Who fired the US attorneys?

Attorney General Gonzales cites a 'consensus' of top Justice officials, but few have acknowledged listing any names.

from the May 17, 2007 edition

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"There are disturbing indications that the decision to fire Mr. Graves was related to his disagreement with a voter fraud lawsuit pushed by [Justice Department headquarters official Bradley] Schlozman, the very person eventually named by you to succeed Mr. Graves as an interim U.S. Attorney," wrote Committee chairman Rep. John Conyers (D) of Michigan in a May 15 letter to Attorney General Gonzales.

As to where the firing list came from, Mr. Gonzales has pointed to others. In particular, he's long said that his understanding was it reflected the "consensus" of senior leaders.

His May 15 remark about McNulty was one of the first times he had singled out one of these senior leaders by name. It followed by a day McNulty's announcement that he would resign his position in order to earn more money for his children's college tuitions.

Yet McNulty, in private discussions with investigators from the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, has said he had only limited involvement in the affair. This assertion is backed up by other evidence such as Daniel Bogden's memory of his phone call with McNulty on December 7.

In a Dec. 7 e-mail, McNulty admitted to feeling "skittish" about Bogden's firing, and admitted that he "had not looked at his district's performance."

As to other senior Justice Department officials, almost all have testified in public that they put no names on the firing list. This includes Michael Battle, former director of the executive office of US Attorneys, and William E. Moschella, principal associate deputy attorney general.

Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Gonzales, has testified that the list was produced by "an internal process that aggregated the considered, collective judgment of a number of senior Justice Department officials."

Mr. Sampson has said he himself didn't put names on the list. (He did at one point float the name of Patrick Fitzgerald, the highly regarded US attorney from Chicago who investigated the leak of CIA employee Valerie Plame's name to the media. This suggestion was rejected.)

Sampson did send then-White House counsel Harriet Miers the list of firees on Nov. 15, 2006, prior to their actual dismissals. The e-mail asks that Ms. Meirs circulate the list to "Karl's shop," presumably the office of political adviser Karl Rove.

"We'll stand by for a green light from you," wrote Sampson in the e-mail to the White House.

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