THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
March 2007:
Week Three
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- March 15: The Senate rejects an ambitious resolution that would have forced Bush to set a date for withdrawing US troops from Iraq about a year from now.
Iraq war and occupation
Instead, the Senate enthusiastically adopts two nonbinding resolutions that support the troops. The withdrawal resolution, which under a Senate agreement would have needed 60 votes to pass, fails 48-50. Bush has said he would veto the resolution if it passed. Hours earlier, the House Appropriations Committee approved a plan to withdraw most U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of August 2008. The House provision is part of a $124 billion emergency spending bill that includes $95.5 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year. Two Democrats, Ben Nelson and Joseph Lieberman, vote against the resolution, and one Republican, Gordon Smith, votes for it. Two Senators -- Republican John McCain, who is campaigning in Iowa as part of his presidential campaign, and Democrat Tim Johnson, recuperating from a brain seizure, do not vote. - Senate Democrats knew that the resolution had virtually no chance of passing and no chance whatsoever of surviving a Bush veto. It was introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. A nonbinding resolution sponsored by Democrat Patty Murray, calling for ensuring the safety of US troops by providing the necessary funding, training and equipment, and restating the government's obligation to ensure medical care for returning troops and veterans, passed 96-2, with two Republicans, Orrin Hatch and Bob Corker, voting nay. The Senate also passes a nonbinding resolution sponsored by Republican Judd Gregg that prohibits cuts in funding for US troops in the field. It was approved 82-16.
- Murray says of her resolution, "We want to make sure we go on record that we support our troops from the time they go to battle until the time they come home. ...Support of our troops extends far beyond their mission in the field" and should continue when service members wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan go to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other facilities, she says. Gregg says his resolution bars Congress from taking "any action that will endanger United States military forces in the field," including the elimination or reduction of funds for those troops. "If you support the troops, you've got to support this amendment," he saysbefore the vote. "In fact, if you supported the Murray amendment, you have to support this amendment unless you changed your mind in the last 30 seconds."
- White House spokesman Tony Snow accuses Reid and Senate Democrats of trying to backstab the Iraqi people with the withdrawal resolution. The resolution calls on Bush to begin the "phased redeployment" of US combat troops from Iraq within four months from the date of enactment with the goal of withdrawing all but a "limited number" by March 31, 2008. It says US troops remaining in Iraq would have the mission of protecting US and coalition personnel and infrastructure, training and equipping Iraqi forces and conducting "targeted counterterrorism operations." The resolution was co-sponsored by 40 other Democrats and one independent, Bernie Sanders, and included presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as its sponsors. The resolution is weaker than a House proposal that imposes deadlines for the Iraqi government to meet military, economic and political benchmarks and requires all US combat troops to be withdrawn by the end of August 2008. But the Senate measure is stronger than previous nonbinding resolutions that merely expressed disapproval of Bush's Iraq war policy. It notes that the circumstances referred to in a 2002 congressional authorization for the use of force in Iraq "have changed substantially" and says US troops "should not be policing a civil war." It also declares that the conflict in Iraq "requires principally a political solution." Accordingly, it continues, US policy on Iraq "must change to emphasize the need for a political solution by Iraqi leaders" and to fight the war on terrorism more effectively. (Washington Post)
- March 15: The Senate Judiciary Committee authorizes subpoenas for five Justice Department officials to testify in the firings of eight US attorneys.
US Attorney firings
Subpoenas for top White House aides, including Karl Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, and her deputy, William Kelley, are in the works. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has agreed to testify before the committee. The five Justice Department officials subpoenaed are Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff who quit this week; Michael Elston, top aide to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty; Associate Attorney General Bill Mercer; Monica Goodling, Gonzales' senior counsel and White House liaison, and Mike Battle, the departing director of the office that oversees all 93 US attorneys. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse says the subpoena authorizations are not needed because Gonzales had agreed to make his aides available, but the Judiciary Committee says it issued the subpoenas in case Gonzales reneged on his agreement to let them testify voluntarily. - The committee also authorizes subpoenas for six of the eight fired US attorneys. The six -- Carol Lam of San Diego, Bud Cummins of Arkansas, Paul Charlton of Arizona, John McKay of Seattle, Daniel Bogden of Nevada and David Iglesias of New Mexico -- testified under subpoena last week before the House Judiciary Committee. "Eight US attorneys who did not play ball with the political agenda of this administration were dropped from the team," says Democratic senator Dick Durbin. "We have a right to ask what that political agenda was and whether or not it was a reasonable firing and dismissal." (AP/San Francisco Chronicle)
- March 15: Another batch of Justice Department e-mails related to the US attorney firings is released, by an angry and disgruntled Bush administration official.
US Attorney firings
More damning information are in those documents, including e-mails indicating that in early 2005, the Justice Department wanted to fire up to 20% of the nation's US attorneys and retain only those prosecutors who were "loyal Bushies." The e-mails also show that Karl Rove asked the White House counsel's office in early January 2005 whether it planned to proceed with a proposal to fire all 93 federal prosecutors. Officials say that Rove was opposed to that idea but wanted to know whether Justice planned to carry it out. Discussions over the planned purge were taking place even as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, was preparing for Senate hearings on his nomination to be attorney general. Gonzales talked "briefly" in December 2004, the messages show, with Kyle Sampson, who would become his chief of staff at Justice, about the plan to remove US attorneys. Justice spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos says Gonzales has "no recollection" of discussing the prosecutors' firings at the time, when he was preparing for his January 2005 confirmation hearings. Until recently, the administration has insisted that neither Gonzales nor anyone at the White House was involved in the firings. Those assertions have now been proven to be lies. Democratic senator Charles Schumer says, "One of the reasons everything is getting out here is that there are people, particularly in the Justice Department, who have been so disgusted with what's happening that information is getting out. And I think the White House and the Justice Department know it's gonna get out whether they release it or not." - A second Republican senator, Gordon Smith, has joined his colleague John Sununu in calling for Gonzales to resign or be fired. "The senator believes, as a matter of credibility, it would be most helpful to have an attorney general we can have full confidence in," says Lindsay Jackson, Smith's spokeswoman. Democratic senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who supported Gonzales's confirmation, also demands that Gonzales resign after learning of e-mails that showed Justice officials actively planning to circumvent Pryor on the replacement for fired Little Rock US attorney Bud Cummins in 2006. Pryor says Gonzales personally told him that there was no attempt to avoid his input. That assertion has now been proven to be a lie.
- All three of the newly released e-mails are conversations between Justice Department officials, including Sampson, who was at the time the counsel for then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. In the e-mails, Sampson gives Gonzales four reasons why the notion of removing all of the country's chief federal prosecutors was a bad idea. Instead, Sampson wrote, "we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current US Attorneys -- the underperforming ones.... The vast majority of US attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc., etc." But, in regard to the idea of firing all US attorneys, Sampson wrote: "That said, if Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, then so do I." (Washington Post, Think Progress [link to video])
- March 15: The political watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) believes that the White House violated the Presidential Records Act (PRA) in using a private, untraceable Web domain, gwb43.com, to send e-mails back and forth between its officials.
Secrecy of Bush administration
White House staffers who dealt with with convicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the US Attorney firings sent e-mails from outside addresses such as the gwb43.com address, linked to the Republican National Committee (RNC), to circumvent the mandatory record-keeping system. CREW is demanding that Democrat Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, investigate whether the White House violated its mandatory record-keeping obligation under the PRA. - CREW notes that some of the e-mails released by the House Judiciary Committee use the gwb43.com domain, including an e-mail sent by the White House's deputy political director, Scott Jennings, to Alberto Gonzales's then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. The e-mail was sent from the account SJennings@gwb43.com. CREW notes, "This raises serious questions about whether the White House was trying to deliberately evade its responsibilities under the PRA, which directs the president to take all necessary steps to maintain presidential records to provide a full accounting of all activities during his tenure." Former Karl Rove aide Susan Ralston used e-mails from other RNC-maintained accounts, including rnchq.com, georgebush.com, and an America Online account. "In many of these emails Ms. Ralston is communicating inside White House information to Mr. Abramoff in response to Mr. Abramoff's efforts to broker deals for his clients and place specified individuals in positions within the administration," CREW notes. "CREW has learned that to fulfill its statutory obligations under the PRA, the White House email system automatically copies all messages created by staff and sends them to the White House Office of Records Management for archiving. Given these development, it now appears that the White House deliberately bypassed the automatic archiving function of its own email system that was designed to ensure compliance with the PRA," CREW says.
- CREW's executive director Melanie Sloan says, "Now that we know that at least two White House officials have circumvented the law by using alternate email systems to discuss the US Attorney firings and Jack Abramoff, we are asking Chairman Waxman to investigate whether the White House has continually violated its mandatory record-keeping obligation under the Presidential Records Act. This administration continues to disregard the law in favor of agenda-driven politics." (CREW)
- March 15: Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation.
Secrecy of Bush administration
Instead of allowing the Justice Department probe going forth, Bush personally shut down the probe by taking the unprecedented step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work. Had the probe not been halted, the probe would have likely focused on Gonzales's own actions regarding the illegal eavesdropping program while he was White House counsel, along with his oversight of the program as attorney general. - Current and former Justice Department officials, as well as experts in legal ethics, question the propriety of Gonzales's continuing to advise Bush about the investigation after learning that it might examine his own actions. Gonzales was acting improperly, they say, if he refused to disclose that information to Bush. However, if Gonzales did inform Bush about the possibility and Bush responded by stymieing the probe -- a far more likely scenario -- that would raise even more serious questions as to whether Bush acted to protect Gonzales.
- Bush's shutdown of the internal probe was reported in July 2006, but it has not been previously reported that investigators were about to question at least two crucial witnesses and examine documents that might have shed light on Gonzales's role in authorizing and overseeing the eavesdropping program. Investigators from the Office of Professional Responsibility notified senior aides to Gonzales early last year that the first two people they intended to interview were Jack Goldsmith, who had been an assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, and James Baker, the counsel for Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. Both had raised questions about the propriety and legality of various aspects of the eavesdropping program, which was undertaken after the 9/11 attacks as an anti-terrorism tool.
- Marshall Jarrett, the head of OPR, informed senior Justice officials in a January 20, 2006, memo that he had "asked the Office of Legal Counsel to provide information and documents in its possession relating to the [National Security Agency] program." The memo also said that the office had asked Baker to "submit to an interview concerning the NSA program and its relationship to the department's dealings with the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court." Law enforcement officials say that Gonzales's senior aides then informed him that OPR wanted to launch its inquiry by interviewing Goldsmith and Baker. Goldsmith and others within the Office of Legal Counsel had clashed with Gonzales when Gonzales had been a strong advocate of the eavesdropping program during his tenure as White House counsel. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey shared some of the same concerns as Goldsmith about the program's legality, according to interviews with current and former officials and to published accounts. The Justice Department officials told Gonzales and other White House aides in early 2004 that they would not support the reauthorization of the program, which was first authorized in 2002, unless changes were made to bring it into legal compliance.
- The White House made some surface modifications to the program, but Congress members, legal scholars, and federal judges continued to argue that the program was illegal and unconstitutional. On January 17, 2007, the Bush administration altered the program, saying it would no longer allow eavesdropping without warrants on electronic communications between individuals within the US and individuals abroad having suspected terrorist ties. The administration agreed that all requests for electronic eavesdropping would, as was the case before the program's inception, be subject to judicial review by a special federal court under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
- A senior federal law enforcement official says that after OPR launched its inquiry in early 2006, Justice Department political appointees were concerned that the internal ethics office might conclude that Gonzales or other administration officials had broken the law in the authorization and oversight of the program. OPR did not have a mandate to determine whether the eavesdropping program itself was illegal or unconstitutional. Rather, the office was to investigate "allegations of misconduct involving department attorneys that relate to the exercise of their authority to investigate, litigate, or provide legal advice," according to the office's policies and procedures. Baker and another Justice Department official had warned the presiding judge of the FISA court that authorities improperly used information from the program to obtain surveillance warrants submitted to the court. If the Justice inquiry had been allowed to continue, Baker would almost certainly have been asked about any discussions he had with Gonzales and his top aides regarding these issues, according to officials close to the inquiry.
- Jarrett undertook his investigation after receiving a request on January 9, 2006, from Democratic representative Maurice Hinchey and three other House Democrats. Hinchey and the other lawmakers were responding to a December 16, 2005, New York Times article that disclosed the program's existence. In his January 20 memo, Jarrett asked that he, four other attorneys in his office, and two administrative aides receive security clearances so that they could proceed with their investigation. OPR had never before been denied security clearances in its three-decade existence, according to former Justice Department officials. And the Bush administration had granted such clearances to a score of other Justice officials, enabling them to learn classified details of the program, as well as to a group of private citizens on a presidential privacy board. But this time, Bush personally ordered that none of the OPR officials be given clearance. Without the security clearances, Jarrett and his team had no way to pursue the probe.
- Law professor Stephen Gillers says that Gonzales's continuing role in advising Bush about the probe after he learned that his own conduct might be scrutinized is highly questionable: "If the attorney general was on notice that he was a person of interest to the OPR inquiry, he should have stepped aside and not been involved in any decisions about the scope or the continuation of the investigation." Robert Litt, a principal associate deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration, says Gonzales "should have recused himself. He should not have played a role in an investigation that touches upon him." An even more serious issue, according to Gillers, Litt, and others is whether Gonzales informed Bush that the investigation was going to examine his actions. "Did the president know that Gonzales might have been shutting down the police force when it was looking into his own behavior?" Gillers asks. Charles Wolfram, a professor emeritus of legal ethics at Cornell, says that if Gonzales did not inform the president, Gonzales ill-served Bush and abused "the discretion of his office" for his own benefit. However, if Gonzales did inform Bush that the probe might harm Gonzales, then "both [men] are abusing the discretion of their offices."
- When it was disclosed in July that Bush himself had halted the OPR investigation, White House press secretary Tony Snow said that the president's decision was justified because the eavesdropping program was already subject to other executive branch oversight. "The Office of Professional Responsibility was not the proper venue for conducting that," Snow claimed. he also said that the president's denial of the security clearances was warranted because "in the case of a highly classified program, you need to keep the number of people to it tight for reasons of national security, and that was what he did." A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, says that any discussions between Bush and Gonzales regarding the OPR investigation were appropriate because "the terrorist surveillance program is a highly classified national security tool to fight the global war on terror." According to accounts that Gonzales and his aides gave to others in the department, Gonzales did advise Bush on the issue of the OPR inquiry.
- Jarrett, the head of OPR, argued strenuously for the granting of security clearances, writing a memo to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty on March 21, 2006 that OPR was being "precluded from performing its duties." Jarrett wrote that in contrast, the administration promptly approved "the Criminal Division's request for the same security clearances for a large team of attorneys and FBI agents that was investigating who initially leaked details of the NSA eavesdropping program to the New York Times." Jarrett continued: "We have also learned that individuals involved in the Civil Division's response to legal challenges to the NSA program and responses to [Freedom of Information Act] litigation have received the same clearances. And according to the recent press reports, the five private individuals who make up the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board have been briefed on the NSA program and have been granted authorization to receive the clearances in question. "In contrast, our repeated requests for access to classified information about the NSA program have not been granted. As a result, this office, which is charged with monitoring the integrity of the department's attorneys and with ensuring that the highest standards of professional ethics are maintained, has been precluded from performing its duties."
- A senior federal law enforcement official says that granting clearances to nongovernmental citizens while refusing to grant them to department attorneys demonstrates "that the decision not to grant clearances to OPR had everything to do with politics and nothing to do with keeping national security secrets."
- Current and former Justice Department officials call Bush's actions unprecedented in the office's history. Michael Shaheen, who headed OPR from its inception until 1997, said on May 27, 2006, that his staff "never, ever was denied a clearance" and that OPR had conducted numerous investigations involving the activities of other attorneys general. "No attorney general has ever said no to me," Shaheen said. "If I were still at OPR and was told I couldn't have security clearances, the first word out of my mouth...would have been, 'Balderdash!'"
- After Jarrett was unable to obtain the security clearances, he wrote to the members of Congress who had asked him to undertake the inquiry. "We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation, because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program," Jarrett wrote to Hinchey on May 10, 2006. "On May 9, 2006, we were informed that our requests had been denied. Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation." Hinchey and other Democratic House members asked Jarrett why he was unable to obtain the necessary clearances; Jarrett's superiors, according to government records and to interviews, instructed him not to inform Congress that Bush had made the decision. Jarrett thus wrote back to Hinchey and three other House Democrats on June 8 that he could not answer their questions because to do so "would require me to disclose client confidences and internal Justice Department deliberations, which I am precluded from doing."
- On July 18, Gonzales himself disclosed that Bush had halted the OPR probe. His disclosure came in response to a question by then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, in light of a May 27 National Journal story that raised questions as to who made the decision to deny OPR its security clearances. Previously, Justice Department officials had suggested that the decision was made within the Justice Department itself, or because the National Security Agency did not want to grant those clearances.
- The most detailed public explanation about the president's actions is contained in a July 27, 2006, letter from Assistant Attorney General William Moschella to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee: "The president decided that protecting the secrecy and security of the program requires that a strict limit be placed on the number of persons granted access to information about the program for nonoperational reasons. Every additional security clearance that is granted for the [terrorist surveillance program] increases the risk that national security may be compromised."
- Federal law enforcement officials said that Gonzales and his top aides learned about OPR's plans to scrutinize the attorney general from Jarrett. OPR's chief informed senior Justice officials that he wanted to review records of the Office of Legal Counsel, where Goldsmith and his aides had questioned the legality of some aspects of the NSA program, and to also interview Baker, who had raised other reservations about the implementation and auditing of the program. Goldsmith, in particular, would have been a key witness to the OPR probe; as assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, he began to develop reservations about the legality of certain aspects of the NSA eavesdropping program, according to published reports and interviews with current and former administration officials.
- Goldsmith, initially considered a "natural fit" for the legal counsel office, quickly became troublesome to Cheney and his aides, Libby and David Addington. According to Newsweek, as he became more and more disillusioned with the illegal practices routinely practiced in the White House, he became "the central figure in a secret but intense rebellion of a small coterie of Bush administration lawyers" against the White House's legal claims that the president should have "virtually unlimited powers in the war in terror." Addington frequently attacked Goldsmith for not supporting the use of torture against terrorism suspects. Worse in the views of Cheney and Addington, Goldsmith began to question the legality of various aspects of the NSA eavesdropping program. Goldsmith found a sympathetic ear and ally when James Comey was appointed deputy attorney general in late 2003. Comey, who resisted the Bush politicizing of the Department of Justice, supported Goldsmith's contentions that absent significant changes to the eavesdropping program, portions of it were illegal. It is certain that Comey would have been a key witness in the OPR probe. In March 2004, while then-Attorney General Ashcroft was in the hospital, Comey faced down the White House, asserting that he wouldn't reauthorize the eavesdropping program unless it was brought within the law. Ultimately, a compromise was reached and the NSA eavesdropping program was reauthorized with the changes recommended by Goldsmith and Comey. That Goldsmith, Baker, and Comey might be questioned as part of a Justice Department inquiry "must have raised the specter of a waking nightmare for the AG," says a former senior Justice Department official.
- As of now, it is highly unlikely that Congress will find out anytime soon what Bush and Gonzales discussed regarding the OPR investigation. Justice officials wrote Specter on July 17, 2006: "Consistent with long-standing executive practice, documents that reflect internal deliberations about these matters [will] not be produced." (National Journal)
- March 15: Research by Daily Kos blogger "agent double o soul" shows that US attorney Carol Lam's firing was possibly orchestrated by the chairman of the California Republican Party, Ron Nehring.
US Attorney firings
Conventional wisdom lays much of the blame on GOP representative Darrell Issa, who has been chasing after Lam since 2002. But Nehring made it happen, not so much as an act of political revenge, but as part of Nehring's efforts to transform California into a Republican bastion. - Nehring is a close colleague of rightist activist Grover Norquist, and in February 2007 managed to oust former GOP chairman George Sundheim, a close ally of moderate Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Agent" notes that "after Schwarzenegger's failed special election, his party loyalty veered sharply toward the middle of the road, and some say, toward the left. No question Nehring was appointed to try to steer the state GOP back to the right." He calls Nehring the potential "next Karl Rove." Nehring's California GOP has issued a new playbook that essentially calls for vivisecting the Democratic political apparatus in California, using the Democrats' own tactics of grassroots mobilization and placing loyal GOP operatives in local offices in preparation for bigger elections. But the playbook goes farther, advising: "Build coalitions with potential new Republican voters by identifying issues where Republicans share common principles and values with those who do not yet identify with our party. [Emphasize that you believe in fiscal conservatism, and smaller government, even while your party is running spending deficits, and increasing the size of the Federal Bureaucracy. Avoid mentioning your position on Stem Cell Research, for instance....]" It also advocates that GOP election officials "take your voting machine home for a sleep over," which is effective for manipulating votes if quite illegal. "California has 1.3 million more Democrats than Republicans, but there are many more elected offices where Republicans can be elected to put our ideas into action by committing ourselves to strong candidates, strong campaigns, and a strong party."
- Back to the Lam ousting. Nehring is not only close to Norquist, and serves as a "senior consultant" to Norquist's influential organization Americans for Tax Reform, but has staunchly defended former Republican congressman Randy Cunningham, convicted of multiple counts of fraud and corruption by Carol Lam's prosecution of Cunningham and several of his defense contractor cronies. Nehring has tried to deflect attention away from Cunningham by crying about historical abuses by Democrats -- both true and fictional. In November, when Francine Busby, the Democratic candidate for Cunningham's seat in CA-50, proposed reforms that would reduce the sort of abuses that allowed Cunningham to secretly steer millions of dollars to companies and individuals, without congressional over-sight, Nehring accused Busby of "regurgitating a 'spoon-fed' proposal created by the Democratic Party in Washington."
- According to "Agent," Lam was brought into office to carry out Nehring's and Norquist's plan to politicize every election in California, including the nonpartisan offices reaching down all the way to Mosquito Abatement Official. Lam pursued bogus investigations of two San Diego Republicans and tried to ignore the growing evidence that Cunningham was involved in a much larger scandal, one that portrayed the entire California Republican Party as potentially corrupt. "Agent" writes, "Carol Lam is not the innocent victim. When it became obvious that Lam's political usefullness had worn thin, and Nehring took charge, a new set of standards was put in place. It was also evident that the plan to influence and win seats in local political races, and the wider veil of corruption were going to coincide to bring intense scrutiny to some of the selective prosecutions which had been conducted. ...It would have made more sense to fire Lam before she convicted Cunningham. All the evidence supports the fact that she tried not to bring the case up in a timely fashion, and that she was issuing blanket subpeonas to Democrats, for their part in the appropriations scandal the day before she was fired. ...This is much more than some political operative in Washington pulling the plug on a DA because he doesn't like who she has prosecuted, when the case is already over. This is something far deeper and more ominious. This is just the beginning." (Daily Kos [multiple sources])
- March 15: Former Clinton White House counsel Sidney Blumenthal writes that, no matter what objections or denials the White House and its apologists may issue, the person obviously at the core of the US attorney firings is chief political operative Karl Rove.
US Attorney firings
Of course, almost the first thing the White House did was try -- unsuccessfully -- to shield Rove from scrutiny when Congress began investigating the firings. But the ties were clear from the start: one of Rove's "most devoted underlings," Tim Griffin, his head of opposition research, who helped spearhead the 2000 negative campaign against Al Gore ("Rain hell on Al!" a sign in Griffin's department read), was chosen to replace one of the attorneys, Arkansas's Bud Cummins. Instead, the Justice Department lied to Congress when it declared, in a letter sent in late February, "The department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin." The recently released e-mails from the Justice Department concerning the attorney firings prove otherwise. One e-mail, reported in earlier items on this page, from Gonzales's chief of staff Kyle Sampson, read in part, "I know getting him [Griffin] appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc." Harriet, of course, was Harriet Miers, then the White House legal counsel. - The White House's attempt to cover Rove's tracks went much farther than a simple lie to Congress. The Justice Department's three top officials -- Gonzales, his deputy Paul McNulty, and chief associate deputy William Moschella, all testified to Congress under oath that the only reason the attorneys were fired were "performance" reasons, not because of political considerations. But another Sampson e-mails proves that their testimonies were also lies: Sampson wrote an e-mail in March 2005 that ranked all 93 US attorneys on the basis of being "good performers," those who "exhibited loyalty" to the administration, or "low performers," those who "chafed against Administration initiatives, etc." Sampson took the heat for his three bosses' lies by claiming, in his resignation letter, that he failed to inform them and other officials about the firings. Sampson was Gonzales's chief of staff, and lusted after a US attorney position of his own. Blumenthal also observes that "Sampson was considered to be politically adept enough to be considered a stand-in for the supposedly indispensable Rove. When it was rumored that Rove might be indicted in the Valerie Plame case, the Washington Post reported that Sampson was likely to replace him."
- The spin continued. After Sampson abruptly quit, Gonzales gave his now-famous press conference where he claimed passively that "mistakes were made," claimed to be ignorant of "all decisions" at his department, explained that it has 110,000 employees, whined about his modest origins, and promised to oversee the investigation of his own misfeasance. "His defense was the very grounds used to fire the US attorneys: poor performance," Blumenthal writes. "He used his failure as a shield."
- Unfortunately for Gonzales's claims, the White House had already inadvertently shot him down the day before, when a spokeswoman, Dana Perino, admitted that Bush had discussed the firings with Gonzales in October 2006, just before the midterm elections, when Bush complained about the attorneys' "failure" to pursue bogus voter-fraud investigations against Democrats. Bush was echoing Rove's own concerns, who in turn was echoing complaints from state-level Republicans afraid that their candidates would lose in the elections, and who wanted high-profile indictments brought to influence the vote. Blumenthal writes, "Rove was the conduit for Republican political grievances about the US attorneys. He was the fulcrum and the lever. He was the collector of information and the magnet of power. He was the originator, formulator and director. But, initially, according to the administration, like Gonzales, he supposedly knew nothing and did nothing."
- But the spin continued. White House communications director Dan Bartlett told the press that there was no plot, nothing untoward happened: "You're trying to connect a lot of dots that aren't connectible. ...It wouldn't be surprising that Karl or other people were receiving these complaints." So Rove was likely involved in the thing that didn't happen.
- It is unlikely at best that Sampson was the center of the storm. And it is just as unlikely that both Gonzales and Miers knew nothing about the firings, or were able to engineer such a scheme. The firings have all the earmarks of a classic Rove political operation. Blumenthal writes, "Gonzales's and Miers's service is notable for their obedience, lack of originality and eagerness to act as tools. The scheme bears the marks of Rove's obsessions, methods and sources. His history contains a wealth of precedents in which he manipulated law enforcement for political purposes. And his long-term strategy for permanent Republican control of government depended on remaking the federal government to create his ultimate goal -- a one-party state."
- An e-mail from deputy White House counsel William Kelley confirms that the White House knew of the firings on December 4, three days before seven of the eight attorneys were fired. "We're a go for the US Atty plan," he wrote. "WH leg[islative affairs], political, and communications have signed off...."
- Blumenthal reminds his readers, "From the earliest Republican campaigns that Rove ran in Texas, beginning in 1986, the FBI was involved in investigating every one of his candidates' Democratic opponents. Rove happened to have a close and mysterious relationship with the chief of the FBI office in Austin. Investigations were announced as elections grew close, but there were rarely indictments, just tainted Democrats and victorious Republicans. On one occasion, Rove himself proclaimed that the FBI had a prominent Democrat under investigation -- an investigation that led to Rove's client's win. In 1990, the Texas Democratic Party chairman issued a statement: 'The recurring leaks of purported FBI investigations of Democratic candidates during election campaigns is highly questionable and repugnant.' A year later, Rove received a reward. Gov. Bill Clements, a Rove client, appointed him to the East Texas State University board of regents. Appearing before the state Senate's Nominations Committee, a Democratic senator asked Rove about how long he had known the local FBI chief. 'Ah, Senator,' replied Rove, 'it depends. Would you define 'know' for me?'"
- Rove has long pressured US senators, who usually recommend the US attorneys for their states, to select Bush loyalists. As reported in an earlier item, Rove resisted the choice of Patrick Fitzgerald as US attorney for Illinois, pressuring Republican senator Peter Fitzgerald (no relation) to pick someone else. Patrick Fitzgerald subsequently went after Republicans such as the incumbent governor, George Ryan, for corruption, and later led the prosecution of Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, for obstruction of justice and perjury related to the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. "That Fitzgerald appointment got great headlines for you, but it ticked off the base," Rove told the senator.
- Blumenthal continues his history lesson: "In 2002, the first midterm elections of the Bush presidency, Republicans systematically raised charges of voter fraud involving Native Americans in the hotly contended US Senate race in South Dakota. Though the accusations were never proved and the GOP failed to depose the Democratic senator, Tim Johnson, the campaign served as a template. By the election of 2004, Rove became a repository of charges of voter fraud across the country, from Philadelphia to Milwaukee to New Mexico, all in swing states. In the campaign, unproven voter fraud charges, always aimed at minority voters, became a leitmotif of Republican efforts."
- Rove was heavily involved in pressuring fired US attorney John McKay of Washington state into looking into "voter fraud" in the election of 2004 Democratic governor Christine Gregoire. The state Republican party chairman, Chris Vance, who was after McKay to heighten his investigation, was in constant contact with Rove. "I thought it was part of my job, to be a conduit," Vance told the Seattle Times. "We had a Republican secretary of state, a Republican prosecutor in King County and a Republican US attorney, and no one was doing anything." McKay refused to have any conversation about an investigation, and he found no basis for charging anyone with voter fraud. In a September 13, 2006 e-mail, Sampson identified McKay as one of those "we should now consider pushing out." In December 2006, McKay was fired.
- In 2006, Rove addressed the Republican Lawyers Association on the "growing problem," as he put it, of voter fraud. Every instance he cited was in a swing state. New Mexico was one of them. Rove had heard complaints from the New Mexico Republican Party chairman, Allen Weh, about David Iglesias, the state's US attorney, for his supposed refusal to indict Democrats for voter fraud (see above items). Blumenthal writes, "Iglesias appeared to be a dream figure for local Republicans -- the model for the movie A Few Good Men, Hispanic and evangelical. 'Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?' Weh asked Rove at a White House Christmas party. 'He's gone,' Rove replied. Indeed, Iglesias' firing was already a done deal.
- Perhaps the most egregrious firing was that of California attorney Carol Lam, who had already put Republican Randy Cunningham in jail and was zeroing in on some of Cunningham's well-connected cohorts, including fellow Republican representative Jerry Lewis. On May 11, 2006, Sampson e-mailed Miers regarding "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam." Soon, she was axed as well.
- Just how loyal should US attorneys be? A study of the prosecutions by US attorneys under Bush, from 2001 through 2006, shows that almost 80% of their investigations of office holders were of Democrats -- a rate almost four times greater than that of Republican office holders. "Data indicate that the offices of the US attorneys across the nation investigate seven times as many Democratic officials as they investigate Republican officials, a number that exceeds even the racial profiling of African Americans in traffic stops," the study shows. The pattern is clear: US attorneys are in place to investigate Democrats and Democrats alone.
- Blumenthal writes, "If the Democrats hadn't won the midterm elections last year there is no reason to believe that the plan to use the US attorneys for political prosecutions -- as they have been used systematically under Bush -- wouldn't have gone forward completely unimpeded. Without the new Congress issuing subpoenas, there would be no exposure, no hearings, no press conferences -- no questions at all. The replacement of the eight fired U.S. attorneys through a loophole in the Patriot Act that enables the administration to evade consultation with and confirmation by Congress is a convenient element in the well-laid scheme. But it was not ad hoc, erratic or aberrant. Rather, it was the logical outcome of a long effort to distort the constitutional framework for partisan consolidation of power into a de facto one-party state. This effort began two generations ago with Richard Nixon's drive to forge an imperial presidency, using extralegal powers of government to aggrandize unaccountable power in the executive and destroy political opposition. Nixon was thwarted in the Watergate scandal. We will never know his full malevolent intentions, but we do know that in the aftermath of the 1972 election he wanted to remake the executive branch to create what the Bush administration now calls a 'unitary executive.' Nixon later explained his core doctrine: 'When the president does it, that means it's not illegal.' Karl Rove is the rightful heir to Nixonian politics. His first notice in politics occurred as a witness before the Senate Watergate Committee. From Nixon to Bush, Rove is the single continuous character involved in the tactics and strategy of political subterfuge." (Salon)
- March 15: The nonpartisan voting rights organization ProjectVote releases a study, compiled primarily by political science professor Lorraine Minnite, that proves the GOP allegations of rampant Democratic voting fraud are based on nothing but lies and partisan maneuverings.
Election fraud
The report finds that voting fraud, as presented by Republicans, is extremely rare at best. Most of the allegations of voting fraud turn out to be something else. And charges of voter fraud are historically used by the political elite to restrict and manipulate the electorate, often targeting the historically disenfranchised. In the words of veteran political blogger Brad Friedman, Minnite "thoroughly debunks --- nay, eviscerates --- the long-worked, well-moneyed, and invidious GOP plot to create the illusion of an American 'voter fraud' epidemic (as distinct from very real election fraud concerns). The point behind the effort is solely to push for disenfranchising laws and restrictions in an effort to keep legitimate voters away from the polls in our democracy." - Though Minnite and ProjectVote are no liberals, the report specifically presents evidence that phony "non-partisan" groups such as the GOP-financed "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR), founded in 2005, has as its driving agenda the attempt to facilitate the GOP push to disenfranchise wide swaths of Democratic voters through false allegations of voting fraud. However, the ACVR has suddenly dropped off the radar. The organization, founded just three days before its representatives testified at a staged Congressional hearing on the 2004 Ohio presidential elections, seems AWOL. The group, which claims a tax-exempt status though it has never produced the paperwork to back up the claim, was founded by the general counsel to the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, Mark Hearne, along with the former communications director of the Republican National Committee, Jim Dyke. Hearne now works for White House political director Karl Rove, and Dyke works for Dick Cheney. The ACVR has deleted its Web site after the US attorney scandal became front-page news, and it has proven to be impossible to contact any spokespersons for the organization. (ProjectVote/BradBlog [links to report])
- March 15: More evidence is surfacing that US attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico was fired because of his unwillingness to pursue baseless "voter fraud" allegations in the weeks before the November 2006 elections.
US Attorney firings
The evidence comes from John Boyd, an Albuquerque, New Mexico, based elections attorney who worked with the Democratic party in the state during the 2004 election. Before the 2004 elections, Boyd helped represent the Dems in defending against the GOP "voter fraud fraud," as he calls it. After the election, he successfully filed suit, along with the watchdog organization VoterAction, against the state concerning failures in their DRE/touch-screen voting system. That suit eventually led to a statewide ban on such systems and a requirement for paper-based elections. Boyd writes that the firing scandal is actually "far worse than it now appears." His first-hand account shows how the GOP manufactured their pre-election "voter fraud" crisis in the state, despite lacking any evidence of any actual crimes. - Boyd writes, "In the run-up to the 2004 election, there were intense efforts at voter registration going on in New Mexico. The result was the enfranchisement of many minorities and poor. The Republicans were apoplectic, of course. The registration campaigns added about 65,000 voters to the rolls in Bernalillo County alone, about a 10% increase. The Republicans' response (and it has since been surfacing in Congress as well as in other states) was to demand strict 'voter ID' laws. Strict voter ID laws have the effect of disenfranchising many students (who may not have in-state licenses, or other forms of ID showing an address), old people, minorities and poor who for many reasons may not possess the type of identification such a law would require. The Republicans have been trying to sell these laws for the last two or three years, but they have needed a 'hook.' The hook is what they refer to as 'voter fraud.' If they can persuade the public that people are voting twice, or that people who shouldn't be permitted to vote are voting, or that other kinds of 'fraud' are occurring, they can sell 'voter ID' as the solution. The problem for the Republicans is that voter fraud is not even a tiny problem. There are not a lot of people who are prepared to risk a felony conviction by finagling a way to vote twice, and there are not a lot of illegal aliens trying to figure out how to vote in American elections. As I learned from a Harvard professor who has studied the history of voting in America, the banner of 'voter fraud' has a long and ugly history because it has been repeatedly used to justify impediments to voting, from poll taxes and literacy tests to the present day push for strict 'voter ID' laws."
- Of his experience in the 2004 New Mexico elections, Boyd writes, "So in New Mexico, in the late summer of 2004, a group of Republicans marched into the county clerk's office and asked if there were any 'problem' registrations associated with the voter registration drives." The clerk provided the Republican operatives with information about some 6,000 incomplete voter registration forms, most missing Social Security numbers or containing invalid addresses such as post office boxes instead of the required street addresses. Boyd says, "The problem for the Republicans, however, was that these didn't represent fraud, they were just typical and expected screw-ups by the registrants or the people registering them. The Republicans nevertheless held a press conference, and grabbed headlines, announcing how terribly shocked they were to report that there were over 6,000 'fraudulent registrations' submitted by these nefarious voter registration groups, and New Mexico's voter rolls were being grossly corrupted. This had the predictable effect on the public, whose response was that they could now understand why a strict voter ID law would be a good idea." Republicans used the "exposure" to file suit in order to force the courts to declare that New Mexico's very narrow voter ID statute, which applied only to first-time voters who had mailed in their voter registration applications, should have a much broader interpretation, under which most new voters would have to present ID at the polls. Boyd represented the Democratic Party as an intervenor in the suit.
- The Republicans' "evidence" as presented in court was badly lacking. In one of the few examples they provided of what they called "clearly fraudulent" registration applications, a New Mexico woman had signed two different registration applications, both of which were accurate. She signed one on a desk and one on her hand as she was walking across campus, with the result that her two signatures appeared different. Another involved a couple who had registered at a voter registration drive table but had not received their registration cards. Worried that their applications had been lost, the husband returned alone to a registration table and filled out two new forms and, with his wife's permission, signed her name. Of the numerous examples the Republicans presented, along with a great deal of heated rhetoric, only one proved to be actual fraud -- a registration application that a teenager had filled out as a prank. The testimony was clear that his name would never have appeared on the rolls because of the cross-checking that occurs with respect to every new registration, nor was there any indication that he would have actually tried to vote.
- But this was the evidence that the New Mexico Republicans gave to Iglesias with their demand that he form a federal task force to get to the bottom of the "serious voter fraud problem" facing New Mexico. Understandably, Iglesias refused due to the lack of evidence. But, as Boyd notes, the New Mexico Republicans didn't want actual convictions, they wanted headlines that would shape the results of the next election. Boyd writes, "The Republicans' theory, probably correct, is that if they can get enough headlines about voter fraud, they will be able to sell their disenfranchising voter ID laws to the public. Iglesias, understandably, had better things to do with his time and with our money."
- Iglesias's firing seems directly related to the New Mexico Republicans whom he angered by refusing to go along with their schemes. Boyd writes, "So this is a three-pronged scandal. First, there is the scandal of the 'voter fraud' fraud which the Republicans have been trying to use to help promote restrictive, disenfranchising voter ID legislation. Second, there is the scandal of the Republicans attempting to enlist the US Atty's office in their voter fraud fraud by getting him, at taxpayer expense and contrary to the most elemental ethics, to use his office to generate headlines about 'voter fraud' when none was occurring, for the sole purpose of shaving Democratic party margins. Third, there is the scandal of firing Iglesias for refusing to go along with this fraudulent manipulation." (BradBlog)
- March 15: A veteran Daily Kos blogger and legal expert, who posts under the moniker "Kagro X," writes that the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is not enough.
Impeachment
Instead, he writes, the only proper address for the firings of the eight US attorneys is impeachment of the president. "Resignation, even in supposed disgrace however, is insufficiently punitive to members of an 'administration' that has made a practice of employing prominent Republican recidivists left over from what should have been career-ending scandals like Watergate and Iran-Contra," he writes. But, more to the point, "resignation as a punishment also fails to fit the crime. You may rest assured that apologists for Gonzales, Bush and Rove (whose involvement also seems obvious) will insist that there is no 'crime' here, because the hiring and firing of US attorneys is within the president's prerogative. True, as far as it goes. But what clearly ought not to be is the political manipulation of federal investigations to bolster the electoral prospects of Republicans, and damage those of Democrats and other rivals. This is the sort of activity that's so obviously and fundamentally wrong that nobody has yet taken the time to devise a statute to address it. Instead, it occupies the space of a general crime against the Constitution, a subversion of our very system of government, and precisely the sort of crime for which the founders gave us the remedy of impeachment. That's what 'high crimes and misdemeanors' are all about. It's not about lawbreaking at altitude." - He continues, "Bush, Rove and Gonzales have now done for the prosecution of public corruption what they've done for impeachment. Defense attorneys across the country are doubtless exploring the possibility of demanding new trials for their clients, and those awaiting trial will be seeking dismissal of charges, all because the Department of Justice has been exposed as a political attack machine, and has lost its credibility in prosecuting corruption cases. Such cases may now be regarded as little more than a sick joke, and every defendant who claims that his prosecution is a 'partisan witch hunt' will suddenly be able to give new legitimacy to that once tired, old saw. For the balance of this 'administration,' then, and for the foreseeable future, the serious prosecution of public corruption may be all but impossible. And that is the true measure of the gravity of this crime."
- "Kagro X" calls the firings more than just a crime against the core tenets of American justice, "it is also evidence of a depravity not seen since Nixon. Veteran watchers of Karl Rove's operations will instantly recognize his infamous m.o. in all of this: make your own weakness a strength, and accuse the opposition of doing precisely what you're actually doing behind the scenes. While Republican corruption was running rampant, Rove's machinations made it appear that it was actually Democratic corruption that was the problem. While Republicans at the federal level were literally looting the Treasury, handing out bricks of cash in Iraq, laundering [Jack] Abramoff's 'lobbying' fees, forcing through illegal redistricting plans, jamming phone lines on election day, suppressing the minority vote, etc., Republican prosecutors were digging for any scraps they could find to use against their political opposition at the local level, where they hoped no one would connect the dots, but which would still have a corrosive effect on the public perception of Democrats. And when Republicans were caught in the act, as DeLay was, what was the first thing he accused the Democratic District Attorney of? Conducting a 'partisan witch hunt.'"
- He concludes, "The long term effects of this scandal are incalculable. At a time when Republicans are accused of engaging in rampant and systematic public corruption, Rove, Bush and Gonzales have succeeded in making corruption investigations into the same sort of partisan joke that Republicans made impeachment. And as their crimes come to light in the closing days of their 'administration' and into the next, they may well have made it impossible for a Democratic successor to actually pursue justice on behalf of the American people, since any such effort will undoubtedly -- and with a lack of shame that shocks the conscience -- be labeled as 'partisan revenge.' Heads must roll, and they must roll in numbers." (Daily Kos)
- March 15: The Daily Show, hosted by comedian and political commentator Jon Stewart, skewers the Bush administration's current favorite talking point surrounding the firing of the eight US attorneys -- that those attorneys "serve at the pleasure of the president."
US Attorney firings
Although this site rarely indulges in comedy, the parody of the talking point is so dead-on and, frankly, so hilarious that the editor felt a link was in order. You can download or view the video from the link below. (Comedy Central/Crooks and Liars [link to video])
