Another Bad Day for AG Gonzales (Or "The RNC Ate My Homework")

I had been wondering what had happened to the congressional investigation into the RNC email accounts that had begun in the midst of the US. Attorney purge. Yesterday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released this interim report (pdf). Some of the highlights:

• The Committee concluded that considerably more White House officials had received RNC email accounts than the White House had previously disclosed. White House spokesperson Dana Perino initially reported that there were only a "handful" of these accounts, and later clarified that there may have been as many as 50. The Oversight Committee found that there were at least 88.
• Karl Rove made extensive use of his RNC account, sending or receiving 140,216 emails. He and others used these accounts for official purposes, in violation of White House policy--and, more importantly, in violation of the Presidential Records Act, which requires the President to "take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented and that such records are maintained as Presidential records." 44 U.S.C. § 2203(a).
• Susan Ralston, former special assistant to the President, was deposed on May 10, 2007. She testified (pdf) that the White House Counsel's Office (at that time run by none other than Alberto Gonzales) received RNC emails as part of its investigations into the Energy Task Force in 2001 and the leak of Valerie Plame's identity. According to the Oversight Committee, "if her testimony is accurate, former White House Counsel Gonzales may have been aware in 2001 that Mr. Rove was using RNC e-mail accounts for official communications. Yet is was not until six years later that the White House" instructed the RNC to preserve the emails in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.

Could this be the end for the Attorney General, or another miraculous display of his survival skills? Stay tuned ...

One Scandal To Rule Them All

Josh Marshall has an interesting post tying together Prosecutorgate and the Abramoff investigation into a single mega-super-scandal. It makes sense...

Gonzales: Nothing To See Here...

AG Alberto Gonzales in today's Washington Post:

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.
[...]
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.

Recently retired career DOJ attorney Daniel Metcalfe, in a recent Legal Times interview:

Actually, I began earlier, in the first Nixon administration, as a college intern in 1971. But I was there again in the Watergate era, when I worked in part of the Attorney General's Office during my first year of law school in 1973-1974, and then continuously as a trial attorney and office director for nearly 30 years. That adds up to more than a dozen attorneys general, including Ed Meese as well as John Mitchell, and I used to think that they had politicized the department more than anyone could or should. But nothing compares to the past two years under Alberto Gonzales.

To be sure, he continued a trend of career/noncareer separation that began under John Ashcroft, yet even Ashcroft brought in political aides who in large measure were experienced in government functioning. Ashcroft's Justice Department appointees, with few exceptions, were not the type of people who caused you to wonder what they were doing there. They might not have been firm believers in the importance of government, but generally speaking, there was a very respectable level of competence (in some instances even exceptionally so) and a relatively strong dedication to quality government, as far as I could see.

Under Gonzales, though, almost immediately from the time of his arrival in February 2005, this changed quite noticeably. First, there was extraordinary turnover in the political ranks, including the majority of even Justice's highest-level appointees. It was reminiscent of the turnover from the second Reagan administration to the first Bush administration in 1989, only more so. Second, the atmosphere was palpably different, in ways both large and small. One need not have had to be terribly sophisticated to notice that when Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey left the department in August 2005 his departure was quite abrupt, and that his large farewell party was attended by neither Gonzales nor (as best as could be seen) anyone else on the AG's personal staff.

Third, and most significantly for present purposes, there was an almost immediate influx of young political aides beginning in the first half of 2005 (e.g., counsels to the AG, associate deputy attorneys general, deputy associate attorneys general, and deputy assistant attorneys general) whose inexperience in the processes of government was surpassed only by their evident disdain for it.
[...]
You have to remember that this is a Cabinet department that, for good reason, prides itself on the high-quality administration of justice, regardless of who is in the White House. Ever since the Watergate era, when Edward Levi came in as attorney general to replace former Sen. William Saxby soon after Nixon resigned, the Justice Department maintained a healthy distance between it and what could be called the raw political concerns that are properly within the White House's domain. Even Reagan's first attorney general, William French Smith, did not depart greatly from the standard that Levi set; as for Meese, I knew him to be more heavily involved in defending himself from multiple ethics investigations than in bringing the department too close to the White House, even though he came from there.

More recently, of course, the DOJ-White House distance hit its all-time high-water mark under Janet Reno, especially during Clinton's second term. And even John Ashcroft made it clear to all department employees that, among other things, he held that traditional distance in proper reverence; he proved that this was no mere lip service when, from his hospital bed, he refused to overrule Deputy AG Comey on what is now called the "terrorist surveillance program." Especially in the wake of 9/11, which strongly spurred the morale and dedication of Justice Department employees, myself included, I saw only a limited morale diminution in general during the first term.

But that strong tradition of independence over the previous 30 years was shattered in 2005 with the arrival of the White House counsel as a second-term AG. All sworn assurances to the contrary notwithstanding, it was as if the White House and Justice Department now were artificially tied at the hip -- through their public affairs, legislative affairs and legal policy offices, for example, as well as where you ordinarily would expect such a connection (i.e., Justice's Office of Legal Counsel). I attended many meetings in which this total lack of distance became quite clear, as if the current crop of political appointees in those offices weren't even aware of the important administration-of-justice principles that they were trampling.

This matters greatly to Justice Department employees of my generation. They are now the senior career cadre there, with the high-grade institutional knowledge that carries the department from one administration to the next, and when they see a new attorney general come from the White House Counsel's Office with a wave of young "Bushies" in tow and find their worst expectations quickly met, they just as quickly lose respect for nearly all of the department's political leadership, not to mention that leadership's "policy concerns." That respect is a vital thing, as fragile as it is essential, and now it's gone.

It's a great interview, the best discussion I've seen so far on this matter. And Metcalfe lays far more of it than I'd have imagined directly on Gonzales's head.

Talking Point Punctured

Did Bill Clinton do something shady or unusual when he asked all of the US attorneys to tender resignations after he took office? Hardly. Ronald Reagan replaced 89 out of 93 US attorneys in his first two years after taking over from Carter. George H.W. Bush even replaced 88 of Reagan's US attorneys in his first two years. And George W. Bush, of course, replaced all of Clinton's US attorneys. The article doesn't say what the practice was prior to Reagan, but quotes one Carter appointee noting that turnover "is the tradition of the office. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and when a new administration comes in, everybody knows you will have a new U.S. attorney."

I Think We Took the Red Pill...

...and now we're going to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes. This DOJ thing is spiraling off in a dozen directions at once:

- US attorney in Wisconsin pushed into a voter fraud case that the appeals court referred to as "beyond thin" by the Rove Machine?

- Monica Goodling, the underqualified "party loyalist" DOJ attorney who resigned last week after pleading the 5th, appears to have been a key player in the US attorney hiring and firing process.

- Another DOJ party loyalist, former assistant to Deputy AG Paul McNulty (who admitted to having given false testimony to Congress), and Goodling co-conspirator, Rachel Paulose, was appointed as US attorney in Minnesota, where she recently drove several of the office's top staffers to resign.

- The DOJ's latest excuse for firing David Iglesias (he was an 'absentee landlord') could land them in further legal trouble: Iglesias was away serving in the Navy Reserve, and his position was protected by the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.

- This has all gotten to be a bit much for Gonzales who apparently can't keep his own bullshit straight, to the point that his staff is pulling him out of planned TV appearances. Can't wait for the Senate date...

It has gotten to be a bit much for Slate too, as they has moved their Gonzo-resignation-meter up to 86% likely. Keep digging folks...

I'm at the Wrong School

Here I had thought that the key to getting ahead was to go to a respectable top tier law school, had I but known that the pipeline to hot jobs ran through Regent University School of Law, I might have chosen differently. Who knew Pat Robertson was a legal genius? It's a school that leaves its students well prepared for the challenges of the federal hiring process, like this one:

In a recent Regent law school newsletter, a 2004 graduate described being interviewed for a job as a trial attorney at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in October 2003. Asked to name the Supreme Court decision from the past 20 years with which he most disagreed, he cited Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling striking down a law against sodomy because it violated gay people's civil rights.

"When one of the interviewers agreed and said that decision in Lawrence was 'maddening,' I knew I correctly answered the question," wrote the Regent graduate . The administration hired him for the Civil Rights Division's housing section -- the only employment offer he received after graduation, he said.

More here.

Obama's Track Record

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for digging up this slightly dated (October of last year) account of how Barack Obama kept himself busy during his two years in the Senate. Keep it in mind while you're being battered by the talking point about Obama having not done anything. The basic summary:

...I do follow legislation, at least on some issues, and I have been surprised by how often Senator Obama turns up, sponsoring or co-sponsoring really good legislation on some topic that isn't wildly sexy, but does matter. His bills tend to have the following features: they are good and thoughtful bills that try to solve real problems; they are in general not terribly flashy; and they tend to focus on achieving solutions acceptable to all concerned, not by compromising on principle, but by genuinely trying to craft a solution that everyone can get behind.

Also, a follow-up on prosecutorgate, Lincoln Caplan has an informative column on Slate on the proper role for politics in the justice system. He handily rebuts the oft-repeated canard about Clinton replacing the US attorneys when he took over by noting that in the past 25 years the number of US attorneys forced out mid-term for reasons other than misconduct is somewhere between two and five.

Mistakes Were (Not) Made

I've been holding off posting on prosecutorgate so far mostly because I've been waiting with bated breath for it to explode. This is the big one. After a nearly endless series of blunders, scams, and scandals in the Bush administration, some big, some small, this is the one that I think will go down in the history books as the defining Bush administration scandal. And I've been too intently observing it unfold to say anything. I've finally been moved, however, to respond to the line of defense being offered by Gonzalez and the White House. That line: mistakes have been made. Namely, the DOJ was not fully honest about why the prosecutors were fired. End of story. They hope, by acknowledging and focusing on this particular aspect of the problem, to obscure what lies behind it. On the Newshour last night, the Republican operative (I don't recall who it was) was quite exercised about how awful it was that the DOJ misled the Senate on this count. He was also adamant that nothing else had been done wrong and that there was nothing actually improper about the firings themselves. Bush and Gonzalez have made similar remarks.

Not so fast. The bullshit about firing these prosecutors for performance issues is the least of the problem. Even the firings themselves are not the whole of the problem. This scandal is about the politicization of enforcement of justice in the US. So far Scott Horton at Balkinization has said it best:

What is at stake here? The issue is enormous. It is whether the criminal justice system will be turned into a partisan political tool. Bush's Administration is already widely called a "hackocracy" because of his tendency to fill slots with unqualified and incompetent partisan hacks. But the crisis at DOJ goes far beyond that. Even civil service positions - which have been protected from this sort of partisan corruption since the Hatch Act of 1939 - are being politicized. The Boston Globe, for instance, has closely documented the process of weeding out qualified career attorneys from the Civil Rights Division at DOJ and their replacement with political retainers - and the same process has continued throughout the Department. But at the heart of the DOJ scandal lies political intrusion into the exercise of prosecutorial discretion - one of the areas which a democratic society most needs to shield from partisan intrusion. There is now clear evidence that Gonzales and Bush directed political prosecutions and attempted to deflect prosecutions of Republicans for political purposes. A state that criminalizes political adversaries and that cloaks the criminal conduct of its retainers is by definition a tyranny.

A study by Donald Shields and John Cragan (not yet released) shows that under Bush seven times more Democratic officials have been investigated by the DOJ than Republican officials. Match that up with the Boston Globe findings. Combine it with all of the DOJ/White House emails released by the Senate showing the overtly political nature of the firing decisions, and how they tied into politicized prosecutions. There were no mistakes made. Nothing accidental occurred here. These people knew exactly what they were doing. They created one law for Democrats and another for Republicans. The Bush administration has made a concerted effort to reduce our nation to a banana republic. Gonzalez will have to go, but this scandal ought not end there. This administration and its DOJ is rotten to the core. For the sake of our nation and our system of government the Democratic Congress needs to climb onto this scandal and ride it as far as it can take them. This sort of misconduct needs to be punished to the fullest extent possible.

Bad Advice

The Washinton Post has a column on attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzales's work writing execution summaries for review by George Bush when they were in Texas. Author Alan Berlow is not exactly impressed by Gonzales's efforts.

Documents on Interrogation Tactics Available at WP

The WP has scanned the documents that were released yesterday by the Bush administration. They include the 2002 memo by now-judge Bybee (who sits on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals) and several memos by White House General Counsel Gonzales. I am sure there will be lots of stories cropping up today on these memos (and I plan to make more comments when I have the time to go through those documents), but I found one scanned document particularly interesting right off the bat.

On November 27, 2002, William Haynes II recommended to Secretary Rumsfeld that certain interrogation techniques be available for detainees at Guantanamo--and Rumsfeld approved his recommendations. Among the techniques that were approved in the memo [PDF] include:

a. Category I techniques. During the initial interrogation the detainee should be provided a comfortable chair and the environment should be generally comfortable. The format of the interrogation is the direct approach. The use of rewards like cookies or cigarettes may be helpful. If the detainee is determined by the interrogator to be uncooperative, the interrogator may use the following techniques:

(1) Yelling at the detainee (not directly in his ear or to the level that it would cause physical pain or hearing problems)
(2) Techniques of deception:
(a) Multiple interrogator techniques.
(b) Interrogator identity. The interviewer may identify himself as a citizen of a foreign nation or as an interrogator from a country with a reputation for harsh treatment of detainees.

b. Category II techniques. With the permission of the GIC, Interrogation Section, the interrogator may use the following techniques.

(1) The use of stress positions (like standing), for a maximum of four hours.
(2) The use of falsified documents or reports.
(3) Use of the isolation facility for up to 30 days. Requests must be made to through the OIC, Interrogation Section, to the Director, Joint Interrogation Group (JIG). Extensions beyond 30 days must be approved by the Commanding General. For selected detainees, the OIC, Interrogation Section, will approve all contacts with the detainee, to include medical visits of a non-emergent nature.
(4) Interrogating the detainee in an environment other than the standard interrogation booth.
(5) Deprivation of light and auditory stimuli.
(6) The detainee may also have a hood placed over his head during transportation and questioning. The hood should not restrict breathing in any way and the detainee should be under direct observation when hooded.
(7) The use of 28-hour interrogations.
(8) Removal of all comfort items (including religious items).
(9) Switching the detainee from hot rations to MREs.
(10) Removal of clothing.
(11) Forced grooming (shaving of facial hair etc...)
(12) Using detainees individual phobias (such as fear of dogs) to induce stress.

The same memo also approved one item from "Category III": "Use of mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger, and light pushing."

When Secretary Rumsfeld signed off on the above techniques, he added a written notation that reads:

However, I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours? DR