branches of government and congressional over-right of the executive. Our founder's worst nightmare was an unaccountable executive, run amok, and that will be exactly what we will have if the SCOTUS rules against Congress.

Actually, we have been a lawless nation for sometime, but the SCOTUS hasn't yet made it official.

If it does, we are headed for a revolution. It is only a matter of how and when.


....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

DOJ Under Bush Is A National Disgrace, According To Career DOJ Attorney

This article could not be found on Goggle. We found it at OpEd News and thought we would do our part to get it out there.

It is too important an article to be ignored. Why is it important?

Here's why.

This career attorney says that the DOJ being politicized in the way The Bushites have politicized it is "UNLAWFUL."

So, if Bush defies Congress over the subpoenas, as he surely will, when it goes to court, the lawyers for Congress can argue that the Congress is investigating that which is credibly believed to be a crime by Mr. Bush. That blows executive privilege right out of the water. EP cannot be used to cover-up a crime. That was decided long ago. If a president can wail "executive privilege over anything, he could cover-up murder, rape, assault with deadly weapon, you name it. A crime is a crime, period.

If Congress fails to make this argument, they should all be run out of town on a rail.

Bush justice is a national disgrace by John S. Koppel Page 1 of 2 page(s) http://www.opednews.com

As a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time.

The public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. The unconscionable commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act and the deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse.

In the course of its tenure since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has turned the entire government (and the DOJ in particular) into a veritable Augean stable on issues such as civil rights, civil liberties, international law and basic human rights, as well as criminal prosecution and federal employment and contracting practices. It has systematically undermined the rule of law in the name of fighting terrorism, and it has sought to insulate its actions from legislative or judicial scrutiny and accountability by invoking national security at every turn, engaging in persistent fearmongering, routinely impugning the integrity and/or patriotism of its critics, and protecting its own lawbreakers. This is neither normal government conduct nor "politics as usual," but a national disgrace of a magnitude unseen since the days of Watergate - which, in fact, I believe it eclipses.

In more than a quarter of a century at the DOJ, I have never before seen such consistent and marked disrespect on the part of the highest ranking government policymakers for both law and ethics. It is especially unheard of for U.S. attorneys to be targeted and removed on the basis of pressure and complaints from political figures dissatisfied with their handling of politically sensitive investigations and their unwillingness to "play ball." Enough information has already been disclosed to support the conclusion that this is exactly what happened here, at least in the case of former U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias of New Mexico (and quite possibly in several others as well). Law enforcement is not supposed to be a political team sport, and prosecutorial independence and integrity are not "performance problems."

In his long-awaited but uninformative testimony concerning the extraordinary firings of U.S. attorneys, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales did not allay these concerns. Indeed, he faced a no-win situation. If he testified falsely regarding his alleged lack of recollection and lack of involvement, he perjured himself and lied to both Congress and the American people. On the other hand, if he told the truth, he clearly has been derelict in the performance of his duties and is not up to the job. Either way, his fitness to serve is now in doubt.

Tellingly, in his congressional testimony, D. Kyle Sampson (the junior aide to whom the attorney general delegated vast authority) expressed the view that the distinction between "performance" considerations and "political" considerations was "largely artificial." This attitude, however, is precisely the problem. The administration that Sampson served has elided the distinction between government performance and politics to an unparalleled extent (just as it has blurred the boundaries between the White House counsel's office and the attorney general's office). And it is no answer to say that U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president. The point that is lost on those who make this argument is that U.S. attorneys must not serve partisan purposes or advance a partisan agenda - which has nothing to do with requiring them to promote an administration's legitimate policy priorities.

As usual, the administration has attempted to minimize the significance of its malfeasance and misfeasance, reciting its now-customary "mistakes were made" mantra, accepting purely abstract responsibility without consequences for its actions, and making hollow vows to do better. However, the DOJ Inspector General's Patriot Act report (which would not even have existed if the administration had not been forced to grudgingly accept a very modest legislative reporting requirement, instead of being allowed to operate in its preferred secrecy), the White House-DOJ e-mails, and now the Libby commutation merely highlight yet again the lawlessness, incompetence and dishonesty of the present executive branch leadership.

They also underscore Congress' lack of wisdom in blindly trusting the administration, largely rubber-stamping its legislative proposals, and essentially abandoning the congressional oversight function for most of the last six years. These are, after all, the same leaders who brought us the WMD fiasco, the unnecessary and disastrous Iraq war, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, warrantless domestic NSA surveillance, the Valerie Wilson leak, the arrest of Brandon Mayfield, and the Katrina response failure. The last thing they deserve is trust.

The sweeping, judicially unchecked powers granted under the Patriot Act should neither have been created in the first place nor permanently renewed thereafter, and the Act - which also contributed to the ongoing contretemps regarding the replacement of U.S. attorneys, by changing the appointment process to invite political abuse - should be substantially modified, if not scrapped outright. And real, rather than symbolic, responsibility should be assigned for the manifold abuses. The public trust has been flagrantly violated, and meaningful accountability is long overdue. Officials who have brought into disrepute both the Department of Justice and the administration of justice as a whole should finally have to answer for it - and the misdeeds at issue involve not merely garden-variety misconduct, but multiple "high crimes and misdemeanors," including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

I realize that this constitutionally protected statement subjects me to a substantial risk of unlawful reprisal from extremely ruthless people who have repeatedly taken such action in the past. But I am confident that I am speaking on behalf of countless thousands of honorable public servants, at Justice and elsewhere, who take their responsibilities seriously and share these views. And some things must be said, whatever the risk.

The views presented in this essay are not representative of the Department of Justice or its employees but are instead the personal views of its author.

John S. Koppel has been a civil appellate attorney with the Department of Justice since 1981.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Another DOJ Bushite Bites The Dust

Wonder what unholy truth this one is running from.....

Another Lawyer in Atty.
Firings Flap Quits
The Associated Press
Friday 29 June 2007


Washington - A Justice Department official who was considered as a possible replacement for one of several fired U.S. attorneys announced her resignation Friday.

Rachel Brand, the assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy, will step down July 9, the department said in a statement. The statement did not give a reason for her departure, but Brand is expecting a baby soon.

Brand was a member of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' leadership team. When officials were planning to fire U.S. attorneys in San Diego, San Francisco, Michigan and Arkansas, Brand was named as a possible replacement for Margaret Chiari in Michigan, according to documents released as part of a congressional inquiry.

The firings have led to congressional investigations, an internal Justice Department probe and calls from Capitol Hill for the resignation of Gonzales on the grounds that he politicized his office.

Brand previously served as associate counsel to President George W. Bush and helped shepherd Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito through Senate confirmation.

"Her considerable knowledge of legal policy is rivaled only by her passion for the issues and projects on which she worked during her tenure here at the department," Gonzales said in a statement. "I will miss her significant contributions as an adviser to me."

Brand recently testified before the House Judiciary Committee about the Justice Department's opposition to a bill that would shield reporters from being forced by prosecutors to reveal their sources.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Carol Lam resigned under threat of immediate firing.

Apparently, Bush's DOJ didn't want to give her anymore time to expand the Cunnigham investigation.

It all got quite nasty.

TPMmuckraker June 19, 2007 04:15 PM:

When a Justice Department official asked eight U.S. attorneys for their resignations last December, most of them went quietly (initially at least), agreeing to resign on relatively short notice and with no public fuss. But one U.S. attorney, Carol Lam in San Diego, had contentious private exchanges with Department officials about her end date.

An email released to Congress last week shows just how heated those discussions got. When Lam delayed announcing her date of resignation -- wanting more time to tend to several high profile cases, the expanded Duke Cunningham investigation among them --, Justice Department officials prepared to have the president fire her immediately.

DOJ Rethug Hackery Goes On.......Schlozman

The really scary thing about these people is they don't seem to realize the difference between right and wrong.

Schlozman admits boasting of Republican hires
Nick Juliano
Published: Tuesday June 5, 2007

As the latest Justice Department official to appear before congressional investigators, Bradley Schlozman admitted Tuesday afternoon to boasting about his success in hiring Republicans or conservatives into career attorney positions within the department.

Although he denied taking political considerations into account, the former acting US Attorney for the Western District of Kansas admitted under questioning from Sen. Chuck Schumer, R-N.Y., that he may have touted the new hires' conservative credentials in conversation. Schumer asked if Schlozman ever "boasted" about hiring Republican lawyers.

"I probably did make statements like that," said Schlozman, who also oversaw the Justice Department's Civil Rights Divison.

Schlozman also acknowledged receiving recommendations on potential hires from a top official in conservative lawyers' group the Federalist Society.

The politicization of hiring decisions within the Department of Justice -- whose career attorneys are expected to operate independent of partisan concerns -- is at the heart of an ongoing scandal surrounding the dismissal of at least nine US Attorneys.

Senators also grilled Schlozman about his role in handing down indictments in a voting fraud case just before the 2006 election. The indictments against voter-registration recruiters for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which works to increase registration among minority voters.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the committee's chairman, pressed Schlozman, who at the time was acting US Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, on why he went forward with the indictments even though Justice Department regulations recommend holding off on voter fraud prosecutions until after the election.

Leahy seemed flabbergasted by Schlozman's assertion that he didn't think the prosecutions would have any effect on the election. Critics argue that stringent voter-fraud prosecutions, especially leading up to an election, suppresses turnout among minority voters, who traditionally support Democrats.

The exchange grew heated when Schlozman tried to insist that the Justice Department does not time prosecutions based on election dates.

"Yes they do!" Leahy yelled, burnishing the "Red Book" of department regulations that contains the recommendation to avoid prosecutions around Election Day.

Testifying later in the day, Schlozman's predecessor as US Attorney in Kansas, Todd Graves, said he was aware of the Justice Department's reticence to filing election fraud charges so close to an election.

"It surprised me that (charges against ACORN organizers) had been filed that close to an election," Graves said.

Graves, who was asked to resign in January 2006, said he did not hold a grudge against anyone in the Justice Department. The Washington Post has reported that the circumstances surrounding Graves' dismissal mirror those of eight other US Attorneys who were fired for allegedly political reasons.

Graves told the committee he had been planning on leaving the US Attorney's office that year to pursue private practice and had assumed he had been asked to step down early to give
President Bush a chance to find his replacement before the 2006 congressional elections. He acknowledged, though, that Schlozman was not well-known in Missouri legal circles before he took over.

"I was sort of indifferent" about Schlozman, Graves told the committee. "I'd never heard of him before i talked to him on the phone."

A review of Schlozman's hires by the Boston Globe found a decidedly more conservative bent in the attorneys he hired. Half of the 14 lawyers he hired were members of either the conservative Federalist Society or the Republican National Lawyers Association. No career lawyers hired in the two years before Schlozman took over were members of such groups.

Schlozman gave conflicting accounts of whether he received recommendations from either group, and he told Schumer he had encouraged applicants to remove political information on their resumes on at least a few occasions, though he would not be specific.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., asked whether Schlozman ever received recommendations from a variety of conservative lawyers and department officials. He denied receiving job candidates from Monica Goodling, who admitted she "crossed the line" in injecting politics into hiring decisions, and former Gonzales Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson.

But Schlozman did admit receiving guidance from Leonard Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society.

"I may have gotten a recommendation from him for a candidate," Schlozman told Feingold, but he continued to offer no specifics.

Schlozman has been accused of injecting politics into hiring decisions within the Justice
Department's Civil Rights Division, which is in charge of ensuring equal access to the polls for all Americans. As RAW STORY reported last month, an internal Justice Department investigation was expanded to include an examination of hiring practices within the division he previously oversaw.

Career lawyers within the Civil Rights division have said Schlozman was a key figure in moving the division's mission away from its original mandate to increase access to voters who had traditionally faced discrimination. They allege Schlozman emphasized on voter fraud cases critics say are designed to disenfranchise the very voters civil rights laws are aimed at helping.

"It is typical in Republican administrations [that] the political appointees generally have a very different approach to the laws than the career attorneys in that office," Noel Francisco, who worked in the White House Counsel's office earlier in the Bush administration, told Legal Times.

"The attorneys in that office have a reputation for advancing a liberal interpretation of the laws."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Bush's "Monica" Problem

A sordid tale of real abuse of power that affects all Americans........

By Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas
Newsweek

June 4, 2007 issue - The United States Department of Justice has not always been above politics. John F. Kennedy, after all, appointed his brother and consigliere Robert to be attorney general. But the Justice Department is supposed to stand for the rule of law—to be the enforcer of the laws of the United States, not the place presidents go to get around the law. Independence is an important tradition in the columned limestone building on Constitution Avenue. It is worth remembering that before Richard Nixon could find someone at the Justice Department willing to fire the Watergate special prosecutor in 1973, he had to accept the resignations of the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, and the deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus. (Solicitor General Robert Bork finally did the deed.)

So consider these scenes from March 2004, described by two former top Justice officials who, like other ex-officials interviewed by NEWSWEEK, did not wish to be identified discussing sensitive internal matters. Attorney General John Ashcroft is really sick. About to give a press conference in Virginia, he is stricken with pain so severe he has to lie down on the floor. Taken to the hospital for an emergency gallbladder operation, he hallucinates under medication as he lies, near death, in intensive care. On the night after his operation, he has two visitors: White House chief of staff Andrew Card and presidential counsel Alberto Gonzales. As described in public testimony, they want Ashcroft to sign a document authorizing the government's top-secret eavesdropping program to go on. The attorney general, who thinks the program is illegal, refuses.

Back at the Justice Department, there is an equally extraordinary scene. Appalled by the White House's heavy-handed attempt to coerce the gravely ill attorney general, virtually the entire top leadership of the Justice Department is threatening to resign. The group includes the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum and the chief of the Criminal Division, Chris Wray. Some of them gather in the conference room of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who describes Ashcroft's bravely turning away the president's men from his hospital bed. The mood that night in the conference room was tense—and sober.

"This was a showdown," says a former senior Justice Department official who was there.

"Everybody understood the choice they were making and the gravity of the situation. Everybody knew what the stakes were." A different source estimated that as many as 30 top DOJ officials would have resigned.

The next day Comey is summoned to the White House to meet with President Bush. The details remain murky. But it takes two weeks before a compromise is reached—averting the spectacle of mass resignation by putting more legal controls on the eavesdropping program.
Gonzales, the president's lawyer and Texas buddy, went on to replace Ashcroft as attorney general. Today he is twisting slowly in the wind—a phrase from Watergate—facing a vote of no confidence from the U.S. Senate. Only the president's still unflagging support has kept him in office. Gonzales has been accused of politicizing the Justice Department by presiding over the firing of U.S. attorneys—apparently so they could be replaced by more dependably loyal partisans. While late-night comics have ridiculed Gonzales as clueless, congressional investigators and reporters have looked for more-sinister plots. For weeks, Washington awaited the testimony of Monica Goodling, who was described as the administration's enforcer of political purity inside the Justice Department.

Goodling's testimony last week was a soft sell. She did not seem like a cold-blooded commissar. On her Regent Law School Web site (class of '99), she comes across as sweetly naive, hoping to make the world "a better place" and urging everyone to "smile." Under oath (and given immunity from prosecution), she seemed shy and a little overwhelmed, more Rosemary Woods than Madame Defarge, although she never got rattled or resorted to histrionics. Wringing her hands beneath the witness table, she acknowledged that she may have improperly used political considerations to choose career prosecutors. "I crossed the line," she said, taking a deep breath, a Christian girl who succumbed to temptation. Carefully prepared by a shrewd lawyer, John Dowd, she suggested, almost in passing, that Gonzales may have crossed another line by discussing with her his account of how the U.S. attorneys were fired. The implication was that Gonzales had been subtly trying to coach her testimony. "I just thought maybe we shouldn't have that conversation," she said.

If Goodling's testimony helps to bring down Gonzales, a distinct possibility, President Bush will be exposed to more questions and dragged into a messy confirmation battle over Gonzales's successor. And so Goodling, like Nixon's unfortunate secretary Rosemary Woods, may be destined to be a footnote in history—but an important one.

Goodling admitted checking the political donations of some job applicants before hiring them for jobs that are supposed to be apolitical. While crass, her actions did not threaten to bring down the republic. Still, they are part of a broader and more troubling picture—a slow and stealthy erosion of the independence of the Justice Department. President Bush's personal involvement remains uncertain, as does the precise role of his chief political adviser, Karl Rove. Nonetheless, the clearest evidence of legal subversion comes not from congressional Democrats, but from once loyal Bush conservatives who worked at the Justice Department.

The trouble began shortly after 9/11, when the administration began looking for tough measures to head off another terrorist attack. The Justice Department has a relatively obscure department known as the Office of Legal Counsel. Typically staffed by brilliant young lawyers, the OLC opines on the legality and constitutionality of administration policies. One of the stars of OLC was a cocky young lawyer named John Yoo. After 9/11, Yoo began writing opinions giving the administration exceptional latitude to fight terrorism. Yoo's memos were used to justify both the secret eavesdropping program, which for the first time allowed the government to listen in on American citizens without obtaining a court warrant, and aggressive interrogation methods, like water boarding.

While easygoing and congenial on the surface, Yoo was a fierce bureaucratic infighter with a penchant for circumventing his superiors. Though all the top officials at Justice were conservative Republicans, Yoo seemed to regard them as political dolts. "He had this calm, unruffled, almost 'devil may care' attitude when he talked about issues that were extraordinarily sensitive," recalled a former Justice Department official. "He would sort of come flying by your office and say things like, 'We've done a little analysis, it's no big deal'." Only later, the official said, would he discover that Yoo had sent the White House an opinion authorizing some sweeping new—and constitutionally dubious—program.

Yoo was increasingly seen as a rogue operator inside the Justice Department. Officials were suspicious of his ties to David Addington, counsel to Vice President Cheney. The vice president's office took a hard-line view that the executive branch should not be trammeled in the war on terror by legislators and bureaucrats. Yoo was "out of control," recalled a former Ashcroft aide. Almost without exception, this conflict stayed behind closed doors. (Yoo declined to respond on the record, but he has told others that Ashcroft was fully briefed by him and approved his memos, and that his critics are now engaged in creative "Monday-morning quarterbacking.")

The bad feelings seemed to come to a head in 2003, when there was a vacancy to head OLC. At the White House, Gonzales wanted Yoo, and was so insistent that he took the matter to Bush. According to the former Ashcroft aide who did not want to openly discuss matters involving the president, Bush was surprised to learn that Ashcroft opposed Yoo as a renegade. A compromise was reached: a conservative lawyer named Jack Goldsmith was put in charge of OLC.

But the fight was really just beginning. Carefully reviewing Yoo's carte blanche memos, Goldsmith became convinced that the Justice Department had been signing off on memos approving initiatives, like wiretapping and water boarding, that were not legally supportable. Goldsmith took the matter to Ashcroft's deputy, Comey, and to Patrick Philbin, Comey's No. 2. Philbin's sterling conservative legal résumé tracked Yoo's—they had both clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas at the U.S. Supreme Court. But Philbin and Goldsmith were adamant. The Justice Department could no longer sign off on the wiretapping program, which had been expanded to wiretap more U.S. residents. "This was not ideological," recalled a former Ashcroft aide. "This was about the difference between pushing the limits to the edge of the line and crossing the line."

Bush's role has remained shadowy throughout the controversy over the eavesdropping program. But there are strong suggestions that he was an active presence. On the night after Ashcroft's operation, as Ashcroft lay groggy in his bed, his wife, Janet, took a phone call. It was Andy Card, asking if he could come over with Gonzales to speak to the attorney general. Mrs. Ashcroft said no, her husband was too sick for visitors. The phone rang again, and this time Mrs. Ashcroft acquiesced to a visit from the White House officials.

Who was the second caller, one with enough power to persuade Mrs. Ashcroft to relent? The former Ashcroft aide who described this scene would not say, but senior DOJ officials had little doubt who it was—the president. (The White House would not comment on the president's role.)

Ashcroft's chief of staff, David Ayres, then called Comey, Ashcroft's deputy, to warn him that the White House duo was on the way. With an FBI escort, Comey raced to the hospital to try to stop them, but Ashcroft himself was strong enough to turn down his White House visitors' request.

The morning after the scene at Ashcroft's hospital bed, the president met with Comey. "We had a full and frank discussion, very informed. He was very focused," Comey later testified, choosing his words carefully. But it wasn't until Bush had met with Mueller that the president agreed to take steps (still unspecified, but probably involving more oversight) to bring the eavesdropping program back inside the boundaries of the law. Mueller has never said what he told the president, but it is a good bet that he said he would resign if the changes were not made. Bush could not afford to see Mueller go, nor could he risk losing the rest of the Justice Department leadership over a matter of principle in an election year.

The confrontation over the eavesdropping program "seared" the relationship between the White House and Ashcroft's team at Justice, according to a former senior Justice official. Within months, many of the top officials had resigned or started making plans to do so. Solicitor General Ted Olson was the first to go that summer. On Election Day 2004, Ashcroft—sensing that he would not be asked to stay for a second term—personally wrote his letter of resignation, and Bush promptly tapped Gonzales to replace him. Comey announced his resignation the next summer.

In some ways, the squabbling over political appointments to the Justice Department seems small time, at least in comparison with the dramatic constitutional confrontations over wiretapping and torture. In her job as White House liaison to the Justice Department, Monica Goodling behaved more like a Chicago alderman than the usual Harvard- or Yale-trained legal scholars who fill those types of prestigious jobs for young lawyers. The Justice Department's inspector general is investigating whether Goodling broke civil-service laws, which require nonpartisan appointments for career prosecutors and immigration judges. Goodling is one of many recent graduates of conservative Christian schools like Regent Law School (founded by evangelist Pat Robertson) to come to Washington to work in the Bush administration. But she denied ever using a religious litmus test.

Goodling's only crime was her lack of subtlety, said Mark Corallo, the Justice Department's chief of public affairs under Ashcroft, and Goodling's onetime boss. "She probably was a little too overt about it," Corallo told NEWSWEEK. "But let's face it—the Democrats do this, too, they all do it. The idea that career employees are above politics is total crap. The so-called career employees are mostly liberal Democrats." He noted that in the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco, career employees refused for months to hang portraits of Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft.

Still, there were some former Justice officials who took a loftier view. One of them was Comey. Every day, he told the House Judiciary Committee, prosecutors must argue cases before juries of all political stripes; if they are seen as little more than political apparatchiks, it will be the death knell for many legitimate cases. To him, the charge that prosecutors were being picked for their politics was the "worst" allegation he had heard yet about the Justice Department. "If that's what was going on," he said, "that strikes at the core of what the Department of Justice is." Or was.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

No One Wants McNuly's Job

Maybe this old Lanterneer is just feeling cranky, at the moment, but it is growing ever more impossible to have any sympathy for any of the people involved in this DOJ mess, let alone, even, a grudging respect.

Junior's "compassionate conservatism" has left me feeling terribly uncompassionate.

Pity.


At DOJ, a Hard Job to Fill

McNulty's leaving, but the department's problems aren't going anywhere

By Jason McLure and Emma Schwartz
Legal Times
May 21, 2007

Few in Washington have envied Paul McNulty over the past three months. But with the deputy attorney general’s resignation last week amid the scandal over the firings of at least eight U.S. attorneys, there’s one person whose position might be even less desirable: McNulty’s yet-to-be-named successor.

“I’d rather trade places with Jose Padilla,” jokes Viet Dinh, a former senior Justice official under then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. Whoever does succeed McNulty in the Justice Department’s No. 2 post may not be facing a lifetime in prison, but he or she is certain to weather more than a few trials of a distinctly Washington variety.

McNulty’s replacement will confront a posse of hostile Democrats in Congress, serious questions over whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will remain in place, and a dysfunctional department demoralized by its current leadership. For a White House nearing the end of a second term and suffering from low approval ratings, the drive to find a successor before McNulty departs later this summer will not be easy.

“I think there are really quite a few people who wouldn’t take the job,” says Jamie Gorelick, who herself was deputy attorney general from 1994 to 1997 and is now in private practice at WilmerHale. “I think it’s a greatly devalued position right now in the eyes of many people.”

Regardless, McNulty’s resignation brings change. For the department, it could also mark a first step toward rehabilitating its beleaguered image and boosting morale. For Gonzales, it only heightens the pressure for his own resignation, but for McNulty, the departure is a lamentable capstone to what had been a highly successful government career as a congressional aide and prominent Justice Department official.

There is also a certain irony in the circumstances that have led to his departure, which both the White House and McNulty’s successor would do well to keep in mind in the coming months. McNulty easily won confirmation in February 2006, in large part because of an enormous store of political capital he’d amassed during his 11 years on Capitol Hill. A loyal Republican, McNulty nonetheless developed a great deal of credibility with Democrats who viewed him as an amiable and honest broker willing to listen. In the five years prior to becoming deputy attorney general, McNulty won plaudits as an effective leader in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, Va.

Yet the scandal that presaged McNulty’s resignation was fueled by a massive leadership failure and a near-total meltdown in the department’s relationship with Congress. “It is ironic that areas in which he does excel and which he has enormous experience and developed a very sophisticated savvy, that these would be the areas, ultimately, that produced this controversy and tumult that has led him and the department to where it is,” says Charles Cooper of Washington, D.C.’s Cooper & Kirk, a former senior Justice official in the Reagan administration. Nonetheless, he adds, “it’s just not possible to dislike Paul McNulty.”


A DIFFERENT DEPUTY

The first order of business for any successor will be to repair Justice’s shaky standing on the Hill — perhaps most importantly with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Its chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), is likely to use confirmation proceedings as leverage to extract more documents about the firings from the Justice Department and White House. Yet what’s needed to pacify Congress, say current and former Justice officials and congressional aides, isn’t a nominee practiced in the art of political jujitsu but someone with a deep background at Justice itself — preferably as a U.S. attorney or line prosecutor.

“They’d obviously want someone of experience and integrity to make the argument that a quick and nonadversarial confirmation is in their interest,” says Michael Carvin, a former senior Justice official who worked for the Bush campaign during the disputed 2000 election and is now a partner at Jones Day. The most credible pick would likely be a Justice Department insider with no fingerprints on the current scandal who could be viewed as independent of partisan politics.

Among the names that have been floated since McNulty announced he was stepping down are Kenneth Wainstein, the head of the National Security Division and the former U.S attorney in D.C.; Stuart Levey, a former top Justice official now at the Treasury Department; Michael Garcia, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York; Charles Rosenberg, the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia; Susan Brooks, the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Indiana; and Kevin O’Connor, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, who is also serving as Gonzales’ chief of staff.

Any replacement likely won’t be confirmed quickly, meaning that if McNulty departs in late summer, as he’s indicated, the Justice Department will need to name an acting deputy.

Historically, such replacements have been picked from within the ranks of Justice’s current Senate-confirmed officials. The Bush administration could simply avoid a bruising Senate confirmation process by appointing an acting replacement to fill out the remainder of the Bush administration — something the Clinton White House did with Bill Lann Lee in the Civil Rights Division.

Bush could also install someone through a recess appointment while Congress is out of session this summer. But an acting or recess appointee might be seen as weaker and less independent. It would also be viewed as a snub of the Democratic-led Congress, given that bypassing the Senate on U.S. attorney picks was a major impetus for the current scandal. Either way, a new deputy attorney general in a lame-duck administration will also have to accept that he or she will be focused mostly on restoring the department’s damaged reputation with Congress, the public, and its rank and file, and will have limited flexibility to introduce new programs.

As things currently stand, a new deputy would also have to contend with uncertainty over who the department’s other senior leaders will be. As the Senate moves towards a no-confidence vote on the attorney general, Gonzales’ tenure is hardly assured. The department’s No. 3 official, Acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer, is unlikely to win Senate confirmation anytime soon, given his own role in the firings.

The departure of McNulty also means that those in his inner circle — such as principal deputy William Moschella, chief of staff Michael Elston, and senior adviser Frank Shults — are likely to follow.


GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

Nor does it appear that by resigning, McNulty will extricate himself from the scandal. That point was driven home on May 15, less than a day after McNulty submitted his resignation letter, when Gonzales shifted his own tactics in responding to questions about the scandal by singling out McNulty as the Justice official most responsible for the firings. “At the end of the day the recommendation reflected the views of the deputy attorney general,” Gonzales told members of the National Press Club in a breakfast address televised on C-SPAN. “He signed off on the names.”

McNulty’s defenders point out that documents released by the Justice Department show he was largely uninvolved in the early phases of the firing plan, which documents and testimony have shown to have been primarily directed by Monica Goodling, the department’s White House liaison, and former Gonzales chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson. But, as Gonzales is now eagerly pointing out, McNulty is the direct supervisor of U.S. attorneys, and McNulty approved the final plan — even though e-mails released by Justice show he had no idea about the job performance of at least one of those chosen to be fired.

McNulty also bears a large share of responsibility for the Justice Department’s disastrous handling of the fallout from the firings. Most fatal was McNulty’s now-infamous assertion that the seven prosecutors sacked on Dec. 7 had been asked to go for “performance-related” reasons.

That statement, at a Feb. 6 hearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, was directly contradicted in most of the cases by the Justice Department’s own internal performance reviews. It also spurred most of the fired prosecutors to publicly defend themselves — four of them alleged that McNulty’s chief of staff, Elston, had attempted to discourage them from speaking out. Three of the fired prosecutors said they were offered a quid pro quo for their silence or threatened with retaliation.

The attack on the Bush administration’s own appointees proved a tipping point and led to the erosion of support for Justice’s leadership among Republicans. “I found it incredibly disingenuous of him to go up and slander these good people,” says Mark Corallo, who was a spokesman for then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and has emerged as an outspoken critic of McNulty.

Indeed, McNulty’s testimony angered three key constituencies in the scandal: the attorney general, Congress, and the fired U.S. attorneys. Gonzales, it would later emerge, was upset that McNulty had essentially disclosed the involvement of the White House in the firing of H.E. “Bud” Cummins III, the U.S. attorney in Arkansas. And members of Congress would note that, in testifying that Cummins had been fired to make way for an acolyte of White House political adviser Karl Rove, McNulty was contradicting an earlier assertion by Gonzales that the firings hadn’t been motivated by “political reasons.”

McNulty later acknowledged to congressional investigators that his testimony had been misleading. But he has placed the blame elsewhere: on Goodling, who, he told congressional investigators, provided inaccurate information to him when he was preparing to testify before the Senate in February. With Goodling’s scheduled appearance before the House Judiciary Committee on May 23 (for which she has been given immunity), McNulty could find the scandal hard to put behind him. Goodling’s version of events may contradict McNulty’s statements and spur further questions (or appearances) on the Hill.

The judiciary committees are also likely to try to exploit what looks to be an ever-widening rift between McNulty and Gonzales as well. McNulty’s stated reason for quitting was the “financial realities of college-age children.” Though few believe that to be the only motivation, his personal finances reflect his career in government service. As of 2005, McNulty, 49, had just $57,000 in savings and owed more than $500,000 for his house in Fairfax Station, Va. It’s unclear how significant a hurdle the controversy will present as McNulty searches for a job in the private sector. Some law firms and major corporations may want to steer clear of anyone connected to the scandal. What’s more, McNulty lacks any real trial experience.

But, says William Barr, general counsel of Verizon Communications Inc., McNulty has talents that make him eminently employable. McNulty’s more than two decades inside the Beltway (which began in the Democratic Party) have included stints crafting crime policy on the House Judiciary Committee, formulating Justice Department policy, running the transition team for the Bush administration in Justice, and leading the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia. There, he oversaw the prosecution of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh and the largely bungled effort to win a death sentence for Zacarias Moussaoui. If anyone would know about his prospects, it’s Barr.

When Barr left his post as attorney general in 1992, he brought his spokesman, McNulty, with him into the firm then known as Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge. “He has a rare combination of skills,” Barr says. “Very intelligent. Very articulate. He had good judgment and understood the political process.” In the short term, what McNulty may want more than anything is a piece of home. For him, that’s Grove City College, a small Christian school in western Pennsylvania. Both McNulty and his wife, Brenda, are alumni, and McNulty sits on the board of directors. Among this year’s 550 graduates is their daughter, Katy, a history major.

Last weekend, McNulty was scheduled to give the school’s commencement address, titled “The Essence of Greatness.” That’s a quality the Bush administration will be fortunate to find in his successor.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Bush Acted To Prevent A Mass Exodus from Justice

Obviously to prevent the NSA spying program from becoming public long before it finally did, Bush intervened when John Ashcroft, Robert S. Mueller and James Comey threatened to resign, en masse, because of their concerns about the legality of the Bush/Cheney domectic spying/data mining program which had been set up at the NSA, after it was deep-sixed at the Pentagon.

At the Pentagon, it was known as "Total Information Awareness."

Our concern is that neither the public nor the Congress are aware of all of the programs in place at the moment.

A cursory review of Gonzales testimony before congressional committees, after the NSA program was revealed in December 2005, makes it apparent that Alberto was choosing his words carefully, always aluding to "the program about which I am am testifying" in his cautious, lawyerly responses.

It seems that Senator Dianne Feinstein, D. Ca. picked up on Alberto's game and attempted to question him regarding any programs the president "may have" authorized. Alberto stammered, asked her to repeat the question, then gave her the same scripted answer. Of course, it made no sense, but it shut down the senator's limited time.

Lil' Alberto is really good at the rope-a-dope thing. It may work at congressional hearings but it won't work in a court of law.

Gonzales is a political hack with a law degree.

We don't have any great love lost for John Ashcroft around here, but the way he was treated by Bush's hit men, while he was very ill in the hospital, makes us all sick, and his strength in the situation does get him our respect.

President Intervened in Dispute Over Eavesdropping

By DAVID JOHNSTON


WASHINGTON, May 15 — President Bush intervened in March 2004 to avert a crisis over the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program after Attorney General John Ashcroft, Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. and other senior Justice Department aides all threatened to resign, a former deputy attorney general testified Tuesday.

Mr. Bush quelled the revolt over the program’s legality by allowing it to continue without Justice Department approval, also directing department officials to take the necessary steps to bring it into compliance with the law, according to Congressional testimony by the former deputy attorney general, James B. Comey.

Although a conflict over the program had been disclosed in The New York Times, Mr. Comey provided a fuller account of the 48-hour drama, including, for the first time, Mr. Bush’s role, the threatened resignations and a race as Mr. Comey hurried to Mr. Ashcroft’s hospital sickbed to intercept White House officials, who were pushing for approval of the N.S.A. program.
Describing the events as “the most difficult of my professional career,” Mr. Comey appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of its inquiry into the dismissal of federal prosecutors and the role of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. Several lawmakers wanted to examine Mr. Gonzales’s actions in the N.S.A. matter, when he was White House counsel, and cited them to buttress their case that he should resign.

Mr. Comey, the former No. 2 official in the Justice Department, said the crisis began when he refused to sign a presidential order reauthorizing the program, which allowed monitoring of international telephone calls and e-mail of people inside the United States who were suspected of having terrorist ties. He said he made his decision after the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, based on an extensive review, concluded that the program did not comply with the law. At the time, Mr. Comey was acting attorney general because Mr. Ashcroft had been hospitalized for emergency gall bladder surgery.

Mr. Comey would not describe the rationale for his refusal to approve the eavesdropping program, citing its classified nature. The N.S.A. program, which began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks and did not require court approval to listen in on the communications of Americans and others, provoked an outcry in Congress when it was disclosed in December 2005.

Mr. Comey said that on the evening of March 10, 2004, Mr. Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., then Mr. Bush’s chief of staff, tried to bypass him by secretly visiting Mr. Ashcroft. Mr. Ashcroft was extremely ill and disoriented, Mr. Comey said, and his wife had forbidden any visitors.
Mr. Comey said that when a top aide to Mr. Ashcroft alerted him about the pending visit, he ordered his driver to rush him to George Washington University Hospital with emergency lights flashing and a siren blaring, to intercept the pair. They were seeking his signature because authority for the program was to expire the next day.

Mr. Comey said he phoned Mr. Mueller, who agreed to meet him at the hospital. Once there, Mr. Comey said he “literally ran up the stairs.” At his request, Mr. Mueller ordered the F.B.I. agents on Mr. Ashcroft’s security detail not to evict Mr. Comey from the room if Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card objected to his presence.

Mr. Comey said he arrived first in the darkened room, in time to brief Mr. Ashcroft, who he said seemed barely conscious. Before Mr. Ashcroft became ill, Mr. Comey said the two men had talked and agreed that the program should not be renewed.

When the White House officials appeared minutes later, Mr. Gonzales began to explain to Mr. Ashcroft why they were there. Mr. Comey said Mr. Ashcroft rose weakly from his hospital bed, but in strong and unequivocal terms, refused to approve the eavesdropping program.

“I was angry,” Mr. Comey told the committee. “ I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me. I thought he had conducted himself in a way that demonstrated a strength I had never seen before, but still I thought it was improper.”

Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card quickly departed, but Mr. Comey said he soon got an angry phone call from Mr. Card, demanding that he come to the White House. Mr. Comey said he replied: “After what I just witnessed, I will not meet with you without a witness, and I intend that witness to be the solicitor general of the United States.”

Mr. Comey said he reached Theodore B. Olson, the solicitor general, at a dinner party. At the White House session, which included Mr. Olson, Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Comey and Mr. Card, the four officials discussed the impasse. Mr. Comey knew that other top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, wanted to continue the program.

Mr. Card expressed concern about mass resignations at the Justice Department, Mr. Comey said. He told the Senate panel that he prepared a letter of resignation and that David Ayres, Mr. Ashcroft’s chief of staff, asked him to delay delivering it so that Mr. Ashcroft could join him. Mr. Comey said Mr. Mueller was also prepared to quit.

The next morning, March 11, Mr. Comey went to the White House for a terrorism briefing. Afterward, he said Mr. Bush took him aside for a private 15-minute meeting in the president’s study, which Mr. Comey described as a “full exchange.”

At Mr. Comey’s urging, Mr. Bush also met with Mr. Mueller, who emerged to inform Mr. Comey that the president had authorized the changes in the program sought by the Justice Department.

“We had the president’s direction to do what we believed, what the Justice Department believed, was necessary to put this on a footing where we could certify to its legality,” Mr. Comey said. “And so we set out to do that and we did that.”

Mr. Comey said he signed the reauthorization in “two or three weeks.” It was unclear from his testimony what authority existed for the program while the changes were being made. Mr. Comey said he shelved his resignation plans that day when terrorists set off bombs on commuter trains in Madrid.

Mr. Comey left the Justice Department in August 2006, saying publicly that he had never intended to serve through the end of Mr. Bush’s second term. Privately, he has told friends that he grew weary of what he felt was increasing White House influence on the agency.

Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, deflected questions about Mr. Comey’s testimony, but defended the N.S.A. program. Mr. Snow also noted that the Justice Department placed the program under the supervision of a special intelligence court earlier this year, which department officials said placed the program on an even firmer legal footing.

“Jim Comey can talk about whatever reservations he may have had, but the fact is that there were strong protections in there,” Mr. Snow said. “This is a program that saved lives, that is vital for national security, and furthermore has been reformed in a bipartisan way that is in keeping with everybody.”

Spokesmen for Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Mueller, and the Justice Department declined to comment. Mr. Card did not respond to a reporter’s inquiries.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Add The Rule of Law to Bush Administration Casualties

Mr. Bush has made it clear that he is above the law, with hundreds of signing statements and other actions since he took office in 2001.

Now, his Justice Department, under the guidance of his chief political operative, Karl Rove, is doing all it can to make the entire justice system into a big joke for us all.

Who will trust any prosecution, now?


More stonewalling at Justice
Published May 15, 2007

The controversy over the removal of several U.S. attorneys last year has been spreading by the week. But Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales sees no reason to change his approach, which is modeled on Muhammad Ali's famous rope-a-dope. At a hearing last week before the House Judiciary Committee, he evaded precise answers and professed a poor memory, while insisting that the decision to sack the prosecutors was utterly sound. The apparent administration hope is that by denying and stonewalling, Gonzales can not only save his job but eventually exhaust all interest in the matter.

This is not good enough. Serious charges have been leveled that undermine public confidence in federal law enforcement, and they have not been convincingly rebutted. To continue to try to shrug off the issue will only deepen suspicions that this administration has taken justice out of the Justice Department.

The purge of prosecutors looks increasingly like an effort to turn U.S. attorneys into arms of the Republican National Committee. Some of the eight prosecutors known to have been fired last year had antagonized White House political adviser Karl Rove and GOP politicians by failing to pursue cases that could have affected last year's election outcome.

But recently, evidence emerged that there were more than eight. The department canned another U.S. attorney, Todd Graves of Kansas City, after he refused to go along with a voter-registration lawsuit filed against the state of Missouri -- a suit that was ultimately thrown out by a federal judge. And Justice Department officials interviewed by congressional aides report that Milwaukee's Steven Biskupic also made the hit list after Rove complained about his handling of vote fraud claims. But he was spared to avoid alienating then-House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.).

Now, vote fraud is a serious matter, and the administration is entitled to make it a priority on its law enforcement agenda -- just as it is entitled to make drug cases or white-collar crime a priority. But the evidence suggests that the department's concern had a fundamental partisan motive, which is not acceptable.

If you are still inclined to give Gonzales the benefit of the doubt on something he claims to have left mostly to subordinates, consider the testimony of his former deputy attorney general, James Comey.

He told the Judiciary Committee that he had a "very positive" opinion of most of the U.S. attorneys who were dismissed, and that only one of the firings was warranted.He was even more disturbed by charges that a former aide to Gonzales, Monica Goodling, used political criteria in the hiring of career prosecutors.

Besides being a possible violation of federal law, that alleged practice would have a terribly corrosive effect.

If it occurred, said Comey, "it deprives the department of its lifeblood, which is the ability to stand up and have juries of all stripes believe what you say and have sheriffs and judges and jailers -- the people we deal with -- trust the Department of Justice."

Americans apparently will get to hear from Goodling, who had refused to answer questions before Congress for fear of incriminating herself. Last week, a federal judge gave her immunity from prosecution and said she must testify if called. Members of Congress should also get to hear sworn testimony from Rove and other White House aides, which President Bush has refused to allow.

And it's anyone's guess whether the resignation of Deputy Atty. Gen. Paul McNulty, announced Monday, is connected to the controversy. McNulty had admitted giving Congress faulty information about the firings.

Because of these developments, public trust in the department is in serious jeopardy. The president and the attorney general now have the burden of demonstrating that the administration acted properly in this episode. So far, they show no sign of being able to.

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

DOJ Made Political Arm of, by and for the Bush Administration

It will be a long time before this mess can be remedied.

Once the Justice Department is suspected of being no more than a place for political partisans to find jobs, they are in no way qualified for, from which to take legal potshots at the opposition, the trust is gone, perhaps for generations and Defense lawyers will have a field day.

This is a severe blow to our Democratic Republic.

Colleagues Cite Partisan Focus by Justice Official
By Eric Lipton
The New York Times
Saturday 12 May 2007

Washington - Two years ago, Robin C. Ashton, a seasoned criminal prosecutor at the Department of Justice, learned from her boss that a promised promotion was no longer hers.

"You have a Monica problem," Ms. Ashton was told, according to several Justice Department officials. Referring to Monica M. Goodling, a 31-year-old, relatively inexperienced lawyer who had only recently arrived in the office, the boss added, "She believes you're a Democrat and doesn't feel you can be trusted."

Ms. Ashton's ouster - she left the Executive Office for United States Attorneys for another Justice Department post two weeks later - was a critical early step in a plan that would later culminate in the ouster of nine United States attorneys last year.

Ms. Goodling would soon be quizzing applicants for civil service jobs at Justice Department headquarters with questions that several United States attorneys said were inappropriate, like who was their favorite president and Supreme Court justice. One department official said an applicant was even asked, "Have you ever cheated on your wife?"

Ms. Goodling also moved to block the hiring of prosecutors with résumés that suggested they might be Democrats, even though they were seeking posts that were supposed to be nonpartisan, two department officials said.

And she helped maintain lists of all the United States attorneys that graded their loyalty to the Bush administration, including work on past political campaigns, and noted if they were members of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.

By the time Ms. Goodling resigned in April - after her role in the firing of the prosecutors became public and she had been promoted to the role of White House liaison - she and other senior department officials had revamped personnel practices affecting employees from the top of the agency to the bottom.

The people who spoke about Ms. Goodling's role at the department, including eight current Justice Department lawyers and staff, did so only on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Several added that they found her activities objectionable and damaging to the integrity of the department.

Ms. Goodling, who is under investigation by the department's inspector general and ethics office, as well as Congress, has declined to testify before a House panel, citing her Fifth Amendment privilege to avoid making self-incriminating statements. Her lawyer, John M. Dowd, declined to comment on Friday.

A judge in Federal District Court in Washington signed an order Friday to grant Ms. Goodling limited immunity, which will allow House investigators to compel her to answer questions.

Justice Department officials declined to respond to questions about Ms. Goodling's actions and refused to allow some agency employees to speak with a reporter about them.

"Whether or not Ms. Goodling engaged in prohibited personnel practices is the subject of an ongoing investigation," a written statement said. "Given the ongoing nature of the investigation, we are unable to comment on the allegations."

H. E. Cummins III, one of the fired prosecutors, said Justice Department officials should have recognized that Ms. Goodling's strategy was flawed from the start.

"She was inexperienced, way too naïve and a little overzealous," said Mr. Cummins, a Republican from Arkansas. "She might have somehow figured that what she was doing was the right thing. But a more experienced person would understand you don't help the party by trying to put political people in there. You put the best people you can find in there."

Ms. Goodling, now 33, arrived at the department at the start of the Bush administration after working as an opposition researcher for the Republican National Committee during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Her legal experience was limited; she had graduated in 1999 from Regent University School of Law, which was founded by Pat Robertson. Deeply religious and politically conservative, Ms. Goodling seemed to believe that part of her job was to bring people with similar values into the Justice Department, several former colleagues said.

She joined the department in the press office. Soon after, two lawyers said, Ms. Goodling complained that staff members in Puerto Rico had used rap music in a public service announcement intended to discourage gun crime.

"That is just outrageous," she told one department lawyer. "How could they use government money for an ad that featured rap music? That kind of music glorifies violence."

Ms. Goodling's shift to the executive office, which oversees budgets, management and performance evaluations of United States attorneys, occurred as officials in the White House and Justice Department were considering replacing a number of the top prosecutors. The first lists of possible targets had already been drawn up. But while those lists were being refined, Ms. Goodling, who would become deputy director of the executive office, was quietly helping make other changes.

In addition to making clear that she wanted Ms. Ashton out, a Justice Department employee still in that office said, Ms. Goodling took actions that encouraged a second experienced prosecutor, Kelly Shackelford, to move on. James B. Comey, who served as deputy attorney general from 2003 to 2005, said Ms. Ashton and Ms. Shackelford were excellent lawyers, whose politics he did not know nor would he ever have asked. Ms. Ashton and Ms. Shackelford declined to comment.

Ms. Goodling helped recruit new office managers who included John Nowacki, another Regent University graduate, who had little experience as a prosecutor, but had previously served as the director of legal policy at a conservative research group, the Free Congress Foundation.

She also insisted that she be given final approval in hiring assistant United States attorneys in offices where there was an interim chief prosecutor. Interim United States attorneys always had to seek permission for hiring, but the review was typically lower level and involved checking that sufficient slots were available, current and former employees said.

But Ms. Goodling's reviews delayed hiring decisions for weeks or months, creating problems in busy offices, and her concerns at times appeared to be for partisan reasons.

In one case, Ms. Goodling told a federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia that she was not signing off on an applicant who had graduated from Howard University Law School, and then worked at the Environmental Protection Agency.

"He appeared, based on his résumé, to be a liberal Democrat," Ms. Goodling told Jeffrey A. Taylor, the acting United States attorney in Washington, according to two of the department employees who asked not to be named. "That wasn't what she was looking for."

Mr. Taylor ultimately found a way to go around Ms. Goodling in hiring the applicant.

She appeared to take similar concerns about political leanings into account when making decisions about promotions and special assignments for Justice Department lawyers.

Robert Nicholson, a career lawyer from the Southern District of Florida, was asked some unusual questions when he applied for a post at the Justice Department headquarters, according to two department lawyers, including Margaret M. Chiara, the former chief prosecutor Western Michigan.

"Which Supreme Court justice do you most admire and why? Which legislator do you most admire and why? And which president do you most admire and why?" Mr. Nicholson was asked by Ms. Goodling, according to Ms. Chiara and the other lawyer, who asked not to be named.

Mr. Nicholson, who did not get the job, did not dispute the account, but he declined to comment, citing the investigation of Ms. Goodling.

In another instance, two Justice Department officials said, Ms. Goodling decided she did not like the applicants for one prestigious posting at department headquarters and decided to offer the job to David C. Woll Jr., a young lawyer who she knew was a Republican. In the interview, a department official said, she asked Mr. Woll if he had ever cheated on his wife. Mr. Woll declined to comment for this article.

Last month, a group of department employees wrote anonymously to Congressional investigators alleging that political considerations were influencing the selection of summer interns and applicants for the Attorney General's Honors Program, which hires promising lawyers right out of law school. The letter did not say if Ms. Goodling was involved in the process. Department officials declined to comment on the matter.

Hundreds of applications for the honors slots were winnowed by career lawyers, then reviewed by top political appointees, who removed many candidates, the letter said. "Most of those struck from the list had interned for a Hill Democrat, clerked for a Democratic judge, worked for 'liberal' causes, or otherwise appeared to have 'liberal' leanings," the letter said.

Ms. Goodling worked less than a year at the executive office, then moved to the attorney general's office, where she became the White House liaison and collected a $133,000 annual salary, according to federal records. She insisted that she retain her power to review hiring of assistant United States attorneys, two department employees said.

Her mandate over hiring expanded significantly in March 2006, when Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales signed a confidential memorandum delegating to her and D. Kyle Sampson, his former chief of staff, the power to appoint or fire all department political appointees other than the United States attorneys. That included interim United States attorneys and heads of the divisions that handle civil rights, public corruption, environmental crimes and other matters.

At the same time, Ms. Goodling, Mr. Sampson and Mr. Nowacki, according to e-mail released to Congressional investigators, were helping prepare the final list of United States attorneys to be dismissed. Ms. Goodling was also calling around the country trying to identify up-and-coming lawyers - and good Republicans - who could replace them, said one Justice Department official who received such a call.

Mr. Comey said that if the accusations about Ms. Goodling's partisan actions were true, the damage was deep and real.

"I don't know how you would put that genie back in the bottle, if people started to believe we were hiring our A.U.S.A.s (Assistant United States Attorneys) for political reasons," he said at a House hearing this month. "I don't know that there's any window you can go to to get the department's reputation back if that kind of stuff is going on."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Goodling's Hatred For Heathen Democrats

Ms. Goodling is a product of the Christian Right's plan to flood the justice system with fundies.

They have already taken over the U.S. Air Force, reportedly, turning it into the Air Farce, no doubt.

I've always been a live and let live kind of person, but these past years, that has been changing. Let me just say, that I will not bow down to these people and their twisted theology, which they, apparently, want to codify as U.S. law.

They want war? They will flat get it.

Justice officials detail Goodling’s partisan witchhunt.
The New York Times reports:

Two years ago, Robin C. Ashton, a seasoned criminal prosecutor at the Department of Justice, learned from her boss that a promised promotion was no longer hers.

“You have a Monica problem,” Ms. Ashton was told, according to several Justice Department officials. Referring to Monica M. Goodling, a 31-year-old, relatively inexperienced lawyer who had only recently arrived in the office, the boss added, “She believes you’re a Democrat and doesn’t feel you can be trusted.” […]

Ms. Goodling would soon be quizzing applicants for civil service jobs at Justice Department headquarters with questions that several United States attorneys said were inappropriate, like who was their favorite president and Supreme Court justice. One department official said an applicant was even asked, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”

Ms. Goodling also moved to block the hiring of prosecutors with résumés that suggested they might be Democrats, even though they were seeking posts that were supposed to be nonpartisan, two department officials said.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free