[Vision2020] Gonzales Assailed by his Own Prosecutors

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

Contrary to what has appeared here and elsewhere in Bush's defense, these firing are unprecedented.  These are Bush's own appointees, who were targeted as not being loyal enough to Bush policies.  As Sunil will tell us, attorneys do not check their commitment to the rule of law and the Constitution at the door when they become federal prosecutors.

On another matter, this morning last night I heard a former Republican appointed justice official complain bitterly about how Gonzales' subordinates undermined her attempts to win a conviction against the tobacco companies.

Gonzales should of course resign.  He is the worst attorney general since Edwin Meese.

Nick Gier

March 29, 2007, The New York Times
Prosecutors Assail Gonzales During Meeting
By DAVID JOHNSTON and NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, March 28 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales endured blunt criticism Tuesday from federal prosecutors who questioned the firings of eight United States attorneys, complained that the dismissals had undermined morale and expressed broader grievances about his leadership, according to people briefed on the discussion.

About a half-dozen United States attorneys voiced their concerns at a private meeting with Mr. Gonzales in Chicago.

Several of the prosecutors said the dismissals caused them to wonder about their own standing and distracted their employees, according to one person familiar with the discussions. Others asked Mr. Gonzales about the removal of Daniel C. Bogden, the former United States attorney in Nevada, a respected career prosecutor whose ouster has never been fully explained by the Justice Department.

While Mr. Gonzales’s trip was part of a long-scheduled tour, he has been meeting in recent days with prosecutors in an effort to repair the damage caused by the dismissals. President Bush has backed Mr. Gonzales, but his tenure at the Justice Department may still be in peril as lawmakers in both parties have called for his resignation, questioned his credibility and raised doubts that he can lead the department.

His former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, is to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. In his prepared testimony, Mr. Sampson, who resigned two weeks ago, said the prosecutors were fired not for political reasons, but because they failed to follow the president’s priorities. He is likely to be closely questioned about the extent of Mr. Gonzales’s involvement in planning the firings.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department released more than 200 additional pages of e-mail messages and other documents and sent a letter to lawmakers saying that it had given Congress inaccurate information in an earlier letter that asserted that Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, had played no role in the removals.

In Chicago, some prosecutors accused Mr. Gonzales’s subordinates of operating as if the prosecutors were an obstacle to be side-stepped instead of a resource to be tapped in developing departmental policy, one person said.

At least one prosecutor complained that United States attorneys had been excluded from deliberations that led to a change in policy on prosecuting corporate crime, a person familiar with the discussions said. He and others would speak only on condition of anonymity because the discussions were confidential.

The policy change at issue happened in December, when Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty rolled back a requirement that corporate defendants waive the confidentiality of their discussions with lawyers to obtain leniency. Justice Department officials said Wednesday that some prosecutors had been involved in those deliberations.

Mr. Gonzales attended the Chicago meeting after abruptly cutting short a news conference in which he was asked about the dismissals and his own status. He reacted unemotionally to the criticism in the private session, responding that he had not previously heard of their specific complaints, including the McNulty memorandum.

Justice Department officials acknowledged that the Chicago meeting was more combative than recent sessions in Cincinnati, Denver, St. Louis and Houston. But they said the exchanges were intended to be candid conversations in which prosecutors could speak freely.

“These were not supposed to be public relations stunts,” said Tasia Scolinos, a department spokeswoman. “These were designed to elicit frank exchanges with the attorney general about what happened. To the extent that happened, that’s a good thing.”

The host of the Chicago meeting was Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney there, who recently successfully prosecuted I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former White House official, on perjury charges. Mr. Fitzgerald’s spokesman declined to comment on the meeting.

Several other prosecutors declined to discuss the meeting. Justice Department officials said the participants included Steven M. Biskupic and Erik C. Peterson of Wisconsin; Joseph S. Van Bokkelen of Indiana; Craig S. Morford of Tennessee; and James A. McDevitt of Washington State.

Behind the prosecutors’ complaints is what several officials have described as their anger about the seemingly arbitrary manner used to identify the United States attorneys selected for dismissal.

One recently released document that underscored their feelings was a chart prepared by Mr. Sampson in 2005 that ranked people as strong or weak performers and identified Mr. Fitzgerald, widely regarded as a highly able prosecutor, as undistinguished.

Officials said Mr. Gonzales had faced direct criticism in most of the meetings with the prosecutors.

At a meeting in Denver, attended by about a dozen mainly Western prosecutors, Mr. Gonzales was told that the dismissals had cast a cloud over all the United States attorneys’ offices, not only over the prosecutors who were removed. But at that meeting, according to one official briefed on the discussion, prosecutors focused on steps to improve communications between the attorney general and United States attorneys.

The criticism from prosecutors in the Justice Department’s field offices comes as the uproar over the dismissals appears to also have eroded confidence in Mr. Gonzales at the agency’s headquarters, where top officials have been focused for weeks on little else.

Mr. Gonzales and Mr. McNulty, who are expected to testify before Congress in two weeks, are said by officials to have maintained a working relationship, but their staffs have feuded over who is to blame.

Some of Mr. Gonzales’ aides have blamed Mr. McNulty for inflaming the issue by testifying on Feb. 6 that one of the ousted prosecutors, H. E. Cummins III, was removed for no reason. Mr. McNulty’s aides have blamed Mr. Sampson and Monica Goodling, the liaison to the White House, for failing to disclose their conversations with the White House before the removals.

In Washington, one Republican lawmaker said he was less concerned with Mr. Gonzales’s personal situation than how it was affecting the day-to-day performance of the Justice Department.

“I can’t imagine a department being more demoralized with what’s going on there,” said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Specter said in an interview that Mr. Gonzales needed to demonstrate his candor about the dismissals and assure people about his competence to retain his post.

“The Justice Department is too important to the country to have it hanging on the edge of a cliff,” he said.

A senior Justice Department official said Wednesday that the uncertainty over Mr. Gonzales’s future and the accusations from Congress were having a dispiriting effect.

“It’s a very difficult time,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Policy and personnel decisions were being put off because of the uncertainty, the official said, adding, “It’s not a time to get into a battle with someone.”

Another official said that relatively few officials had been directly affected by the dismissal issue and that the agency’s work had continued without interruption.

Beleaguered presidents often seek refuge in foreign travel where they can be seen on a different stage. Mr. Gonzales has been engaged in his own version of that practice in recent days, setting off around the nation to deliver speeches about the department’s efforts to curb child pornography, meet with prosecutors and appear before friendly audiences.

On Wednesday, he seemed buoyed by a warm reception in his home state from about 1,000 people at the annual luncheon of the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

As his staff kept the news media at a distance, Mr. Gonzales was greeted with cheers and applause.

“Because of all the great needs that exist in our community, I have to remain focused on doing my job,” he said. “Doing my job is serving the American public.”

He said he had received hundreds of messages from people who said they were praying for him, adding, “I can’t tell you how much that has meant to me and my family.”

The audience rewarded him with warm laughter when he said: “For many of us, getting where we are today was going down a bumpy road. I’m traveling down a bumpy road these days.”

Eric Lipton contributed reporting.