Time to Go, Mr. Gonzales

By Ruth Marcus

Wednesday, March 14, 2007; A15

"I believe in accountability," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales proclaimed yesterday at a news conference that was a self-serving masterpiece of passive voice and unpersuasive platitudes. "Like every CEO of a major organization, I am responsible for what happens at the Department of Justice. I acknowledge that mistakes were made here. I accept that responsibility. And my pledge to the American people is to find out what went wrong here, to access accountability and to make improvements so that the mistakes that occurred in this instance do not occur again in the future."

Is there anyone left -- seriously, is there a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- who has confidence in Gonzales's capacity to fix this mess? Is there anyone who accepts Gonzales's CEO analogy -- and thinks that a sentient board of directors wouldn't have fired him long ago?

Let's assume Gonzales's good faith: that he truly is upset about what happened on his watch, just as he was upset last week about the FBI's cavalier mishandling of its authority to issue "national security letters," and wants to make things right.

There is no reason to believe that he is capable of making a change. The portrait of the Gonzales Justice Department that emerges from the e-mails released yesterday, and from the attorney general's own comments, is of an agency overseen by an absentee landlord, chronically clueless about what's happening around him.

This is a man whose memory is so foggy that George W. Bush -- not exactly Mr. Detail -- has a sharper recollection of their conversations than the attorney general does. The president, according to White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, told Gonzales that Republicans were complaining about prosecutors failing to aggressively pursue voter fraud. Gonzales doesn't recall the conversation.

I'm sorry, is there somebody he's paying more attention to than the president of the United States?

At his I'm-accountable-but-I-didn't-know-anything news conference yesterday, Gonzales said he knew the White House had suggested canning all 93 U.S. attorneys, rejected that idea and then left things to his chief of staff. "I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on," he said. "That's basically what I knew as the attorney general."

How reassuring. But, a reporter asked, how could it be that his chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, was figuring out "which U.S. attorneys to . . . let go and you not know?"

Answer: "Well, again as -- I accept responsibility for whatever happens here in this department. But I have 110,000 working in the department. Obviously, there are going to be decisions made that I'm not aware of all the time."

Translation: "I'm going to tell you I'm responsible, because that's what they tell me I have to say. But of course I'm not. It's all Kyle Sampson's fault. I'm hoping that if I say I'm accountable often enough, no one will actually hold me accountable."

Ousting a group of top federal prosecutors isn't some minor, inconsequential act. It's the sort of thing that a responsible attorney general would be deeply immersed in. Gonzales's depiction of his own marginality is the most damning evidence of his unfitness for the job.

The precise non-mistake mistake that Gonzales copped to yesterday was sharing "incomplete" -- this is Gonzales-speak for wrong -- information with Congress. Think about this: Gonzales first testified about the U.S. attorney firings on Jan. 19. His No. 2, Paul McNulty, testified on Feb. 6. Assistant Attorney General William Moschella testified March 6.

And it wasn't until this week that Justice finally figured out it hadn't figured out the whole story? If that's true -- and I'm not sure which would be worse -- why should anyone believe this crowd is capable of getting its congressional story straight in the future?

Meantime, the pages of e-mails released yesterday show how -- while Gonzales hummed happily above the fray -- his lieutenants carefully choreographed the firings, down to making sure that the relevant senators were called at precisely the same time the ousted prosecutors were to be informed of their fates, and delaying the moment of truth until they left a meeting of federal prosecutors "to reduce chatter."

When Arkansas senators balked at installing Karl Rove protege Tim Griffin in the U.S. attorney's job there, Sampson recommended that the department "gum this to death." If the senators ultimately balk, he said, "then we can tell them we'll look for other candidates . . . and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in 'good faith' of course." Of course.

In his now famous "overblown personnel matter" column in USA Today last week, Gonzales wrote, "While I am grateful for the public service of these seven U.S. attorneys, they simply lost my confidence." (Or did he mean Kyle Sampson's confidence?)

It's time -- past time -- for the president to say the same, perhaps more quietly and more politely, about his friend, his counselor and his failed attorney general.

marcusr@washpost.com

Senate Republicans Deliver Sharp Criticism of Gonzales; New Attorney General Soon?

Senate Republicans Deliver Sharp Criticism of Gonzales
Senators Say Attorney General Fired Prosecutors Without Explanation

By Paul Kane and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 8, 2007; 3:36 PM

Senior Senate Republicans today delivered scathing criticism of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales for his handling of the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, joining Democrats in chagrin that the prosecutors were dismissed without adequate explanation.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested that Gonzales's status as the nation's leading law enforcement officer might not last through the remainder of President Bush's term, pointedly disputing the attorney general's public rationale for the mass firings.

"One day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later," Specter said at a committee hearing where a new round of subpoenas to the Justice Department was considered.

After the meeting, Specter declined to elaborate on that remark, but told reporters that most of the blame for the ongoing controversy rests with the attorney general. "It's snowballing, mostly with the help of the Department of Justice," he said.

Two of the Justice Department's most vocal defenders on the issue, Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), also had sharp words for senior Justice Department officials who attacked the credibility of the prosecutors publicly by saying they performed poorly at their jobs.

"Some people's reputations are going to suffer needlessly," Kyl said. "Hopefully we can get to the point where we say, 'These people did a great job.'"

Sessions said the firings were handled in an "unhealthy" manner. "They really should have talked with these people in far more detail," he added.

Kyl and Sessions said, however, that the evidence does not yet point to a widespread conspiracy to oust the prosecutors for political motives. Both said it was within Bush's right to ask for the resignations of the eight prosecutors.

The remarks from a trio of top Republicans marked the strongest criticism so far from Bush administration allies in the controversy. Senior Democrats on the panel continued to sharply criticize the firings.

The eight prosecutors were dismissed last year, seven of them on Dec. 7. The Justice Department has said that all but one were fired for "performance" issues, including failing to adhere to Bush administration policy on a number of matters. The other was removed to make way for an ally of White House political adviser Karl Rove.

One of the U.S. attorneys, David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, has charged that he was let go after a conflict with Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) and Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R.-N.M.) over a corruption investigation involving Democrats that his office was pursuing. He has testified to Congress that both called him shortly before the 2006 election to pressure him on the timing of indictments. Domenici and Wilson have acknowledged phoning Iglesias but said they were not trying to sway his investigation.

Specter said that an op-ed article by Gonzales that appeared in USA Today yesterday, in which he said the firings were an "overblown personnel matter," only served to exacerbate the problem. "I hardly think it's a personnel matter, and I hardly think it's been overblown," he said.

He read portions of the Gonzales article, pausing to critique each one. He added that the suggestion that the attorney general had lost "confidence" in the prosecutors needlessly suggested they performed poorly at their jobs.

"There will always be a black mark against them," Specter said.

Committee Republicans objected to issuing subpoenas to force the testimony of Gonzales's inner circle of aides, instead arguing that the panel should continue to negotiate for their testimony on a voluntary basis. Democrats agreed with that idea, saying they would be willing to conduct interviews in private if that produced information they are seeking about the decision-making process behind the mass firing.

Also today, a liberal-leaning advocacy group formally requested a third ethics investigation in the controversy. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked the House ethics committee to investigate allegations that a top aide to Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) called the U.S. attorney in Seattle to inquire about a vote fraud case.

Former U.S. attorney John McKay said Hastings's chief of staff called him shortly after a hotly disputed gubernatorial race inquiring about the pending inquiry, but McKay said he cut the call short. Hastings and his former aide, Ed Cassidy, have characterized the call as routine and appropriate.

CREW's executive director, Melanie Sloan, said that Hastings, ranking member of the House ethics panel, "attempted to use the criminal justice system to interfere with a gubernatorial election."

Hastings and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio), who chairs the House ethics committee, declined comment. They said they were forbidden from talking about any internal issues on the panel, which is officially called the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

CREW has also filed requests for probes of Domenici and Wilson. The Senate Ethics Committee has announced a preliminary inquiry into the Domenici call.