1 Boring Old Man

In Step 1, Sampson talked about what to say to the Senators and "Political leads." It included, "We will look to you, Senator/Political lead, to recommend candidates that we should consider for appointment as the new U.S. Attorney." This implies that appointments would be made and passed on to the Senate for confirmation [and that the Congressmen didn’t really know that the procedure had been quietly changed in the renewed Patriot Act to allow AG appointed Interims to serve indefinitely].

In Step 2, he talks about what to say when firing the U.S. Attorneys which includes, "The Administration … has determined to give someone else the opportunity to serve as U.S. Attorney in your District for the final two years of the Administration." He goes further, "We … intend to have a new Acting or Interim U.S. Attorney in place by January 31, 2007." Sounds to me like that "someone else" is the Interim who will serve from January 31, 2007 until Bush is out of office.

Then come Step 3 [above] which clearly says, "(granting ‘extensions’ will hinder the process of getting a new U.S. Attorney in place and giving that person the opportunity to serve for a full two years)." Here, it is simple stated that the Interim person put in place is going to be there for the duration.

What they’re saying in the hearings is a patent lie. They were clearly going to appoint Interims to serve for the duration, but were asking for nominations in hopes that the Senators didn’t know a change had been made in the Patriot Act without their knowledge. And why? To have AG appointed U.S. Attorneys in place in Karl Rove’s targeted States – "Swing States" – conscious and willful manipulation of Congess for partisan gain – pure and simple. Thus, stick to our  alibi  planned story, "Recipients of such ‘appeals’ must repond identically."

QUESTION: Was the President disappointed in the testimony?
MS. PERINO: Is the President? No.
QUESTION: But what about the fact that even Republicans now are coming out and calling for the Attorney General to resign?

MS. PERINO: There is no doubt that there were many members from both sides of the aisle who had expressed frustration over the confusing remarks from the initial responses on this matter. And that frustration had built up over many weeks. The President believes that the Attorney General answered all of their questions honestly and forthrightly. I can understand there are some people who still don’t want to support the Attorney General; that is their right. But he has done a fantastic job at the Department of Justice. He is our number one crime fighter. He has done so much to help keep this country safe from terrorists. He has worked determinately to prevent predators from attacking our children. He has worked — they have a fantastic record of fighting corruption in government and in keeping gang violence off our streets. And I could go on and on, but I think that following the hearing and following the tension that was in the room, I think on this new day I think — hopefully people will be able to take a step back, realize that there was no credible evidence of wrongdoing, that the Attorney General has apologized for how it was handled, and that he has a job to do, and he’s been doing it very well. And the President has full confidence in him.

Ari Fleischer, Matt McClellan, Tony Snow, and now Dana Perino. They come out day after day and present a view of what goes on in George Bush’s mind that is surely distant from what he thinks. They present how he’d like to be seen [by third graders]. In their shared dramatization, he’s "full of sugar and spice and everything nice." He has fullest confidence in everyone in government. No one ever has personal or evil motives. It reminds me of Pleasantville [the movie]. And our War on Iraq, it just gets better and better by the year. Mistakes are openly admitted, but never named. And no Administration Official ever has a memory of anything that’s happened that might be bad. Days and days go by and events and emails and meetings float from his mind with great regularity – the famous Very Important Person Defense.

I’ve kind of liked all four of them. They seem to get into role easily and do their little Disneyland dance day after day. Sometimes they have to lie through their teeth. Other times they just have to play the little Ozzie and Harriet roles. It doesn’t seem like much of a job for grown-up people to be doing, but then again, I wonder why the Press people keep going to the silly productions. They’re not very grown-up either. They ask their questions, and pretty Dana, or suave Tony, or Rolley Polley Matt, or Professor Ari talk about the made-up sweetness and light in Boy George – day after day.

I guess it’s like a morality play, and my mind plays the Greek Chorus on the side refuting the daily bah blah. It’s an exercise in what not to think. I will admit to being a bit disappointed in Dana. When she first came on the scene, she had a cute little smile that conveyed that she knew that this whole show was abject horse-manure. But lately, she’s seemed to be taking herself a bit too seriously. That’s what happened to Matt. He just got too involved in the fact that he was having to lie, day after day, about the Plame thing, so he bailed out. Maybe Tony will come back and save Dana from disillusionment or worse. I hope so. He too seems like a decent enough fellow. I hope he has a good surgical result.

The sad thing is that they are all four participating in the greatest lie ever perpetrated on the American scene, and actively covering up for a Fascist takeover of America. That’s not going to be a very strong resume builder…

So, as I said, Gonzales’ performance was brilliant. He refused to provide the key details about:

• How Rove and Miers were involved in the process (and since we now know that none of Gonzales, Sampson, McNulty, or Battle made the actual choice of which USAs to fire, is probably significant)
• Who decided the AG should start appointing USAs without oversight
• When the actual decision to fire the USAs happen (which gets into the still-significant issue of what happened between November 27 and December 7, when the White House okayed the firings)

Those are the key details that lead right into White House decision-making. Yet even while hiding all the most important information, Gonzales provided everyone–Democrat and Republican alike–ample reason to call for his firing. So I presume the game is that Gonzales will get fired, and we never get answers to those three key questions.

I haven’t much kept up with the plight of Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank. I will admit to knowing next to nothing about the World Bank or his girlfriend Shaha Ali Riza who he apparently muscled into a job in our government. But I do know about Paul Wolfowitz and about his girlfriend’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing. There’s a video out [by the guy that slammed Hillary with the 1984 video] about our friend Paul. In it Wolfowitz says that people have animosity towards him for his former job [Assistant Secretary of Defense, Architect of the Iraq War], and that they shouldn’t hold that against him.

I do. I wish him the very worst in this particular endeavor. He designed the "Bush Doctrine." He was the patron of Douglas Feith and the Defense Department’s Intelligence scam. I wish he and his girlfriend’s lawyer nothing but the worst. Shaha’s on her own with me. The only things I know about her is that she’s pretty and that she is guilty of having extremely bad tastes in people. 

What have we learned this week about the DOJ this week? We already knew about the political firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. We already knew that the political architects have all fled:

We learned from Senator Whitehouse that the approved lines of communication between the White House and the Department of Justice have been increased from 7 to 447:

But most of all, we learned that Alberto Gonzales is a political operative. His shameful testimony in the Senate Oversight hearing yesterday was designed to both mislead and also litigate for the Administration’s right to hide evidence [the Rove emails]. It’s clear that Lame Duck Bush doesn’t even care any more about the running of government. It’s all about continuing his tragic war and entrenching the Republican take-over. After yesterday’s pathetic showing, it seems to me that keeping Gonzales in his job is grounds for impeaching the lot of them…

Gonzales Testifies Before Senate Panel

LEAHY: Mr. Attorney General, late last week, the White House spokesperson claimed an unknown number of e-mails, including those of Karl Rove, from both White House accounts and apparently those sent or received using political Republican National Committee accounts, were lost. And Mr. Rove’s attorney, in the investigation that led to Scooter Libby’s conviction for lying suggested that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, a part of the Department of Justice, obtained all of Mr. Rove’s e-mails as part of the investigation into the leak of the identity of a covert CIA operative. If that is the case, those e-mails would be in your possession or in the possession of the Department of Justice. What do we have to do to obtain Mr. Rove’s e-mails relevant to the development and implementation of the plan to replace U.S. attorneys and the committee’s investigation into that matter?
GONZALES: Senator, I was not aware that — I didn’t see that article. I wasn’t aware that Mr. Fitzgerald had that information or if, in fact, the department still has that information. So I’d have to go back and look to see what, in fact, the facts are.
LEAHY: If he does have the information, and it involves e-mails relevant to the development and implementation of the U.S. attorneys plan…
GONZALES: Senator, I believe that those — well, I don’t have the answer to that, Senator. I know that they’re of interest to the committee, and obviously the department wants to be cooperative with the committee. There may be White House equities here that need to be considered, and so…
LEAHY: We’re not talking about e-mails from the president. In fact, the president doesn’t use e-mail, as I understand. Am I right?
GONZALES: As far as I know that’s correct, sir. But the fact that they may have been communications over an RNC account doesn’t mean that they’re not presidential records. If in fact relates to government business, and they’re transmitted over an RNC account, they could nonetheless be presidential records. And so there would be a governmental interest — a White House interest in those records.
LEAHY: These are records supposedly that were lost, though.
GONZALES: Senator, I don’t know…
LEAHY: Are they there or aren’t they there?
GONZALES: What I’m saying is, is if in fact they exist…

The fact that Alberto Gonzales is lying, or that he is incompetent, or that he is partisan are difficult problems. But the biggest problem is that he is a political operative. It overwhelms all of the others. He was testifying in a Congressional Hearing where he was literally fighting for his own reputation, yet he spontaneously brought up an Administration issue, not in response to direct questions, and argued for it.

Another example [in the words of John Dean]:

Some of the most important and revealing information during this hearing did not come from Gonzales, but rather from the newest member of the committee, freshman Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D.RI). Senator Whitehouse is the former Attorney General of Rhode Island, and a former U.S. Attorney. He thus understands well how the Justice Department should operate, and how it actually is operating.

In a premise to a question for Gonzales, Senator Whitehouse said he had found correspondence in the files of the Senate Judiciary Committee from the days when Orrin Hatch was chairman relating to an investigation of the relationship between the Clinton White House and the Justice Department (under Attorney General Janet Reno). Hatch was concerned about the independence of the Department of Justice, so he wanted to know who in the White House could speak with whom in the Justice Department. The correspondence showed that four people in the White House (the President, Vice President, chief of staff, and White House counsel) could speak with three people in the Justice Department (the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney and the Associate Attorney General) – period.

Senator Whitehouse discovered – and created a chart to make the point – that in the Bush White House, a shocking 417 people could speak with 30 different people in the Justice Department. It was a jaw-dropper. As Chairman Leahy said, when he asked Senator Whitehouse to continue when his time expired, in his thirty years on the Judiciary Committee, he had never seen anything like the open contacts from the White House to the Justice Department that had occurred in the Bush Administration.

Gonzales really had no response when asked about this subject. But this information shows that, in this Administration, the Department of Justice has become a mere political appendage of the White House. (I have a number of friends who are career professionals at the Department of Justice, and since Gonzales arrived, they have said that morale at the department has tanked, for they all feel the politicization of the place, and they do not like it. Many of these gifted, experienced professionals are leaving, which will hurt the Department, the government, and ultimately all of us.)

Gonzales v. Gonzales

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had gone to the Senate yesterday to convince the world that he ought to be fired, it’s hard to imagine how he could have done a better job, short of simply admitting the obvious: that the firing of eight United States attorneys was a partisan purge.

Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch.

He had no trouble remembering complaints from his bosses and Republican lawmakers about federal prosecutors who were not playing ball with the Republican Party’s efforts to drum up election fraud charges against Democratic politicians and Democratic voters. But he had no idea whether any of the 93 United States attorneys working for him — let alone the ones he fired — were doing a good job prosecuting real crimes.

He delegated responsibility for purging their ranks to an inexperienced and incompetent assistant who, if that’s possible, was even more of a plodding apparatchik. Mr. Gonzales failed to create the most rudimentary standards for judging the prosecutors’ work, except for political fealty. And when it came time to explain his inept decision making to the public, he gave a false account that was instantly and repeatedly contradicted by sworn testimony…

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ap·pa·ra·tchik   (ä’pÉ™-rä’chÄ­k) 
n.  pl. ap·pa·ra·tchiks or ap·pa·ra·tchi·ki (-chÄ­-kÄ“)

1. A member of a Communist apparat.
2. An unquestioningly loyal subordinate, especially of a political leader or organization.

As for Gonzales, if he’s telling the truth, he’s grossly incompetent. If he’s not telling the truth, he’s a gross liar. A likely scenerio? He’s grossly incompetent and he’s a gross liar. Three choices. All bad. I can see why his department is run on party loyalty. It’s the only thing he’s got going for himself…

Statement by Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino

President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General’s testimony today. After hours of testimony in which he answered all of the Senators’ questions and provided thousands of pages of documents, he again showed that nothing improper occurred. He admitted the matter could have been handled much better, and he apologized for the disruption to the lives of the U.S. Attorneys involved, as well as for the lack of clarity in his initial responses. The Attorney General has the full confidence of the President, and he appreciates the work he is doing at the Department of Justice to help keep our citizens safe from terrorists, our children safe from predators, our government safe from corruption, and our streets free from gang violence.

I wonder how she says such things with a straight face. Sometimes, she does show signs of recognition at the corners of her mouth that what she’s saying is ludicrous, but mostly she delivers this pap as if it make sense…

As I’ve said many times, the President has full confidence in the Attorney General. The Attorney General looked forward to the hearing that is taking place right now. Of course, the President has not seen any of that testimony. As I told you, he’s had a busy morning, and now we’re on our way to Tipp City, Ohio. And I haven’t seen any of the testimony, either. But clearly, we would hope that there were no preconceived notions, or canned talking points that the senators had in mind before they had this hearing. They said they wanted to get to the facts, and I’m sure that the Attorney General will be fully responsive to their request.

Dear Messrs. Chairman,

Many of us in the Department of Justice have been watching with admiration as you expose the overly political firing of United States Attorneys and hope that you can help in returning our beloved Department to of establishing justice in the United States. We are equally concerned, however, about the politicizing of the non-political ranks of Justice employees, offices which are consistently and methodically being eroded by partisan politics.

Many employees within the Department’s litigating divisions are sitting quietly by, hoping that you will investigate what has happened to the Attorney General’s Honors Program and even the Summer Law Intern Program (SLIP). You are surely aware that the Attorney General’s Honors Program has a long history of hiring top students from a variety of law schools, and it is the only way that young lawyers are able to come into the Department immediately after law school. This year the divisions once again pored over applications and resumes, choosing students to interview who demonstrated not only excellent grades but a real interest in the areas of law they might be hired to work in. After choosing potential candidates to interview, the division personnel forwarded their lists to the Office of Attorney Recruitment Management for what was traditionally final approval. This is no longer a final step, however, because the list had to go higher – to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. When the list of potential interviewees was returned this year, it had been cut dramatically.

When division personnel staff later compared the remaining interviewees with the candidates struck form the list, one common denominator appeared repeatedly: most of those struck form the list had interned for a Hill Democrat, clerked for a Democratic judge, worked for a “liberal” cause, or otherwise appeared to have “liberal” leanings. Summa cum laude graduates of both Yale and Harvard were rejected for interviews.

While the current political appointees repeatedly remind everyone that the U.S. Attorneys “serve at the pleasure of the President,” the Department’s career attorneys serve the people of the United States. We hope you will see fit to include this politicizing of the career ranks in your questioning of Attorney General Gonzales and his staff.

Thank you.

A Group of Concerned Department of Justice Employees

It’s been a troubling week: The tragedy at Virginia Tech. Today’s [non] testimony by the Attorney General. The escalating violence in Iraq. But somehow, I found this damning letter from a group of concerned career employees at the Department of Justice comforting. The Administration has been surprisingly free of whistle-blowers. With the notable exception of Joseph Wilson, Paul Oniell, and Richard Clarke, we’ve had to do dental extractions to find out anything much about what’s gone on. Where are the heros? Where are the people who see what’s going on and come clean out of a sense of personal morality? This has been the most corrupt and secretive Administration in my lifetime, and there haven’t been the kind of whistleblowers that let us peek at the inside of things.