In a long term psychotherapy, there are moments when one learns something new, and there follows a period of "working through" in which each element of the history has to be reconsidered in light of this new information or changed perspective. The result is a new narrative. The facts are often unchanged, but their meaning may be radically altered. The "work" part of "working through" is accurate – both therapist and patient have become uncomfortable with the previous version of the story, and have to "work" to get the narrative to make sense again.
I woke up this morning with that kind of altered perspective feeling. Our second dog, a stray who adopted us can stay inside at night now, but at some very early moment hears the call of the wild and needs to return to his forest. Usually, one of us lets him out and goes back to bed [while our first dog, a domesticated princess, snoozes away]. This morning, instead of going back to bed, I find myself sitting in front of a computer re-reading Murray Waas’ article. Is it a trick? Is he being set up? No, he’s not that kind of reporter; and he quotes Senior Administration Officials; and he has the documents. No, it’s true.
What does it mean? Alberto Gonzales signed over hiring and firing at the Department of Justice to two young political operatives – his Chief of Staff and the DOJ Liason to the White House, retaining only figurehead approval to keep things Constitutional. That essentially puts the line of authority for the DOJ staff directly below the White House. Is that really a change? They’ve always said the U.S. Attorneys "serve at the pleasure of the President." Yes, it really is a change. It cuts out any input from the senior staff in the Department of Justice. The Federal Prosecutors are no longer legal, they’re political. So, who is above the two DOJ Operatives?
Time to revisit the narrative [after going back to bed and sleeping on it for a bit]:
The Problem
Karl Rove is a political animal. His job is to get Republicans elected and keep them elected. It’s what he does. And the one thing that’s been the thorn in his side has been the scandals: Plame, Libby, Cunningham, Abramoff, Ney, Lewis, etc. What’s the center of the problem?
It’s the Department of Justice and the Federal Prosecutors, plain and simple. John Ashcroft really messed up and somehow Patrick Fitzgerald got appointed. Nothing much could be done about it. So now Al is in place, but the scandals just keep coming. Something needs to happen to get all these scandals off of the radar scope. They’re killing us at the polls. We could just replace them all! Harriet…
Phase 1 [January 2006]
Kyle Sampson, Alberto Gonzales’ Chief of Staff, balked at replacing all the U.S. Attorneys, particularly at midterm.
It would disrupt the DOJ for one thing, but it would make an enormous amount of noise. Maybe it would be better to replace the ones that are problems for us. There are problems like Home-State Senator nominations and Senate conformation, but there are some things we could do. We could offer them a chance to resign and save face rather than be fired, for one thing.
We know that’s exactly what did happen. Any number of U.S. Attorneys suddenly resigned throughout the year unexpectedly. No need to document that – it’s an established fact. Who were they? People in States where just a little voter harassment [the voter-fraud plan] might well change the outcome.
But then there were the overly zealous types who were prosecuting Republicans left and right – stars. We can’t just intimidate them. They’ll scream to the high heavens. We need a new plan…
Phase 2 [March 2006]
There has to be some way to appoint our people that doesn’t make waves in the Press or in the DOJ. We need to find a way to get around the Home-State Senatorial nominations and around the Senate confirmation. We need to be able to directly appoint our people quietly. Here’s what we’ll do…
So, we now learn that Alberto Gonzales delegated the hiring and firing of the U.S. Attorneys to Kyle Sampson and the DOJ White House Liason. That gets around the ripples inside the DOJ, and it insulates the Attorney General from charges of being
political, he’s just being
administrative. Next came the second part of the two pronged plan – sticking a piece in the Patriot Act that gets around
both the Home-State Senators and the Senate confirmation process – the AG appoints Interims and we’ll just never get around to nominating anyone. That part of the plan came off without a hitch. The Congress didn’t even know it was in the Patriot Act.
Bingo! Now let’s get Monica Goodling over there with Kyle. She knows the score and is a real go-getter. And, by the way, we’ve got to shut down this Indian thing. We can’t take any more Abramoff fallout…
Phase 3 [November 2006]
The best time to move is right after the midterms. That’ll keep it off the radar. Fitzgerald’s a lost cause. We’ll have to just ride that one out. Heffelfinger’s out of the way. Get to work on Debra Wong Yang with Lewis and Paul Charlton with Renzi. Stall Carol Lam until then. And, by the way, don’t forget the Indian thing…
And so by November, they were ready to move right after the midterm elections. They’d gotten a few more resignations and gotten lucky when a couple of U.S. Attorneys won State elections. Monica Goodling had helped with planning, strategizing, and un-funded the main worker-bee in the Native American Issues Subcommittee, Leslie Hagen. Margaret Chiara had put up a fuss and had to be told she was being replaced, but she was being quiet. Kyle Sampson’s Action Plan looked good. He’d covered what to tell the Attorneys and what to tell the Senators. He’d even solicited nominations from the Senators [keeping them in the dark about the new endless terms for the Interims]. It was a go for right after the election [maybe on a Friday?].
But then there was a glitch. They lost the midterm elections – even the Senate. So it was a new ball game. Karl Rove was in a big-time double bind. On the one hand, firing of the U.S. Attorneys was going to be a lot harder now – more likely to hit the radar. On the other hand, losing the election made getting on top of things at the DOJ even more important – 2008 was already looking bad. So the plan went on hold for a bit. Kyle Sampson made the first of two revisions to adapt to this new challenge. He added a step:
Prepare to Withstand Political Upheaval: U.S. Attorneys desiring to save their jobs (aided by their allies in the political arena as well as the Justice Department community), likely will make efforts to preserve themselves in office. We should expect these efforts to be strenuous. Direct and indirect appeals of the Administration’s determination to seek these resignations likely will be directed at: various White House offices, including the Office of the Counsel to the President and the Office of Political Affairs; Attorney General Gonzales and DOJ Chief of Staff Sampson; Deputy Attorney General McNulty and ODAG staffers Moschella and Elston; Acting Associate AG Bill Mercer; EOUSA Director Mike Battle; and AGAC Chair Johnny Suitton. Recipients of such "appeals" must respond identically:
And he adjusted the Attorney list [presumabely removing people that might raise a stink]. But by November 15th, he was good to go. He wrote Harriet Miers and sent her his new plan [Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling were a hell of a team]. Here’s the exchange between Kyle Sampson and Harriet Miers:
Well, it didn’t fly quite so fast as Kyle thought it might. We don’t exactly know what happened in the 18 day gap in the emails. They added some in a later dump, but they don’t tell the story – more like "fillers." But it’s not too hard to guess what went on from how it played out. Rethinking Alberto Gonzales secret DOJ Memo that we just learned about, they had to run it by the AG. So they called a meeting on November 27th and got that out of the way. And Harriet Miers worried that they needed to run it by the President. After all, they were going to say that these U.S. Attorneys served at the "pleasure of the President." It was a tough time for such things to be going on. They’d lost the election. The President was off travelling around the world and hard to get to. Things had suddenly gotten a lot more risky. Sampson clearly knew what might be coming and added his warning step.
They got the CYA meeting with Gonzales out of the way and waited on the White House. There must have been some back and forth, because there were further changes in the plan. Bill Kelly, Miers’ Assistant White House Counsel, was originally going to smooth the Senator’s feathers. That was changed. Gonzales was put in charge of calling Senator Kyl who apparently liked Paul Charlton. Kelly was still in charge of calling the other Republicans. Karl Rove was to call the Bush Republican "Leads" in the States with no Republican Senator [the Democratic Senators were, of course, out of the loop]. And they added an Attorney, Kevin Ryan, a poor performer. My guess is they added him to make it look administrative.
Okay. They’ve run it by the AG at Justice [it’s part of that Memo]. We’ve got things in place for calling the Senators and Leads. Kyle’s got people straight at the DOJ ["not any specific person at the White House or the Department of Justice"]. When the Chief gets back, I’ll give him a heads-up without details. He has to know, but he can’t be involved.
So, on December 4th, the go ahead finally came [from Bill Kelly]:
And now we know who runs the DOJ [and why][and how][and when]:
- WH leg[al] – Harriet Miers and Bill Kelly
- political – Karl Rove
- communications – (not clear to me)
We have no way of knowing if this is a true narrative [yet], but it’s a lot closer than it was a month ago. And it’s close enough for me to let go of for a while.
I expect Harry’s going to get some cold shoulders for speaking the truth, but he’s right, both about the war and right to say what he said. Being right doesn’t always win you friends. Personally, I don’t see the war is lost as a tragedy. I think the tragedy is that we fought it in the first place, and that we kept at it even when we knew it was unjust. Had we won this war in the way Bush talks about winning, the Bush Doctrine of Unilateral Pre-emptive War and American Dominion would have become an entrenched policy that would have created even more mayhem and tragedy in the world than the war we’ve lost.
Respectfully, as your former commander on the ground, your administration did not listen to our best advice. In fact, a number of my fellow Generals were forced out of their jobs, because they did not tell you what you wanted to hear — most notably General Eric Shinseki, whose foresight regarding troop levels was advice you rejected, at our troops’ peril.
Congresswoman Holtzman’s article goes on to make the issues very clear – including a credible list of the possible actionable crimes in the U.S. Attorney scandal. It’s coming down to a standoff, and Alberto Gonzales heads back to Congress week after next for another round. My read on things after reading this article is that Bush is going to hold onto the Attorney General no matter what happens. It’s the only way to avoid the Nixon trap. And, I might add, it’s the only thing that Bush does really well – be a stubborn ass. The only way to get the AG out of office will be to impeach him [which may ultimately be doable at the rate Gonzales is going]. [Thanx to Peg for the tip about this article]. 
