1 Boring Old Man

Politicization of Career Hiring at Justice Department?

…Calling themselves "A Group of Concerned Department of Justice Employees," they have penned an anonymous letter to the House and Senate Judiciary committees asking them to look into "the politicization of the non-political ranks of Justice employees, offices which are consistently and methodically being eroded by partisan politics."

The controversy is related to the Attorney General’s Honors Program, which is how recent law school graduates get hired by DOJ, as well as through the Summer Law Intern Program. The Attorney General’s Honors Program is the "only way that the Department hires entry-level attorneys," according to the website for DOJ’s Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management…

Under normal circumstances, the various divisions at Justice review applications from potential hires, set interviews and send the list to the Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management, which gives the green light to proceed. But recently, a number of divisions’ requests to interview certain applicants were turned down, and the career employees started to wonder why…

These career employees got a meeting with Michael Elston, McNulty’s chief of staff and a central figure in the prosecutor purge. This meeting took place on Dec. 5, and it didn’t go well. According to the career employees’ letter, obtained by The Crypt, Elston "was offensive to the point of (being) insulting." Elston has since taken a personal leave from the Justice Department.

"Claiming that the entire group had not ‘done their jobs’ in reviewing applicants, (Elston) said that he had a ‘screening panel’ to go over the list and research these candidates on the Internet; he refused to give the names of those on his ‘panel,’" the career employees wrote. "Mr. (Elston) said that people were struck from the list for three reasons: grades, spelling errors on applications and inappropriate information about them on the Internet.

So, in their own words, the career employees did some checking of their own. They reportedly detected a "common denominator" for "most of those" struck from the interview list: They 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 at both Yale and Harvard were rejected for interviews."

Such partisan tests are illegal. You know. Illegal. The stuff DOJ is supposed to be protecting us from."

Shades of the Red Guard. The Bush Administration has stepped way over the line here. Way over the line. Loyalty oaths from Monica Goodling, quotas for Administration Agenda cases, this outrageous screening of applicants, interference in cases by Congressmen, mass resignations at the top with pre-emptive 5th Amendment claims, lost emails from the White House Servers, alternative email accounts, refusal to testify in front of Congress, etc. And Mr. KR@georgewbush.com is right in the middle of this one. Damn the Torpedos! Full Speed Ahead!

At the end of the ninrteenth century, a German Neuropathologist named Emil Kraepelin reviewed the records of a large sanatorium, and defined two types of severe mental illness. The first, Manic Depressive Illness [Bipolar Disorder] related to a group of patients who had intermittant madness, either severe depression or mania at intervals, but in the intervening years were sane and left the hospital. The second group, Dementia Praecox, were people who became mad as young adults, entered the hospital and deteriorated over time leading to an early death in the hospital. At the turn of the twentieth century, Eugene Bleuler, a Neuropsychiatrist in Switzerland focused on this second group – people he called Schizophrenic. He actually saw the patients rather than just their records, and his descriptions of the illness remain as clear a picture as any written today.

He described people who in earlier life seemed shy and reclusive, but not so far from the norm. They tended towards pursuits that took them away from people rather than towards them. He called them "schizoid" though it is completely clear that only a small number of such people develop Schizophrenia. Somewhere in young adulthood, such people enter a state called "trema" in the older literature – which may last for hours, or months, or years. In this state, they seem troubled, confused, things just aren’t right. In our City hospital, one could often see a "blue line" in the patient’s medical chart in the period before the Schizophrenic Break. The blue line was a number of pages from emergency clinic visits [the pages were blue] in which nothing was found – a manifestation of this sense that "something’s wrong."

The Schizophrenic Break, called the "apophany" often progresses in a matter of hours. It begins with emotional confusion, agitation, hearing the first "voice," or having the first paranoid idea. So a shy, odd person suddenly becomes agitated and begins to do crazy things. Noi one knows what to do, and the patient ends up in the hospital or in a jail somewhere. Internally, it’s a terrible experience – the "Break" is a break with reality. Bleuler was much less gloomy about the outcome than Kraepelin. Even in the days before there was treatment, some 50% recovered and went on to live a somewhat normal life. Two examples that come to mind – Johnathan Winters and Ian Fleming. The remainder developed one of the chronic forms of the illness and deteriorated.

Beginning in the 1950’s, medications became available that controlled these dramatic symptoms – the antipsychotics. But what happened before? Huge mental hospitals, the one’s we grew up joking about. "You keep acting like that, you’ll end up in Central State! [or Saint Elizabeth’s, or whatever they were called in your State]. They were the place of ECT, and Insulin Coma Therapy, and Pre-frontal Lobotomy as desparate measures were tried to treat the desparate illness Chronic Psychosis can become. With the advent of effective medications, these hospitals were shut down. Unfortunately, the medications are only symptomatic, not curative, and over the years, funding for mental health care for the mentally ill has disappeared. The Chronic Schizophrenics live on the streets or in other Institutions [L.A. County Jail is currently the country’s largest mental hospital].

What happened at Virginia Tech? A shy young man who lived as a recluse began to show signs of being troubled. His teachers saw it in his writings [see Teacher warned Authorities About Va. Tech Shooter and More details emerge in Virginia Tech attack]. His dorm counsellors saw it in his behavior – stalking, setting fires, withdrawal. And so he had a distantly observed trip into madness. He leaves a crazy note, has some crazy personal symbol scratched on his arm, and set out to kill his tormentors. He says "you caused me to do this" referring to the perceived tormentors that are part of most Psychotic Breaks. No one is really at fault other than that we are a country unwilling to fund a mental health system for such people. It would help to have seminars for counsellors and faculty on the early detection of a Psychotic Break, but as we see in this case, there aren’t many real resources for definitive action any more.

If there’s a message here, it’s a wake up call that the mentally ill, particularly those with devastating psychotic illnesses, are our forgetten citizens. Best we know, they are born into their illness. Many do quite well, but those who don’t are not afforded the ongoing care and careful observation that’s needed, because we just don’t particularly want to pay for it. There’s nothing new to learn here. Just another chapter in the national tragedy of our unwillingness to care for the mentally ill.

It’s a very old, old story. As old as mankind…

QUESTION: Dana, a lot of the stories about the Gonzales appearance tomorrow framed it as "his job is on the line." Is it?
MS. PERINO: Look, I think there’s a lot of hype about the hearing. This issue has been ongoing for I think over a couple of months now. The Justice Department has been fully responsive to the committee, and that’s going to culminate tomorrow in a hearing. But I think that one day’s hearing does not necessarily mean — I’ve heard it described as "make or break," and I would submit to you that the Attorney General, as you’ve reported, has been as forthcoming as he possibly can be, has laid it all out on the table for them and tomorrow he looks forward to answering their questions.
QUESTION: Is this a job security issue?
MS. PERINO: No, I don’t think so. The Attorney General has the full confidence of the President, and the President wanted the Justice Department to be fully responsive and they have been. The President also said he needed to go to Capitol Hill and continue to talk to those members. He’s had many conversations with members of Congress by phone, while they were on their two-week recess, and tomorrow he’ll have a chance to talk to them in person.
QUESTION: Well, does he, and he alone, have to dig himself out of this controversy?
MS. PERINO: Look, the Attorney General has taken full responsibility for it, and I think that the Attorney General looks forward to answering those questions tomorrow.

I believe that the central issue in this and all of the other scandals that swirl around the trinity of Karl Rove, George Bush, and Richard Cheney come down to one shared trait – contempt. With President Bush, it’s most apparent is his famous sneer. With Cheney, it’s often called a sneer, but it’s more of a snarl. With Rove, it’s in the sarcastic wording of his speeches to rally supporters. Independent of its mode of expression, all three men have elevated contempt from a feeling or emotion to the level of a noun. They embody contempt. That contempt is global. The came into office with contempt for the other people of the world, particularly Arabs. They have contempt for their political oppenents – Democrats and "Liberals." They have contempt for the restraints of our system of checks and balances, for the Congress, for the Judiciary, for the Central Intelligence Agency, for the U.N., for the Geneva Conventions, for the Constitution, and even for Democracy itself – or at least Democracy unimpeded. And they immediately interpret any criticism as an enemy attack – retaliating with contempt, manipulation, and dirty tricks.

They came into office driven by years of contempt for our foreign policy and jumped at the chance to "brandish some steel" [Karl Rove] by trumping up a disasterous war in the Middle East. When confronted for lying by Joseph Wilson, they responded by destroying his wife’s career. They have misused every possible Presidential power – commander in chief, secrecy, signing statements, executive privledge, recess appointments – the list is endless. They sneer and snarl with actions as well as with their facial expressions and their words.

I think they really don’t even understand the Justice Department scandal. Since the President has the power to hire and fire the U.S. Attorneys at will, they can’t understand why their actions are being questioned. They don’t see that the President’s and the Attorney General’s denials of any direct involvement don’t exactly fit with their claims of having the power to do what they want to do. Both men deny knowing what was going on, yet they both use the word confidence in characterizing what happened. They don’t seem to even get that their arbitrary firing of U.S. Attorneys whose numbers are low in voter fraud cases and immigration cases without even knowing who they are or what they’ve done is being seen as an arbitrary and capricious misuse of their power. It’s just like their not seeing that their arbitrary and capricious distortions of prewar intelligence has produced a crisis in the meaning of America in the world, and in our own country.

It’s as if they see our Constitution as a Bill of Rights for the Presidential Triumverate – a set of powers for them to do use as they see fit. They don’t see it as a Bill of rights for the American people. It is a privilege to serve as President of the United States, a privilege to defend our rights, not their own. It is not their right to play out their own contemptuousness on the grand scheme of American policy. Government by contempt, by sneer, by snarl, by retaliation has no place here. Never has…

Nothing Improper
By Alberto R. Gonzales

My decision some months ago to privately seek the resignations of a small number of U.S. attorneys has erupted into a public firestorm. First and foremost, I appreciate the public service of these fine lawyers and dedicated professionals, each of whom served his or her full four-year term as U.S. attorney. I apologize to them, their families and the thousands of dedicated professionals at the Justice Department for my role in allowing this matter to spin into an undignified Washington spectacle.

What began as a well-intentioned management effort to identify where, among the 93 U.S. attorneys, changes in leadership might benefit the department, and therefore the American people, has become an unintended public controversy.

While I accept responsibility for my role in commissioning this management review process, I want to make some fundamental points abundantly clear.

I know that I did not — and would not — ask for the resignation of any U.S. attorney for an improper reason. Furthermore, I have no basis to believe that anyone involved in this process sought the removal of a U.S. attorney for an improper reason.

Given my convictions on this issue, I testified before Congress in January and will do so again on Tuesday. I have personally spoken with many members of Congress over the past several weeks to hear their concerns about this matter. Additionally, I have instructed all Justice Department officials to make themselves available for on-the-record interviews with lawmakers and hearings before Congress, and I have ordered the release of thousands of pages of internal documents.

All of these documents and public testimony indicate that the Justice Department did not seek the removal of any U.S. attorney to interfere with or improperly influence any case or investigation. Indeed, I am extremely proud of the department’s strong record of vigorous prosecutions, particularly in the area of public corruption, where Republicans and Democrats alike have been held accountable for their crimes.

I have nevertheless asked the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility to further investigate this matter. Working with the department’s Office of Inspector General, these nonpartisan professionals will complete their own independent investigation so that Congress and the American people can be 100 percent assured of what I believe and what the investigation thus far has shown: that nothing improper occurred.

While I have never sought to deceive Congress or the American people, I also know that I created confusion with some of my recent statements about my role in this matter. To be clear: I directed my then-deputy chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, to initiate this process; fully knew that it was occurring; and approved the final recommendations. Sampson periodically updated me on the review. As I recall, his updates were brief, relatively few in number and focused primarily on the review process.

During those conversations, to my knowledge, I did not make decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign.

I am committed to explaining my role in this process and will do so Tuesday when I testify before Congress.

I am also committed to correcting any management missteps that occurred during this process. In recent weeks I have met with more than 70 U.S. attorneys around the country to hear their concerns and discuss ways to improve communication and coordination between their offices and the Justice Department.

These discussions have been frank, and good ideas are coming out, including ways to ensure that every U.S. attorney can know whether his or her performance is at the level expected by the president and the attorney general. Additionally, I have asked for recommendations on formal and informal steps that we can take to improve all forms of dialogue between the main Justice Department and U.S. attorneys nationwide.

I am also telling our 93 U.S. attorneys that I look forward to working with them to pursue the great goals of our department in the weeks and months to come. During the past two years, we have made great strides in securing our country from terrorism, protecting our neighborhoods from gangs and drugs, shielding our children from predators and pedophiles, and protecting the public trust by prosecuting public corruption. As I have stressed repeatedly to our U.S. attorneys and others within the department, recent events will not and must not deter us from our important mission.

In part because of my own experience, I know the real strength of America. It lies in our Constitution, our people and our collective unyielding commitment to equal opportunity, equal justice, common decency and fairness. With this same commitment in my mind, I very much look forward to answering Congress’s questions about this matter on Tuesday.

The writer is the U.S. attorney general.

They lost my confidence
Attorneys’ dismissals were related to performance, not to politics.
By Alberto R. Gonzales

As any employer or manager knows, the handling of personnel matters — especially the termination of employees — is one of the most challenging tasks in any business. Personnel matters in the federal government are no exception.

To be clear, it was for reasons related to policy, priorities and management — what have been referred to broadly as "performance-related" reasons — that seven U.S. attorneys were asked to resign last December.

…If U.S. attorneys are not executing their responsibilities in a manner that furthers the management and policy goals of departmental leadership, it is appropriate that they be replaced. After all, the responsibility of the Department of Justice, and of the Congress, is to serve the people of the United States. While I am grateful for the public service of these seven U.S. attorneys, they simply lost my confidence. I hope that this episode ultimately will be recognized for what it is: an overblown personnel matter.

Alberto R. Gonzales is attorney general of the United States.

And he sees his mistakes. He let this turn into a spectacle. In fact, he even apologizes for that. If he’d handled it better, it would all be smooth and these people would’ve been fired more quietly. There would be no outrage. The Republican Agenda would have been effected seamlessly. The new Attorneys would file the Karl Rove cases at a faster rate. Yes, Alberto is sorry he made such a mess of things as he hastens to let us know that he had nothing to do with the running of his own Agency.

He doesn’t even get what his job is supposed to be. He doesn’t even know what he’s charged with. For Gonzales, the function of the Justice Department is to further the President’s Agenda. We think it’s to further Justice itself. He sounds like Adolph Eichmann at his trial in Israel explaining that he was just doing his job, keeping up production levels in a government sanctioned death camp. If Alberto Gonzales doesn’t resign in the next week or so, impeach him.

I suppose news stories like the ones linked above should simply present the facts. The facts are, Gonzales is saying the same things he’s said from the start, only the facts change from day today. There’s no question what happened here. These people eat their own young. Bush/Rove had an agenda to harass poor and minority voters in swing states in order to increase their chances at the polls. Alberto Gonzales and his associates were part of the plan to get rid of U.S. Attorneys who weren’t going along. They did what the boss asked. It’s time to clean house at the Justice Department. Now, about those White House emails…

In my musings, even from years before I got involved in following the Bush sheenanigans closely, I wondered how the Administration coordinated their Talking Point network so effectively. It seemed like there was some kind of telepathy going on. I would hear of an issue, and almost immediately, the Talking Points would be on the News from multiple sources, on the airway’s Talk Shows, and on the streets. Sometimes the stories were circulation before I’d even heard the issue they were purporting to explain. When all this stuff came up about Rove’s alternative email servers came up, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was Rove’s Blackberry that ran the show. I don’t know if it’s even true or not, but it’s a hypothesis so intuitively right that I’m going to assume it’s correct until I know otherwise [plus, it gives me a chance to use my nifty Karl Rove Balckberry graphic over and over].

There’s an old military principle that shutting down the enemy’s lines of communication is the way to win a closely fought battle. It strikes me that separating Karl Rove from accesss to a secret way to coordinate the Administration both impairs his ability to initiate these Administration salvos and keep his finger on the pulse of the multiplicity of issues he’s obviously followed closely over the years. In the last few months, they seem to be stumbling over their own feet. And in a couple of days, Gonzales is going to get "creamed" in a Congressional Hearing. I say, let’s add Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to the list by issuing supoenas from both the House and Senate while continuing to moniter for clandestine communications. I even have a fantasy of the F.B.I. and C.I.A. using their new powers to snoop to focus on Mr. Rove. I think without Rove’s Blackberry, his gang would fall apart…

Domenici Sought Iglesias Ouster

Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was fired after Sen. Pete Domenici, who had been unhappy with Iglesias for some time, made a personal appeal to the White House, the Journal has learned. Domenici had complained about Iglesias before, at one point going to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before taking his request to the president as a last resort. The senior senator from New Mexico had listened to criticism of Iglesias going back to 2003 from sources ranging from law enforcement officials to Republican Party activists.  Domenici, who submitted Iglesias’ name for the job and guided him through the confirmation process in 2001, had tried at various times to get more white-collar crime help for the U.S. Attorney’s Office— even if Iglesias didn’t want it. At one point, the six-term Republican senator tried to get Iglesias moved to a Justice Department post in Washington, D.C., but Iglesias told Justice officials he wasn’t interested.

In the spring of 2006, Domenici told Gonzales he wanted Iglesias out. Gonzales refused. He told Domenici he would fire Iglesias only on orders from the president. At some point after the election last Nov. 6, Domenici called Bush’s senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and told him he wanted Iglesias out and asked Rove to take his request directly to the president. Domenici and Bush subsequently had a telephone conversation about the issue. The conversation between Bush and Domenici occurred sometime after the election but before the firings of Iglesias and six other U.S. attorneys were announced on Dec. 7.

Iglesias’ name first showed up on a Nov. 15 list of federal prosecutors who would be asked to resign. It was not on a similar list prepared in October. The Journal confirmed the sequence of events through a variety of sources familiar with the firing of Iglesias, including sources close to Domenici. The senator’s office declined comment. The House and Senate Judiciary committees are investigating Iglesias’ firing as well as the dismissals of six other U.S. attorneys.

• Senator calls Rove about Prosecutor
• President talks to Senator
• Prosecutor fired

If all of this is okay, Why the panicky email? If it’s okay, Why the attempted deception? The referenced article in the email is here. Trying to parse the local issues in New Mexico, I searched the Alberquerque Tribune for "Iglesias." It’s a tangled web that centers on winning the House seat in 2006, won narrowly by the Republican [1%]. I just can’t follow it, but it does seem that Iglesias’ firing was part of a Republican strategy to win this hotly contested seat in Congress. I hope someone in Albequerque will write a summary that makes the details more intelligible to the rest of us.

Pete Domenici

Prior to the 2006 midterm election Domenici called and pressured then-United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico David Iglesias to speed up indictments in a federal corruption investigation, immediately prior to an election, that involved at least one former Democratic state senator. When Iglesias said an indictment wouldn’t be handed down until at least December, Domenici said "I’m very sorry to hear that" – and the line went dead. Iglesias was fired one week later by the Bush Administration. A communication by a senator or House member with a federal prosecutor regarding an ongoing criminal investigation is a violation of ethics rules. In a March 2007 statement, Domenici admitted making such a call.^[3] House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., issued subpoenas to require Iglesias and three other ousted U.S. attorneys to testify before Congress.^[4]

Domenici’s intial denial, Domenici later admitted calling Iglesias, though Domenici claimed he never used the word "November" when he called Iglesias about an ongoing Albuquerque courthouse corruption case.^[5] Domenici has denied trying influence Iglesias, and has hired lawyer K. Lee Blalack II to represent him.^[6]

According to the Justice Department, Domenici called the Department and demanded Iglesias be replaced on four occasions.^[7]

According to the Washington Post, on the day of the firing (Dec 7, 2006) William Kelley, a deputy to White House counsel Harriet Miers, said in an email that Domenici’s chief of staff was "happy as a clam" about the Iglesias firing. A week later, a Justice Department email to the White House counsel stated: "Domenici is going to send over names tomorrow (not even waiting for Iglesias’s body to cool)."^[8]

E-mails contradict testimony in U.S. attorneys scandal

A U.S. attorney in Wisconsin who prosecuted a state Democratic official on corruption charges during last year’s heated governor’s race was once targeted for firing by the Department of Justice, but given a reprieve for reasons that remain unclear. A federal appeals court last week threw out the conviction of Wisconsin state worker Georgia Thompson, saying the evidence was "beyond thin."

Congressional investigators looking into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys saw Wisconsin prosecutor Steven M. Biskupic’s name on a list of lawyers targeted for removal when they were inspecting a Justice Department document not yet made public, according to an attorney for a lawmaker involved in the investigation. The attorney asked for anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the investigation.

It wasn’t clear when Biskupic was added to a Justice Department hit list of prosecutors, or when he was taken off, or whether those developments were connected to the just-overturned corruption case.

Nevertheless, the disclosure aroused investigators’ suspicion that Biskupic might have been retained in his job because he agreed to prosecute Democrats, though the evidence was slight. Such politicization of the administration of justice is at the heart of congressional Democrats’ concerns over the Bush administration’s firings of the U.S. attorneys.

Republicans had cited the June 2006 conviction as evidence that Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration was rife with corruption as he ran for re-election last year. He won anyway – the first Democratic governor of the state to win re-election in 32 years.

This revelation about Biskupic is expected to be the subject of questions to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales when he testifies Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Making Sense of the Georgia Thompson Ruling

Thursday’s ruling by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, which immediately freed former state worker Georgia Thompson, was a stunner. Not only did the three federal judges immediately give Thompson her freedom, but they also delivered a smack-down to the Milwaukee office of U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic, calling the evidence in the case “beyond thin.”

So how did that happen? Why would a prosecutor, working on the taxpayers’ dime, press charges when the evidence was negligible? Why did a jury convict based on that same evidence? And why was Thompson given the unusual punishment of going to federal prison while her case was being appealed?

Why? Because the political climate—in George W. Bush’s America, in Wisconsin and in Milwaukee, in particular, where the case was decided—is so poisoned by political games that the jury sent a message that wasn’t based on the evidence introduced in the courtroom.