The US attorney purge came from the White House

From the NY Times:

By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, March 12 — The White House was deeply involved in the decision late last year to dismiss federal prosecutors, including some who had been criticized by Republican lawmakers, administration officials said Monday.

Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not aggressively addressing voter fraud, the White House said Monday. Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, was among the politicians who complained directly to the president, according to an administration official.

The president did not call for the removal of any specific United States Attorneys, said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. She said she had “no indication” that the president was aware that a process was already under way to identify prosecutors who would be fired. But a few weeks later, the Justice Department forced out seven prosecutors.

White House officials consulted with the Justice Department in preparing the list of United States attorneys who would be removed, Ms Perino disclosed.

The idea of dismissing federal prosecutors originated in the White House more than a year earlier, White House and Justice officials said Monday.

In early 2005, Harriet Miers, then the White House legal counsel, asked a Justice Department official whether it would be feasible to replace all United States attorneys when their four-year terms expired, according to the Justice Department. The proposal came as the administration was considering which political appointees to replace in the second term, according to Ms. Perino.

Ms. Miers sent her query to D. Kyle Sampson, a top aide to Mr. Gonzales, the Justice officials said. Mr. Sampson, who resigned Monday, replied that filling so many jobs at once would overtax the department. He suggested replacing a smaller group, according to e-mail messages and other memorandums compiled by the Justice Department.

Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, also had rejected the idea of replacing all the prosecutors, Ms. Perino said. But as Ms. Miers worked with Mr. Sampson on devising a list of attorneys to oust, Mr. Rove relayed to her complaints he had received that the Justice Department was not moving aggressively on voter fraud cases.

The role of the president, his former White House counsel and his chief political adviser in the prosecutor shakeup likely will only intensify the calls by Congress for a deeper investigation into the matter. The episode has erupted into the worse crisis of Mr. Gonzales’s tenure, and provoked charges that the dismissals were a political purge that threatened the historical independence of the Justice Department.

So this wasn't just a rogue DoJ operation. It came from Bush through Harriet Miers.

My question - Why would Bush want to change ALL the US attorneys? Were they too bound by the law, and not enough by loyalty to the Bush regime?

This was going to be politically difficult. They knew that going in, and they delayed the actual firings because the US attorneys were together at a meeting. The White House waited until they had gone home so that they couldn't immediately start talking ot each other.

One speculation I might offer is that the US attorneys as a group were too loyal to the law and not enough to Bush. The Big-hammer solution is fire them all. But the problems of replacing all of them would be very difficult, so they scaled down to a sample of just under 10%. The most obstreperous ones (Carol Lam, David C. Iglesias, and John McKay?) would be gone, and the rest would get the message and be more compliant to "requests" from the Party.

Whatever the reason, we can all be certain that it was for the benefit of Bush and to the detriment of the United States.