Time: Inside the Scandal at Justice

[maddezmom]

It takes a lot to get mild-mannered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hot under the collar. That's why it was telling when word went out to his top aides in February that something had set him off. "The Attorney General is extremely upset with the stories on the U.S. Attorneys this morning," his spokesman Brian Roehrkasse wrote in an e-mail. The papers that day were full of news about the testimony that his deputy Paul McNulty had given to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the firing last year of eight U.S. Attorneys. Gonzales had previously suggested that all of them had been dismissed for poor performance, but McNulty allowed that at least one of them, Bud Cummins of the Eastern District of Arkansas, had been removed to make room for Tim Griffin, a Karl Rove protégé who had headed the opposition-research operation at the Republican National Committee. Gonzales was upset, his former chief of staff Kyle Sampson has told congressional investigators, that McNulty's revelation put "in the public sphere" the uncomfortable fact that the White House helped engineer the dismissal.

That went right to the real question that is being exposed as the controversy over last year's purge of U.S. Attorneys enters its fifth month: Did Gonzales, the consummate George Bush loyalist, politicize the workings of one of the most sensitive and traditionally independent agencies in government, the Department of Justice (DOJ)? While it's true the President has always picked an ally to run the department and populated its upper echelons with political appointees, the bureaucracy has fiercely guarded a unique and proud tradition of insulating from partisanship those who are charged with making sure that the laws of this country are fairly and evenly enforced. Though every Attorney General has faced pressure to use the DOJ's awesome power to punish the President's enemies and help his allies, critics inside the department and out say Gonzales has yielded to it more than most.

At a minimum, he has handed an extraordinary amount of authority, particularly over hiring and firing, to young, lightly credentialed and fiercely partisan aides who appear to have put politics ahead of the public interest. One of those aides was Sampson, 37, who assembled the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired and who was himself bucking for a U.S. Attorney post, despite the fact that he had limited experience as a prosecutor. The other was Monica Goodling, 33, the department's White House liaison, the product of a law school where more than half her graduating class flunked the bar exam on the first attempt. A March 2006 memo signed by Gonzales delegated authority to the two of them over the hiring and firing of 135 non-civil service Justice Department staffers. Amid the scandal, both have resigned.

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Seven of the eight fired had one thing in common: they were in districts where there were close electoral contests. In New Mexico, for instance, David Iglesias was fired after two Republican lawmakers, Senator Pete Domenici and Congresswoman Heather Wilson — who was in a tight House race — called him to inquire about a corruption investigation that could have hurt Wilson's Democratic opponent. Iglesias claims Domenici went so far as to ask whether charges would be filed before the November balloting. A few weeks later, after complaints from Rove reached Sampson, Iglesias' name was added to the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired. When Iglesias was booted with the others on Dec. 7, William Kelley, a deputy to then White House counsel Harriet Miers, sent Sampson an e-mail saying that Domenici's chief of staff "is happy as a clam" about the move. A week later Sampson replied that "Domenici is going to send over names tomorrow (not even waiting for Iglesias's body to cool)." Both Domenici and Wilson have denied acting improperly.

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