I would guess Congress will be wondering why they weren't told of that.
Re: US Attorney Under Attack for "Terror Trophy" P
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:US Attorney Under Attack for "Terror Trophy" Prosecutions
By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 27 April 2007
A small but increasingly vocal group of protesters is charging that a United States attorney in northern New York has pursued a series of terror-related "political prosecutions" to enhance his reputation as "a loyal Bushie" and thus avoid the fate of eight of his colleagues recently fired by Alberto Gonzales's Department of Justice.
A spokesman for the group, Madis Senner, claims that US Attorney Glenn Suddaby prosecuted Dr. Rafil Dhafir, Yassin Muhiddin Aref and his co-defendant, Mohammed Mosharref Hossain, and the so-called St. Patrick's Four, to win "political trophies" in the Global War on Terror.
The group has been holding a series of "witnesses" in Syracuse, New York, and other upstate communities to register their opposition to what they label "terror trophy" prosecutions by Suddaby.
"We are hoping to get [Sen. Charles] Schumer (D-New York) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) to look beyond the firing of those who would not play ball with the Bush administration, and to focus on those such as Suddaby who were all too willing to do whatever their master asked. If we can do that, it will help free Dhafir, Aref, Hossain and a lot of other Muslim and Arab-Americans who have been unjustly punished since 9/11," Senner told Truthout.
Suddaby has repeatedly denied that any of the prosecutions were politically motivated. He was not immediately available for comment.
The prosecution of Dr. Dhafir, an oncologist from Manlius, New York, a community near Syracuse, was arguably the most high-profile of these prosecutions. Dhafir was arrested in February 2003 in a raid that drew nationwide media coverage. Long before his trial began, he was labeled "a terrorist" by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and New York Governor George Pataki. But reference to terrorism or to Dhafir's Muslim faith was not permitted in court, and no terrorism charges were ever brought against him. His supporters claim he was "selectively prosecuted."
Dhafir was convicted in February 2005 of 59 criminal counts, including money laundering; conspiracy to violate US sanctions against Iraq; misusing $2 million that donors contributed to his unlicensed charity, Help the Needy; spending $544,000 for his own purposes; defrauding Medicare out of $316,000, and evading $400,000 in federal income tax payments by writing off the illegal charity donations.
Prosecutors said Dhafir's Syracuse-based charity solicited more than $5 million over the Internet and by mail between 1995 and February 2002, claiming it would help starving Iraqi orphans and poor children. The government was able to trace only about $160,000 in Iraq.
But according to Dhafir's attorney, Deveraux L. Cannick, "When the government failed to link him to any terrorists or terrorist groups, it charged him with fraud to save face. Other individuals and corporations that sent money to Iraq received only civil penalties, not criminal charges," he said.
Dhafir was denied bail four times - he was deemed a flight risk - and held for nearly two years while awaiting trial. Cannick said Dhafir's detention hindered his defense and violated his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
Civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union protested Dhafir's conviction and sentence. He is currently appealing. His supporters have set up several websites, including (www.loyalbushie.com) and (www.jubileeinitiative.org/FreeDhafir.htm).
Now 60, Dhafir is serving his 22-year prison sentence in the recently created Communications Management Unit, or CMU, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Most of the unit's initial group of inmates are Arab Muslims, including five members of the so-called Lackawanna Six, a group of Yemeni nationals who pleaded guilty in 2003 to attending an al-Qaeda training camp.
The CMU closely monitors all telephone calls and mail and limits the number of phone calls and visits at the unit. Inmate conversations must be conducted in English unless otherwise negotiated.
"The government targeted Dr. Dhafir to be a trophy in the war on terror," said protester Madis Senner.
"They called him a terrorist. They denied him bail. They made it so he couldn't even defend himself properly. This was all done on Mr. Ashcroft's watch. We want to hear his explanation," Senner said.
"We have to wonder whether the Bush administration selected, orchestrated and directed Dr. Dhafir's prosecution," Senner told the Associated Press.
Ashcroft recently spoke at Syracuse University's Goldstein Auditorium at the invitation of the school's College Republicans organization. The former US senator was attorney general from 2001 to 2005. He orchestrated the round-ups and detention of hundreds of Muslims and South Asians following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and played a leading role in passage of the USA Patriot Act.
Suddaby also prosecuted a group that came to be known as the St. Patrick's Four, because their arrest took place on St. Patrick's Day of 2003. The four peace activists from Ithaca, New York, poured their own blood on the walls, posters, windows and a US flag at a military recruiting center in order to try to stop the imminent invasion of Iraq.
The group admitted their actions, which claimed they were based on international law, then knelt in prayer and waited to be arrested.
Charged in state court, they convinced nine jurors that their actions were consistent with international law. Daniel Burns, 43; Clare Grady, 45; Teresa Grady, 38, and Peter DeMott, 57, are all members of the Magnificat Catholic Worker community in Ithaca.
They testified that they risked arrest in order to protect members of the US military and civilians in Iraq.
Following their acquittal, the local district attorney announced he would not reprosecute them. But the US attorney, Glenn Suddaby, stepped into the case and pressed four federal charges arising from the same incident: federal conspiracy "by force, intimidation, and threat" to impede an officer of the United States - a felony charge punishable by up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine - and criminal damage to property and two counts of trespass, charges punishable by up to an additional two years in prison.
A jury acquitted the four of the felony charges but convicted them of the lesser misdemeanor charges. They served prison sentences ranging from four to eight months. All have since been released.
According to Senner, the St. Patrick's Four (www.stpatricksfour.org) "were also selectively prosecuted." After a local jury could not convict them, "Suddaby's office brought federal conspiracy charges against them. Bill Quigley, the defense lawyer for the four, said he could find no similar case of federal conspiracy charges, going back to the Nixon era. He called it an attempt to 'hyper-criminalize dissent'."
In nearby Albany, New York, the state's capital, US Attorney Suddaby also led the prosecution of Yassin Muhiddin Aref, 36, and Mohammed Mosharref Hossain, 51, both of Albany. Aref was a local part-time ambulette driver and the imam, or spiritual leader, of the Central Avenue mosque. Hossain was an Albany pizzeria owner who also owned rental properties in the community.
The men were charged with promoting terrorism and conspiring to launder money with an FBI informant. The informant baited both men with a phony scheme to purchase a surface-to-air rocket launcher for a fictitious plot to assassinate a Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations.
They were denied bail as flight risks, despite a declaration by the judge in the case that there was "less than overwhelming evidence" against them. The judge said that the question of whether or not entrapment comes into play in the case is a matter for a jury to decide. However, he said, the "weight of evidence" against both defendants on their willingness to "associate themselves" with the rocket purchase and terrorist plot is another story entirely."
Hossain's attorney, Kevin Luibrand, said the government's entire case was based on entrapment, and that his client had been a hard-working American citizen for 10 years and had no criminal past over the 20 years he's spent in this country.
"Entrapment is the central issue here.... They (FBI) didn't go to a church or synagogue, they went to Muslims," said Luibrand. "This guy is an American citizen who works like a dog and could give a damn about terrorism."
"The Albany Muslim community finds the allegations against Yasin Aref and Mohammed Hossain deeply troubling," said Faisal Ahmed, a teacher at Masjid-As-Salam. "The idea that such (men) could be deliberately involved in violent activity is unbelievable."
After a month-long trial that ended in October 2006, both men were found guilty of conspiracy to engage in money laundering, money laundering, conspiracy to provide material support in connection with an attack with a weapon of mass destruction, two substantive acts of material support in connection with an attack involving a weapon of mass destruction, conspiracy to provide material support to a known terrorist organization, two acts of material support to a designated terrorist organization, and one count of lying to the FBI.
Each was sentenced to a to a 15-year prison term.
US Attorney Suddaby contended there was "ample justification to initiate a sting operation." He added, "The FBI has an obligation to use all available investigative tools, including a sting operation, to remove those ready and willing to help terrorists from our streets. The jury's verdict - representing the jury's thoughtful consideration of testimony and evidence presented during the month-long trial - makes clear that both Aref and Hossain fall into this category."
Suddaby denies he ever felt any pressure from the Justice Department to bring, or to decline to bring, any prosecution. But he readily acknowledges that counter-terrorism has been the number one DOJ priority.
In a recent interview, Syracuse Post-Standard reporter Hart Seely asked Suddaby how the 9/11 terrorist attacks affected the priorities and track record of his office.
Suddaby responded, "It changed everything. The FBI, the major federal investigative agency, all of a sudden, became a terrorism prevention agency.... A majority of their investigative resources have been focused on terrorism, and that includes a lot of times doing 'intel.' They don't generate cases, but they're out there, pounding the pavement, trying to develop sources, talking to people, trying to get the information flow of what's going on in the community of the Northern District. If there is a threat, they want to feel confident that they're going to hear about it, that they're going to get tipped off in some way."
But some legal authorities point out that there have been very few terrorism convictions since 9/11.
Independent activist Katherine Hughes, one of the leaders of the "Free Dhafir" movement, told Truthout, "When [Attorney General John] Ashcroft announced his resignation in November of 2004, he gave as evidence of success in the war on terror 211 criminal prosecutions, 478 deportations and $124 million in frozen assets. But what he neglected to mention was that virtually none of these cases were actual terrorism convictions. Like Dhafir, other charity associates were convicted of white-collar crime and sanctions violation. Indeed, at the time of Ashcroft's resignation there was only one bona fide terrorism conviction, that of the shoe bomber Richard Reid."
A former prosecutor who declined to be identified, but who is familiar with the inner workings of the Justice Department, told Truthout, "US attorneys are well aware of their bosses' priorities. Since 9/11, all of them have been under pressure to bring terrorism prosecutions. In many cases, that has led them and their superiors, as well as prominent politicians, to call high-profile press conferences where they announce terrorism charges against people, but when they show up in court, there are no actual terrorism charges."
US attorneys "are instead prosecuting cases against people for providing material support for terrorists or terrorist organizations. There's nothing illegal about that - it's authorized by the Patriot Act. The question is always whether they're stretching the evidence, or intentionally exploiting people's fears of another 9/11, or being overzealous to the point of committing prosecutorial misconduct. Just look at Jose Padilla - he was accused of being 'the dirty bomber' who was going to blow up an American city. But, after years in custody without charges, by the time he appeared in an actual courtroom, the dirty bomb charge had vanished."
Citizen pushback against overzealous prosecutors appears to be on the rise. It comes at a time when the controversy over the firings of US attorneys has become a contentious political issue that threatens to trigger the early departure of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The DOJ's credibility has been further damaged by accounts of increasing departures of DOJ lawyers. The National Law Journal reported this week, "The number of attorneys defecting from the US Department of Justice to private practice is mounting as the head of the agency continues to fend off calls for his ouster over the firing of eight US attorneys. In the last month alone, several attorneys in key posts at the DOJ have taken jobs at prominent law firms."
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William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East and in many other parts of the world for the US State Department and USAID for the past thirty years. He began his work life as a journalist for newspapers and for the Associated Press in Florida. Go to The World According to Bill Fisher for more.
Quote:I think you will find that noone links to truthout any longer, as they have lost credibility due to the Rove thing. I think they were probably being used back then; someone was leaking lies to them in order to spin certain stories in the media, and they got burned.
I haven't seen anyone on 'the left' swear by them in a long, long time. In fact, on the biggest Dem websites, they are considered to be unreliable at best.
Cycloptichorn
Um, okay. I can't control what others post or don't post.
Lame
Cycloptichorn
Gonzales Delegated Extraordinary Powers To Aides
Secret Order By Gonzales Delegated Extraordinary Powers To Aides
By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides -- who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys -- extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. A copy of the order and other Justice Department records related to the conception and implementation of the order were provided to National Journal.
In the order, Gonzales delegated to his then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, and his White House liaison "the authority, with the approval of the Attorney General, to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration" of virtually all non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department, including all of the department's political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation. Monica Goodling became White House liaison in April 2006, the month after Gonzales signed the order.
The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level. Department records show that the personnel authority was delegated to the two aides at about the same time they were working with the White House in planning the firings of a dozen U.S. attorneys, eight of whom were, in fact, later dismissed.
A senior executive branch official familiar with the delegation of authority said in an interview that -- as was the case with the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the selection of their replacements -- the two aides intended to work closely with White House political aides and the White House counsel's office in deciding which senior Justice Department officials to dismiss and whom to appoint to their posts. "It was an attempt to make the department more responsive to the political side of the White House and to do it in such a way that people would not know it was going on," the official said.
An original draft of Gonzales's delegation of authority to Sampson and Goodling was so broad that it did not even require the two aides to obtain the final approval of the attorney general before moving to dismiss other department officials.
As was the case with the fired U.S. attorneys, the employees targeted for dismissal would never know that they had been selected by the White House or the Justice Department aides, according to records and interviews. Most of the eight fired U.S. attorneys were given the news by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty; by McNulty's chief of staff, Michael Elston; or by Michael Battle, another senior Justice official, typically with no mention of any role by anyone else.
An original draft of Gonzales's delegation of authority to Sampson and Goodling was so broad that it did not even require the two aides to obtain the final approval of the attorney general before moving to dismiss other department officials, according to records obtained by National Journal.
The department's Office of Legal Counsel feared that such an unconditional delegation of authority was unconstitutional, the documents show. As a result, the original delegation was rewritten so that in its final form the order required "any proposed appointments or removals of personnel" be "presented to the Attorney General... for approval, and each appointment or removal shall be made in the name of the Attorney General."
The senior administration official who had firsthand knowledge of the plan said that Gonzales and other Justice officials had a "clear obligation" to disclose the plan's existence to the House and Senate Judiciary committees -- but the official said that, as far as he knew, they had not done so. When the committees began to inquire into the firings of the U.S. attorneys, the official said, Congress had a right to know that the firings were part of an ambitious effort to install administration loyalists throughout the department. The official spoke on the condition that neither his position nor agency be identified, because he feared retaliation from his superiors and the White House for disclosing aspects of the program.
Referring to the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the broader plan targeting other Justice employees, the senior official said, "You cannot separate one from the other. They were one and part of the same plan by the White House."
The official added, "The president of the United States has said it was imperative for the attorney general, and the attorney general alone, to re-establish trust with the Congress to keep his job
and you have, even after the president has said that, the attorney general and his men stiffing Congress."
Once the order went into effect, the extent to which Sampson, Goodling, and the White House played roles in the hiring and firing of various officials in the upper reaches of the Justice Department is unclear.
Sampson And Goodling
The roles that Sampson and Goodling played in removing U.S. attorneys and selecting new ones drew fire from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who cited their youth, their scant prosecutorial experience, and their lack of law enforcement credentials. Goodling was a 1999 graduate of televangelist Pat Robertson's Regent University School of Law and had worked at the Republican National Committee as an opposition researcher. Sampson had tried one criminal case while at Justice and had worked as a counsel for Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and then for the White House counsel's office before rapidly ascending to become Gonzales's chief of staff.
Sampson has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the U.S. attorney firings, but Goodling resigned on April 6, after her attorney asserted her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination for declining to testify. The House Judiciary Committee voted on April 25 to grant Goodling limited immunity from prosecution to compel her testimony about the U.S. attorney firings.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that Gonzales's order "simply gives the chief of staff and the White House liaison the authority to execute certain decisions related to the hiring and termination of some noncareer employees with -- as the memo states -- the 'approval of the Attorney General.' The constitutional issues were explicitly resolved in the order."
Deputy White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto said it was "unremarkable" that Sampson and Goodling would be involved in the hiring and firing of Justice Department officials.
"The job of a chief of staff is to work with the White House liaison to hire qualified people," he said. "That is fairly standard practice in any large Cabinet department or agency." Fratto added, "The White House has full authority in hiring and firing presidential appointees" and "can choose to delegate that authority. There is no need for written authority to exercise that power."
Asked why, if the process is routine, Gonzales issued the confidential order, Fratto responded, "I don't know why anyone would force the need to write such a memo." He referred further inquiries to the Justice Department.
John Dowd, an attorney for Goodling, said in an interview that it was "absolutely untrue" that his client was ever delegated the authority outlined in the confidential March 1, 2006 order signed by the attorney general. "She had no authority," Dowd said, "My God, she was an assistant to the chief of staff to the attorney general. She was an assistant to the assistant." An attorney for Sampson, Brad Berenson, said that his client was not available for comment for this story.
Robert Litt, who served as a deputy assistant attorney general under former President Bill Clinton, said in an interview that during the Clinton presidency "it was routine that senior appointments in the department would be vetted by the White House. Appointees were often placed by the White House." Such a process is typical under most presidents, Litt said, because they "want to ensure that their administration's policies and priorities are carried out."
But Litt also called Gonzales's secret delegation of authority to Sampson and Goodling unprecedented. It was distressing, he said, that many of the most sensitive appointments at the highest levels of the Justice Department were to "be made by these two people with no law enforcement experience... that this extraordinary authority was being delegated to these two young puppies," and apparently without much input by more-experienced and less-partisan officials.
Even though the White House played a major role in filling Justice Department positions before and during the Clinton administration, Litt said, "there was always a bit of tugging and pulling" between the White House and career department officials in selecting top aides: "Typically, a deputy attorney general might really like someone and the White House might not, or vice versa."
In the end, however, Litt and current and former Justice Department officials said that a balance is often brokered between the policy and political imperatives of an administration and the desire of career federal law enforcement officials to protect the integrity of the criminal-justice process. When Gonzales delegated such authority, and in secret, to Sampson and Goodling, he risked tipping that balance, Litt and other officials said.
Under the plan and delegation of the authority, even the second- and third-highest-ranking political appointees in the Justice Department -- the deputy attorney general and the associate attorney general -- would no longer have final authority to staff their own offices.
Justice Department records indicate that while the order was being drafted, McNulty and other senior department officials were at times purposely kept out of the loop.
A correspondence record from Gonzales's own files indicates that when Paul Corts, the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for administration, transmitted a memo regarding the then-draft plan to Gonzales, information regarding the plan was ordered to be withheld from McNulty. A "control sheet" of the department's Executive Secretariat, which tracks sensitive records as they move among senior Justice officials, includes this notation regarding the transmission of the Corts memo to Gonzales: "Per instructions received from JMD [the Justice Department's Management Division], ODAG [the office of the Deputy Attorney General] is to bypassed on the package."
To give Sampson and Goodling hiring and firing authority, the Justice Department first had to place that authority directly under Gonzales. The department published regulations in the Federal Register on February 7, 2006, stating that the final authority would be reserved for the attorney general. In the past, the deputy attorney general, the associate attorney general, and other senior Justice Department officials had been able to staff their own offices.
Once Gonzales had the final authority, however, another barrier stood in the way: The Office of Legal Counsel believed that an unconditional delegation of authority by Gonzales to his aides would be unconstitutional. Corts so informed Gonzales in a February 24, 2006, memo: "The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) advises that permitting the Attorney General's delegates to approve [some] appointments
would be inconsistent" with the appointments clause of the Constitution. The "excepting clause" of the Constitution requires the president alone to exercise the appointment power, or his Cabinet officers, who are appointees themselves.
The draft was rewritten to address that concern, and Gonzales on March 1, 2006, signed the final order, which read: "Under the authority of this delegation, any proposed appointments or removals of personnel who are 'inferior officers' within the meaning of [the] Excepting Clause of the Constitution shall be presented to the Attorney General... and each appointment or removal shall be made in the name of the Attorney General."
At the bottom of the delegation order, this note appeared, in all capital letters, referencing the Federal Register: "INTERNAL ORDER-NOT PUBLISHED IN F.R."
Politics And Perception
A senior Justice Department official, who did not know of Gonzales's delegation of authority until contacted by National Journal, said that it posed a serious threat to the integrity of the criminal-justice system because it gave Sampson, Goodling, and the White House control over the hiring of senior officials in the Justice Department's Criminal Division, which oversees all politically sensitive public corruption cases, at the same time that they held authority to hire and fire U.S. attorneys.
"If you are controlling who is going to be a U.S. attorney and who isn't going to be,... firing them outside the traditional process... and the same people are deciding who are going to be their supervisors back in Washington... there is too much of a potential for mischief, for abuse," the official said.
Even if there is no interference or politicization of public corruption investigations, the same official said, "you are just going to have people questioning every prosecutorial decision, when all of the people in place have been put there for political reasons."
Typically, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division has five deputies who oversee political corruption cases and nearly all other federal criminal prosecutions. The assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division is a political appointee of the president and is subject to Senate confirmation. But two of the division's five deputies are not subject to Senate confirmation. Under the order signed on March 1, 2006, their fate was delegated to Sampson and Goodling.
Based on a review of the delegation order, the official said, the Criminal Division chief's principal deputy, his counselor, any of his special assistants, and a score of other aides were also among those who could be fired and replaced by Sampson and Goodling, and then subject to final approval by Gonzales.
"It would be an act of insanity and, frankly, implausible that the attorney general would grant authority to Kyle [Sampson] and Monica Goodling to make these decisions," the official said, "But it would be frightening if they were serving as proxies for the White House. You do not want to allow for the possible politicization of your Criminal Division like that."
Three of the fired U.S. attorneys have said that Republicans in Congress inappropriately approached them about politically sensitive investigations. Testimony by two of the U.S. attorneys, Sampson's testimony, and documents made public by the House and Senate Judiciary committees indicate that complaints by Republican lawmakers and White House officials may have played a role in the dismissal of two of the U.S. attorneys. Four of the federal prosecutors were involved in politically sensitive investigations at the time of their firings.
"What you have is U.S. attorneys saying they were being interfered with, people coming at them trying to influence them inappropriately, and then being fired," said the senior Justice Department official. "If we are learning now that the same people who are firing U.S. attorneys and replacing them with friendlier faces also were doing the same with their supervisors, with the people who ran the Criminal Division, then that is very serious."
Gonzales and Sampson both adamantly denied, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, that any U.S. attorneys were fired to interfere with politically sensitive investigations.
But David Iglesias, the fired U.S. attorney from New Mexico, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 6 that he felt improperly pressured by Republican members of Congress regarding a then-ongoing criminal investigation under his supervision. Iglesias testified that Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., called him on October 16 to ask whether his office had returned sealed indictments against Democratic officeholders alleged to have taken kickbacks in a courthouse construction project. At the time, Wilson was locked in a tight race for re-election, and criminal charges against the Democrats would have aided her campaign. Wilson narrowly won re-election.
Ten days later after Wilson's call, Iglesias testified, he received a phone call from Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a political mentor to Wilson, also inquiring about possible pending indictments. Domenici asked him, "Are they going to be filed before November?" Iglesias testified. When Iglesias answered that no charges would be filed any time soon, Domenici responded, "I'm sorry to hear that," and the line went dead.
"I felt sick afterward," Iglesias testified, "I felt leaned on. I felt pressured to get these matters moving."
Domenici and Wilson have acknowledged making the calls but have said that they did not intend to influence Iglesias's handling of the kickback investigation.
Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Domenici called him after the November 2006 election and complained to him that Iglesias hadn't aggressively pursued voter-fraud allegations against Democrats in New Mexico. Domenici also passed along similar complaints in conversations with President Bush and senior White House adviser Karl Rove, and the complaints were relayed to Gonzales.
Not long after, both Gonzales and Sampson have testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Iglesias's name was added, at the last minute, to the list of U.S. attorneys slated to be fired that was being compiled by Sampson and the White House. Asked during his Senate testimony whether Domenici's complaints played a role in Iglesias's firing, Sampson said that Deputy Attorney General McNulty commented to him, "Senator Domenici won't mind if he stays on the list."
A second ousted U.S. attorney, John McKay of Washington state, testified that the-then chief of staff to Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., called him to inquire about potential voter-fraud charges against Democrats. Later, during an interview about a possible appointment as a federal judge, then-White House counsel Harriet Miers asked McKay why he had "mishandled" the charges concerning the governor's race, McKay testified.
Most recently, it was reported that a senior aide to Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., telephoned Arizona's then-U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, to inquire about a criminal investigation into allegations that Renzi used his office to arrange a land deal that benefited a former business partner. The former partner then paid Renzi $200,000. After the FBI raided his wife's insurance business on April 19, and it was reported that Renzi himself was a target of the probe, Renzi temporarily stepped down from his seats on three House committees. Renzi has denied any wrongdoing, saying that the $200,000 payment from his former business partner was to settle a debt unrelated to the actions Renzi had taken to arrange the land deal. Renzi has also said that his aide called Charlton's office simply to inquire about whether Renzi was going to be criminally charged.
The Wall Street Journal (subscription) reported last week that prosecutors in Arizona charged that their superiors in Washington slowed their investigation and that the prosecutors suspected it was because the superiors wanted Renzi to win re-election. Conflicts between U.S. attorneys' offices and the Criminal Division typically stem from routine disagreements regarding the law and the strategy for handling an investigation.
But Charlton's firing, the delay in the Renzi investigation, and disclosures about the role of the White House in the firings of U.S. attorneys has created a climate where suspicions abound among career prosecutors, a senior Justice Department official said in an interview.
"Under ordinary circumstances, with something like the Renzi case," the official said, "everyone would assume that this was just an honest disagreement between a U.S. attorney and main Justice. But the presumption in the current environment is that everybody's motives are suspect-and for good reason. There really has to be a housecleaning and a coming clean to Congress, the public, but perhaps most of all, the rank-and-file line prosecutors."
Cycloptichorn wrote:Um, okay. I can't control what others post or don't post.
Lame
Cycloptichorn
I didnt say you could.
But,you do seem to be one of the leading liberal voices on here,so I thought I would let others know what you thought of truthout.
mysteryman wrote:Cycloptichorn wrote:Um, okay. I can't control what others post or don't post.
Lame
Cycloptichorn
I didnt say you could.
But,you do seem to be one of the leading liberal voices on here,so I thought I would let others know what you thought of truthout.
That's cool with me; I'm sure that other Conservatives here eschew the use of non-reliable Republican sources, while some don't.
Cycloptichorn
Quote:DoJ Official to Lam: Leave in "Weeks, Not Months"
By Paul Kiel - May 2, 2007, 2:52 PM
Those who are suspicious of U.S. Attorney for San Diego Carol Lam's firing just got a lot more cause for suspicion.
In her written answers to questions from Congress, Lam recounted a conversation with Justice Department official Michael Elston after she was fired in which Elston made it clear to her that she would be gone within "weeks" regardless of the fate of certain cases, and that this order came "from the highest levels of the government." Elston also told her that someone from outside her office would most likely to come in to take over.
Lam had good reason to be preoccupied about certain cases, of course. Her office was close to indicting Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor who allegedly bribed Duke Cunningham and possibly other Republican congressmen, and Dusty Foggo, the former executive director of the CIA.
But according to Lam, Elston told her that her appeals to stay on in order to deal with certain cases was "'not being received positively.'" She was to depart in "weeks, not months" and "these instructions were 'coming from the very highest levels of the government.'"
Lam also adds that Elston told her he "suspected" that the administration would be installing someone from outside her office as her successor, that there would be "no overlap" between Lam's departure and her successor's start date, and that her successor wouldn't have to be vetted by the committee of Republicans in California who had before been responsible for vetting U.S. attorneys in the state.
All of this will do much to increase suspicion that the administration intended to replace Lam with a "loyal Bushie" of their choice.
Lam also describes an odd conversation she had with Deputy Atttorney General Paul McNulty. After being told that she was being fired, Lam called McNulty for an explanation. McNulty declined to tell Lam why she was being fired:
Quote:He responded that he wanted some time to think about how to answer that question because he didn't want to give me an answer "that would lead" me down the wrong route. He added that he knew I had personally taken on a long trial and he had great respect for me. Mr. McNulty never responded to my question.
Lam's account of these conversations is below. You can read all of her answers
here.
From Lam's written testimony to Congress:
Every day, more and more and more. This issue is in a slight lull at the moment but hasn't vanished by a long shot.
Cycloptichorn
Justice Dept. Announces Inquiry Into Its Hiring
The Democrats need to be careful about the timing of Monica Goodling's testimony or they may create the immunity loophole that allowed Oliver North to escape going to jail. ---BBB
Regarding the question of whether Gonzales committed a crime, he may have violated, or conspired to violate, the Hatch Act. For instance, if he set up, or participated in, a procedure to vet nonpolitical Justice employees on the basis of their politics, he would have violated the Act.
And there is the continuing concern that this is an administration that believes itself beyond the scrutiny of any other governmental body.
May 3, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
He's Impeachable, You Know
By FRANK BOWMAN
Columbia, Mo.
IF Alberto Gonzales will not resign, Congress should impeach him. Article II of the Constitution grants Congress the power to impeach "the president, the vice president and all civil officers of the United States." The phrase "civil officers" includes the members of the cabinet (one of whom, Secretary of War William Belknap, was impeached in 1876).
Impeachment is in bad odor in these post-Clinton days. It needn't be. Though provoked by individual misconduct, the power to impeach is at bottom a tool granted Congress to defend the constitutional order. Mr. Gonzales's behavior in the United States attorney affair is of a piece with his role as facilitator of this administration's claims of unreviewable executive power.
A cabinet officer, like a judge or a president, may be impeached only for commission of "high crimes and misdemeanors." But as the Nixon and Clinton impeachment debates reminded us, that constitutional phrase embraces not only indictable crimes but "conduct ... grossly incompatible with the office held and subversive of that office and of our constitutional system of government."
United States attorneys, though subject to confirmation by the Senate, serve at the pleasure of the president. As a constitutional matter, the president is at perfect liberty to fire all or some of them whenever it suits him. He can fire them for mismanagement, for failing to pursue administration priorities with sufficient vigor, or even because he would prefer to replace an incumbent with a political crony. Indeed, a president could, without exceeding his constitutional authority and (probably) without violating any statute, fire a United States attorney for pursuing officeholders of the president's party too aggressively or for failing to prosecute officeholders of the other party aggressively enough.
That the president has the constitutional power to do these things does not mean he has the right to do them without explanation. Congress has the right to demand explanations for the president's managerial choices, both to exercise its own oversight function and to inform the voters its members represent.
It doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is that they thought we would all just let ourselves get bulldozed into an authoritarian state just because they said so.
Has there ever been less regard for the American people by any other group with so much power? The Robber Barons of the late nineteenth century come to mind, but their crime was mostly about greed, these people seem intent on disassembling the Constitution.
I kept waiting for them to announce a new Constitutional Convention and I think, had they won a majority last November, it would have already been convened.
And let no one lose sight of the fact that they still hold immense power.
Joe(let's have a look at this Article I, mebbe we don't need it.)Nation
Are any of you fellas reading Glenn Greenwald? If not, try this for starters...
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
The connection here, if not obvious, relates to ownership of media and the facility that offers to control or influence the community's perception of reality, thus to influence consensus.
Has Gonzales resigned yet?
I can't be certain but I would wager that there are some top level Republicans who are urging him to announce that he needs to spend more time with his family. One cannot help but wonder what work is like at the Federal District Court Offices these days with Alberto's credibility completely in shreds.
Maybe he could say that he got that book, One Thousand Place You Must See Before You Die, for his birthday and that he just feels compelled to see all of them.
Joe(he ought to first go to the Lincoln Memorial and kneel at Abe's feet)Nation
