What's the cover-up and why the fear? "The woman who knew too much?"
link
Lam was notified of her firing Dec. 7; she stepped down in February. Two days before leaving office, she announced federal grand jury indictments of Wilkes and Foggo.
Why US Attorney Carol Lam was fired
by kos
Mon Mar 19, 2007 at 09:44:36 AM PDT
Your corrupt White House at work.
Fired San Diego U.S. attorney Carol Lam notified the Justice Department that she intended to execute search warrants on a high-ranking CIA official as part of a corruption probe the day before a Justice Department official sent an e-mail that said Lam needed to be fired, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Sunday.
Feinstein, D-Calif., said the timing of the e-mail suggested that Lam's dismissal may have been connected to the corruption probe [...]
Feinstein said Lam notified the Justice Department on May 10, 2006, that she planned to serve search warrants on Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, who'd resigned two days earlier as the No. 3 official at the CIA.
On May 11, 2006, Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales' chief of staff, sent an e-mail to deputy White House counsel William Kelley, asking Kelley to call to discuss "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires."
Wow! This thing really got messy today and it is probably going to get worse tomorrow. We are probably headed for the Supreme Court.
realjohnboy wrote:Wow! This thing really got messy today and it is probably going to get worse tomorrow. We are probably headed for the Supreme Court.
I doubt it. Bush will lose quite a bit of support from Republicans in the next few days, who face the major disadvantage of elections next year; and the 2006 raping they underwent is still fresh in the minds of many Congressmen and Senators.
Before the case gets to the Supreme court, Bush will start losing support from Republicans on all sorts of issues. I fully expect him to blink first.
If not? That's okay with me too.
Cycloptichorn
Bush is too stubborn to care about what even his own party thinks. This might come down to Cheney and whether he puts party or presidential power first.
I reckon I disagree with you, Cyclops. While a House subcommitee today, and a Senate subcommittee tomorrow have approved or may approve motions allowing for Rove and Meires to be summoned, the last thing that the White House wants is for these two, and anybody else, to appear under oath and on camera. They can toss Gonzales and a few other folks overboard, but it is probably a bit late.
So, unless Congress acquiesces and settles for something less, I see this as going to the Judicial branch.
Mr Bush, as he has for the last 5 years, claims that everything is justified because we are at war. That is wearing very thin. His own party is realizing that, but I am not sure Mr Bush does.
realjohnboy wrote:I reckon I disagree with you, Cyclops. While a House subcommitee today, and a Senate subcommittee tomorrow have approved or may approve motions allowing for Rove and Meires to be summoned, the last thing that the White House wants is for these two, and anybody else, to appear under oath and on camera. They can toss Gonzales and a few other folks overboard, but it is probably a bit late.
So, unless Congress acquiesces and settles for something less, I see this as going to the Judicial branch.
Mr Bush, as he has for the last 5 years, claims that everything is justified because we are at war. That is wearing very thin. His own party is realizing that, but I am not sure Mr Bush does.
Hmm, maybe not. But that will be as destructive to Bush as anything else. It will be in the news for
months. The Democrats are going to use every trick and way around it they possibly can to keep attacking the WH, and why not? The boot's off the neck now, there's nothing holding them back any longer. And who can blame them, after the contempt that Republicans have displayed for years for their party?
Like I said, there are a whole lot of Republicans up for election next year. In some ways, it's as important as the presidency. Out of all the different matricies which the Dems won on this year - Iraq, scandals, corruption, weak economic growth - I can't see any of them getting any better by next year. This will scare the Republican candidates sh*tless and support will peel off for everything.
Just a prediction
Cycloptichorn
Missing eighteen-day stretch in Justice emails recalls infamous Watergate tape gap Josh Catone
Published: Wednesday March 21, 2007
First spotted by a commenter on the blog Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall reports there is an 18-day gap in the over 3,000 emails released by the Department of Justice pertaining to the attorney firing scandal.
The gap covers the days between November 15 and December 4, 2006. So far, only one email has been found dated within the 18 days among those released in Monday night's document dump. The lone email, from November 29, 2006, was one forwarded by Justice official Michael Elston to a fellow staffer asking for an attached review document to be printed.
"The firing calls went out on December 7th. But the original plan was to start placing the calls on November 15th," notes Marshall. "So those eighteen days are pretty key ones."
Politico reporters Mike Allen and John Bresnahan also picked up on the gap. They surmise that the missing communication covers "a critical period, as the White House and Justice Department reviewed -- then approved -- which U.S. attorneys would be fired, while also developing a political and communications strategy for countering any fallout from the firings."
The gap, specifically because of its length, is an eerie reminder of the infamous eighteen-and-a-half minute gap in the Nixon tapes. As one blogger writes, "The Bush Administration is working overtime to make this attorney scandal look more and more like Watergate by the day."
rjb, I now retract my earlier prediction; I don't believe there's a chance in hell this will make it all the way to an SC judgement.
Ed Henry brought up an excellent point today:
Quote: I think also, another thing to look at, I followed up a question about executive privilege. You heard Tony Snow at the end there saying the president has no recollection of being involved in this decision to fire the US attorneys. So we asked the question then, well why are you citing executive privilege - or at least suggesting you will, and yesterday the president said the principle at stake here is candid advice from his advisers to the president - if the president was not involved in the decision, then how can you cite executive privilege on something he was really not involved in? And Tony Snow basically said, it's a good question and I don't know the answer.
Either executive privilege can be cited, or a lot of people have been lying about the president's involvement - including him.
Cycloptichorn
Oh, and a little birdie told me this just now:
Quote:WASHINGTON--The former leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said Wednesday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government's racketeering case.
...
Sharon Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government's claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers.
She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop arguments that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty. He and two others instructed her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony. And they ordered Eubanks to read verbatim from a closing argument they rewrote for her, she said.
``The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said,'' Eubanks said. ``And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public.''
Eubanks, who served for 22 years as a lawyer at Justice, said three political appointees were responsible for the last-minute shifts in the government's tobacco case in June 2005: then-Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum, then-Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler, and his deputy at the time, Dan Meron.
Supposedly in tommorrow's WaPo. We'll see.
Cycloptichorn
Uh Oh - it's in today's
Slate:
Quote:Scenes From a HijackingOther moves at DoJ, however, alarm lawyers of all stripes with their partisanship. In 2005, the Department of Justice was about to wind up its big racketeering case against the tobacco industry, which had begun during the Clinton presidency. The lead attorney on it, Sharon Eubanks, says that when John Ashcroft became attorney general, she laid out the options for him: drop the case, or some of the claims, or continue to pursue it. She was told to go ahead. But on the day of her summation at the trial, deputies for Gonzales, who'd since become attorney general, apparently had second thoughts. Over Eubanks' objection, they forced her to cut the government's claim for damages from $130 billion to $10 billion. She saw that as a big fat gift to the tobacco companies, and she subsequently resigned, after 22 years as a DoJ attorney. "The reason they went ahead with the case was that they did not think I was capable of leading a team of 30 to 35 lawyers to victory over 350 lawyers on the other side," Eubanks said when I reached her this week at home. "I'm a small black woman. I'd go over to the main building and I'd say we had a good day, and the political people didn't pay much attention. The moment the relationship changed was before my closing argument, when I went in and said we'd won the case. It was at that point that they came after us."
I mean, that doesn't sound good. It's hard to see how Gonzales can keep his job. It's hard to see how the DoJ isn't going to have to undergo a hell of a lot of further scrutiny.
Cycloptichorn
Here it is.
This is the way these people work. I doubt Americans will ever grasp how corrupt this administration has become because the various means of investigating, identifying and policing corruption (a powerful house, a justice department with integrity, an independent media, effective and well-staffed government agencies actively representing the population rather than wealthy corporate interests, a questioning populace) have all been quite systematically targeted so that such corruption is and continues to be facilitated. That things have gotten so rotten while so many remain unaware of this corruption or believe that it is 'normal' or even supportive of it because the alternative might be atheists and gay people taking over the embattled apple-pie heartland is all pretty alarming. And that noise we hear is the brittle hum of the republic.
Quote:Prosecutor Says Bush Appointees Interfered With Tobacco Case
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 22, 2007; Page A01
The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government's racketeering case.
Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government's claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers.
She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty. He and two others instructed her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony. And they ordered Eubanks to read verbatim a closing argument they had rewritten for her, she said.
"The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said," Eubanks said. "And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public."
Eubanks, who served for 22 years as a lawyer at Justice, said three political appointees were responsible for the last-minute shifts in the government's tobacco case in June 2005: then-Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum, then-Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and Keisler's deputy at the time, Dan Meron.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR2007032102713.html
Gap in Justice, White House e-mails raises questions
Gap in Justice, White House e-mails raises questions
March 21, 2007
From Kevin Bohn
CNN Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A 16-day gap in e-mail records between the Justice Department and the White House concerning the firing of U.S. attorneys last year has attracted the attention of congressional investigators.
In an investigation into whether seven U.S. attorneys were fired for political rather than professional reasons, the Justice Department on Monday handed over 3,000 pages of documents to the House and Senate Judiciary committees.
But the documents included no correspondence about the firings in the critical time period between November 15, 2006, and December 2, 2006, right before the attorneys were asked for their resignations.
In addition, citing executive privilege, President Bush has refused a congressional request to have his key aide Karl Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, who was involved in the firings, testify under oath. (Full story)
All eyes on the AG
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has come under fire in the past week, as both Republicans and Democrats suggested it might be best if he resign. (Watch Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer explain why he is unhappy with the White House response )
On November 15 -- the last day before the e-mail gap -- Kyle Sampson, who was then chief of staff to Gonzales, e-mailed Miers and her deputy an outline of the plan to fire the prosecutors and wrote, "The plan, by its terms, would commence this week."
Sampson resigned last week amid outcry about the firings.
Later in the same e-mail Gonzalez said, "I am concerned that to execute this plan properly we must all be on the same page and be steeled to withstand any political upheaval that might result."
Miers responded that same morning, saying, "Not sure whether this will be determined to require the boss's attention" and noted that President Bush had left town the night before. Sampson then asked, "Who will determine whether this requires the president's attention?"
There is no follow-up response in the documents so far released to those questions and no correspondence at all about the plan to fire the attorneys from that point until December 2, when Sampson e-mailed Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty's chief of staff, saying, "The list is expanded; still waiting for green light from White House (though we would not launch until after 12/7 anyway)."
On December 4, Deputy White House Counsel William Kelley told Sampson, "We're a go for the US atty [sic] plan. WH leg [legislative affairs], political, and communications have signed off and acknowledged that we have to be committed to following through once the pressure comes."
Sampson said he forwarded the message to other Justice Department officials, saying, "We are a go for Thursday."
Justice denies gap in e-mails
There are documents from days in that time period, but they deal with related issues such as setting up an interview for Tim Griffin, who was the replacement for Bud Cummins, the U.S. attorney in Arkansas who was one of the eight asked to resign. They also deal with a request for a copy of an evaluation of an unnamed U.S. attorney and how U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton was directed to provide a prosecutor for a high-profile trial.
A Justice Department official said "there was no lull" when asked about the time period between mid-November and early December.
The White House has yet to release internal communications that could shed light on the issue. It has offered to release communications between White House staffers and those at the Justice Department or others outside the White House, as part of negotiations with congressional committees over their access to key White House officials.
The White House, however, has not included internal communications between White House officials in its offer.
Members of a House Judiciary subcommittee voted Wednesday to authorize the committee's leaders to issue subpoenas to force testimony from key White House and Justice Department figures in the controversy over the firings of the eight U.S. attorneys. (Full story)
The vote does not mean that subpoenas will be issued; only that they could be used if at least four White House officials and a former Justice Department official do not voluntarily come to testify before the committee.
-------------------------------------------
CNN's Terry Frieden and Ed Henry contributed to this report.
Quote:Okay, enough. The president fired US Attorneys to stymie investigations of Republicans and punish US Attorneys who didn't harass Democrats with bogus voter fraud prosecutions. In the former instance, the evidence remains circumstantial. But in the latter the evidence is clear, overwhelming and undeniable.
Indeed, it is so undeniable the president hismelf does not deny it.
The president himself says that in some cases US Attorneys were dismissed because they were too lax in prosecuting election fraud. What he does not say -- but what we know directly from the accounts of the players involved -- is that these were cases in which Republican operatives and activists complained to the White House and Republican members of Congress that certain US Attorneys weren't convening grand juries or issuing indictments against Democrats, even though these were cases where all the available evidence suggests there was no wrongdoing prosecuted. (It's all reminiscent of the bogus voter fraud allegations Republicans got caught peddling in the South Dakota senate race in 2002. Only in this case getting these charges into the press wasn't enough; they wanted to use US Attorneys to actual harrass people or put them in jail.)
We know that Republican members of Congress sought to pressure the prosecutors in question to push these indictments. And we know at least in the case of David Iglesias in New Mexico that Sen. Domenici's (R-NM) complaints after not being able to get Iglesias to knuckle under were directly tied to his dismissal.
Back up a bit from the sparks flying over executive privilege and congressional testimony and you realize that these are textbook cases of the party in power interfering or obstructing the administration of justice for narrowly partisan purposes. It's a direct attack on the rule of law.
This much is already clear in the record. And we're now having a big public debate about the politics for each side if the president tries to obstruct the investigation and keep the truth from coming out. The contours and scope of executive privilege is one issue, and certainly an important one. But in this case it is being used as no more than a shield to keep the full extent of the president's perversion of the rule of law from becoming known.
It's yet another example of how far this White House has gone in normalizing behavior that we've been raised to associate with third-world countries where democracy has never successfully taken root and the rule of law is unknown. At most points in our history the idea that an Attorney General could stay in office after having overseen such an effort would be unthinkable. The most telling part of this episode is that they're not even really denying the wrongdoing. They're ignoring the point or at least pleading 'no contest' and saying it's okay.
-- Josh Marshall
The White House no longer deserves any quarter or respect. There's no reason not to subpoena each and every one of them, and fight it all the way. In the meantime, Gonzales is going to be toast and I don't expect McNulty to last longer than him; starting from the bottom, this criminal organization needs to be broken up.
Cycloptichorn
Frameshop has the heads up on what to watch for as the language changes.
I'm Sure Fox News is already making the changes.
Quote:Frameshop: The 5 Words Bush Wants Americans To Repeat
BUSH USED PRESS CONFERENCE TO FORCE PR BUZZWORDS INTO THE DEBATE
In a scripted moment of imperial bravado, President Bush held a press conference yesterday to address the scandal over his Attorney General having lied to Congress. Why this sudden move? In a word: framing.
Even more frightening to the Bush administration than being caught putting loyalty to leader above following the law, the Gonzales scandal has lured off the White House PR ranch and into a frame about administration corruption and deceit.
And so, as is par for this President's course whenever the White House is faced with a crisis, the goal of Bush's press appearance was not to inform the American public of any facts, but to force the White House's carefully scripted keywords into the debate--with the hope that journalists and Democrats would repeat them.
So, they sent in the PR keyword "repeaterer" to get the job done.
The following is a list of the 5 keywords dropped by Bush, yesterday--keywords that Americans should repeat only if they want to help President Bush deceive the American public by luring the debate away from the important issue of honesty in government:
resignation
leadership
explanation
incomplete
fishing
"Resignation"
In the very first sentence of his press conference, President Bush said the following:
THE PRESIDENT: Earlier today, my staff met with congressional leaders about
the resignations of U.S. attorneys.
Since the key to framing a debate is naming the subject being discussed, the top priority of the White House, yesterday, was to redirect the whole discussion of Attorney General Gonzales with one, big word: resignations.
President Bush repeated "resignation" 4 conspicuous times in his 12-minute appearance, yesterday, including the coveted opening line of the entire event. So important is this word to the White House that they even used it in the title they gave the press conference on their website ("President Bush Addresses Resignations of U.S. Attorneys").
A simple Google search reveals, however, that "firing" has and continues to be the keyword used to describe what the Bush administration did to their Federal Attorneys. By attempting to swap the word "firing" for the word "resignation," President Bush is trying to force the debate onto more neutral grounds. The word "resignation" relieves Gonzales of any responsibility for having forced the Federal Attorney's out of their jobs--putting in its place the less problematic bureaucratic error of errors in explanation.
Instead of repeating the word "resignation," as President Bush would have us do--Americans should stay focused on the term "firing" (or variations on that) to ...
Read the rest at the link above then let's see what happens to the news language.
I found the language by Snow in yesterdays briefing to also be interesting in it attempt to change / frame / name the debate.
March 21 Press Transcript
Several funny parts, but my favorite was after Tony said "extraordinarily generous offer" a billion times, a reporter says:
Quote:
MR. SNOW: Well, I think that's just -- that's a grotesque leap. I'm not going to bite.
Q I just want to be clear on something. On the "extraordinarily generous offer," which heretofore shall be known as "EGO" -- (laughter) -- so that would be withdrawn if the subpoenas are issued?
Not only do the Bush administration and the justice department not deserve any benifit of the doubt or respect, but those defending them don't either. In my opinion, it has come to that.
revel wrote:Not only do the Bush administration and the justice department not deserve any benifit of the doubt or respect, but those defending them don't either. In my opinion, it has come to that.
I wonder when it was that you actually had any respect for anyone that supported any element of the Bush Administration?
Gonzales has shown himself to be inept, mangerially and politically.
Federal prosecutors obtain their jobs thanks to politics. It's at least disingenuous and at worst hyprocritical for any of them to decry losing their jobs because of politics. Interestingly enough, the one's I've seen interviewed do not. Their beef seems to be with The DOJ's attempt to explain their firing/forced resignations as linked to poor performance.
If Gonzales had simply asked them to resign, this political fire may have still gotten started (after all pyros like Waxman and Leahy now have the matches), but it probably would not have burned as brightly or as long.
It's amusing to watch Democrats dismiss how the Clinton Administration cleaned out the entire cadre of federal prosecutors. "That's always been done! Now let's get back to how unique and horrible this affair is."
If it is OK to clean out the entire staff of existing prosecutors to make way for you own political appointees, I'm not sure I understand why it is unacceptible to then remove 7 or 8 of them later on to make way for new political appointees?
It is stupid and seedy to make a political move and attempt to cover it with dispersions about the involved prosecutors, but heinous?
Quote:I'm not sure I understand why it is unacceptible to then remove 7 or 8 of them later on to make way for new political appointees?
Oh, maybe because they weren't being removed to bring in new people (with the exception of Bud Cummins, who was axed for Rove's aid) but because they were either investigating too many republicans and not enough democrats?
I know, I know - you don't believe it. But you will, in time. Protestations from the WH that the Congress doesn't actually have oversight ability over the Exec branch aren't going to get them very far.
Cycloptichorn
