By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 13, 2007; 4:30 PM
The Justice Department identified five Bush administration insiders as replacement U.S. attorneys almost a year before most of the prosecutors were fired, contrary to repeated claims that no such list had ever been drawn up, according to documents released today.
E-mails sent to the White House in January and May of 2006 by D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, list potential replacements for U.S. attorneys in San Diego, San Francisco, Grand Rapids, Mich., and Little Rock, Ark.
The replacements on the list were all high-level administration insiders, including two who have gone on to different U.S. attorney postings: Jeff Taylor, now chief prosecutor in the District, and Deborah Rhodes, now U.S. attorney in Alabama. The others were Rachel L. Brand, currently head of the Office of Legal Counsel, and Daniel Levin, a former senior Justice and White House official, the memos show.
Justice officials have previously said that only Tim Griffin, currently acting U.S. attorney in Little Rock, was specifically identified as a replacement candidate for one of the fired prosecutors.
Seven U.S. attorneys were fired Dec. 7, and another was dismissed earlier in 2006, as part of a plan that originated in the White House to replace some prosecutors based in part on their perceived disloyalty to President Bush and his policies. The uproar over the removals has grown amid allegations that Republican lawmakers had improper political contact with prosecutors and assertions by Democrats that the firings may have been an attempt to disrupt public corruption investigations.
Sampson resigned as Gonzalez's top aide last month ahead of revelations that White House political officials helped direct the dismissals.
Also last month Sampson submitted prepared testimony to the Senate saying that, with the exception of the prosecutor in Little Rock, "none of the U.S. attorneys was asked to resign in favor of a particular individual who had already been identified to take the vacant spot."
During the same March 29 hearing, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked Sampson whether he had specific replacements in mind for seven of the prosecutors before they were fired.
"I personally did not," Sampson replied. "On December 7th, I did not have in mind any replacements for any of the seven who were asked to resign."
Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said today that the list of candidates "in no way contradicts the department's prior statements" because it "reflects Kyle Sampson's initial thoughts," was compiled long before the firings and was never followed through.
"With the exception of Griffin, none of those individuals was named as an interim U.S. Attorney in any of the eight districts," Roehrkasse said.
Roehrkasse said that Brand had initially expressed interest the U.S. Attorney's job in western Michigan after being approached by Sampson. But he said Brand later decided against it "and never entered into a formal selection process for the position."
Sampson's attorney, Bradford A. Berenson, released a statement today saying that the "testimony regarding the consideration of replacements was entirely accurate."
"In December 2006, when the seven U.S. Attorneys were asked to step down, no specific candidate had been selected to replace any of them, and Kyle had none in mind," Berenson said. "Some names had been tentatively suggested for discussion much earlier in the process, but by the time the decision to ask for the resignations was made, none had been chosen to serve as a replacement. Most, if not all, had long since ceased even to be possibilities."
The potential replacements are the latest contradiction to emerge from thousands of pages of Justice Department documents that have been turned over to the House and Senate, including a new batch of more than 2,000 pages delivered to Capitol Hill this morning.
The documents also underscore the extent of efforts to place Bush administration insiders in U.S. attorney's jobs around the country. About a third of the Justice Department's four dozen prosecutor appointments during the past two years went to former Justice or White House officials, including 10 senior aides to Gonzales, government records show.
The disclosures come as Gonzales continues preparations for pivotal testimony next Tuesday at the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Democrats plan to focus on the department's numerous misstatements about the firings and Gonzales's shifting explanations about his role in carrying them out.
Among other documents released today was a chart of U.S. attorneys distributed in February that notes whether each sitting prosecutor is a member of the Federalist Society, a coalition of conservative lawyers and legal scholars with close ties to the Bush administration.
Another document -- internal Justice Department "talking points" about the fired prosecutors -- shows that Justice officials used identical language to describe alleged shortcomings in immigration enforcement by two U.S. attorneys.
About Carol S. Lam of San Diego, the memo said: "Regardless of what was done by the office in this area, she failed to tackle this responsibility as aggressively and as vigorously as we expected and needed her to do." The same sentence was used for David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, except that "her" was replaced with "him."
The same document also includes criticism of Iglesias, a Naval Reserve officer, for allegedly traveling too much: "We expect our U.S. Attorneys, particularly those in critical districts, to be hands-on managers working hard to advance the work of the Department."
Six other U.S. attorneys are currently serving double duty as senior Justice officials in Washington. They include acting Associate Attorney General William W. Mercer, who is also the U.S. attorney in Montana, where the chief federal judge has demanded Mercer's removal.
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