Firing of US attorneys: Was it too political?

At issue is whether the Bush administration went too far, pressuring the attorneys to help the GOP.

from the March 30, 2007 edition

Page 2 of 2

Page 1 | 2

'Performance-related' is a plastic term that includes a lot of things to a lot of people," said Mr. Sampson.

As political appointees, the federal prosecutors should promote such initiatives as the president's Project Safe Neighborhoods to get guns off city streets, said Mr. Gonzales's former chief of staff.

Yet Ms. Lam in San Diego "simply did not devote any resources to that," said Sampson.

Lam also did not bring as many immigration cases as the administration wanted, Sampson added.

Yet critics have noted that there is no indication that the Justice Department ever confronted Lam with their complaints about her performance in regard to gun control or immigration.

After her dismissal, the chief of the FBI bureau in San Diego told a reporter that the firing would hamper key investigations, and that politics was surely involved.

In Albuquerque, Mr. Iglesias last fall received phone calls from Rep. Heather Wilson (R) and Sen. Pete Domenici (R) of New Mexico inquiring as to whether he would soon bring indictments in a politically charged corruption case involving Democrats. Iglesias has written that he felt the calls constituted political pressure, coming as they did shortly before the fall elections.

Moreover, Senator Domenici called Justice Department officials, including Gonzales, to complain about Iglesias.

Thousands of pages of e-mails and documents released by the Justice Department in recent days make clear that the White House was consulted throughout the process of drawing up lists of US attorneys for dismissal.

A Feb. 22, 2007, e-mail from Sampson noted that the draft of a letter responding to Congress on the US attorney matter needed to be forwarded to the White House counsel's office, since political adviser Karl Rove was involved.

"The plot continues to thicken. It seems the Justice Department rarely acted without the knowledge and approval of the White House," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D) of New York on Thursday.

Also, Gonzales was wrong when he stated that he was not involved in discussions about the firings before they occurred, according to his former chief of staff and documentary evidence. "I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain US attorneys to resign," said Sampson during his Senate appearance.

1 | Page 2