Murray Waas - Gonzales delegated US atty firings to Sampson, Goodling

I wondered what Murray Waas was doing since "Scooter" Libby was convicted. Now we know.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides ... extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. [Snip]

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. [Snip]

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 [From Murray Waas, published April 30, 2007 in the National Journal.]

This explains Gonzales' total lack of understanding of the process by which the U.S. Attorneys were fired on Pearl Harbor Day of 2006. Gonzales was establishing plausible deniability for himself. Then when he appeared before the Senate, he allowed himself to look like a total doofus rather than point to this letter delagating the authority to Sampson and Goodling. Looking like an idiot or an incompetent must have been easier than explaining why he signed this document.

The choices for Gonzales at the Senate testimony have been to

• Look like an idiot and incompetent, (he's not)
• appear to be a total failure as a manager, (possible) or
• protect the White House involvement in the firings and the politicization of the Department of Justice. (My bet.)

This also explains why the emails [See the January 9, 2006 email from Kyle Sampson to Harriet Miers. Presumably the process of politicizing the Department of Justice preceded the effort at covering it up.] discussing the firings went from Sampson to the White House Counsel, Harriet Miers, without even a Cc to Gonzales. Miers, of course, worked closely with Karl Rove and President Bush. Neither of them wanted to be addressed in such documents, so their only contact would have been verbal. Again, plausible deniability.

Harriet Miers, Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling have all resigned from the government, Sampson and Goodling over the U.S. Attorney firings and Miers for "personal reasons."

More to come on this I am sure.

US attorneys who investigate Republicans have been pushed out

The State of Missouri has long had a system in which some driver's license offices were operated by private contractors rather than by the state itself. This has been a system of patronage, allowing the Governor to give his political friends control of these offices, some of which gross as much as $700,000 a year. But according to the Springfield Business Journal this was not good enough for Matt Blunt, the current Governor. This has resulted in an FBI investigation.

Jack Cardetti, Missouri Democratic Party spokesman, said Blunt improperly gave his political supporters control of the state’s 183 driver’s license offices during his administration’s mid-2005 privatization initiative. [Snip]

The FBI probe may validate Cardetti’s accusation that Blunt abused his power by forming a system of umbrella companies established through Kansas City law firm Lathrop & Gage LC to run the state’s licensing network.

Cardetti speculates that Blunt’s scheme is to line his own pockets with revenues from the license offices through mysterious funding channels.

This FBI investigation was being supervised by Todd Graves, U.S. Attorney for Western Missouri. From Fired Up Missouri we get more of the story, by way of the recent DoJ document dumps.

In a January 9, 2006 email from DOJ Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson to White House Counsel Harriet Miers, he outlines U.S. Attorneys who are targets for ouster. Two of the names in the email have been redacted from the version released by DOJ to Congressional investigators.

In the email, he also suggests that those listed should be given the chance to leave on their own so that they can "save face."

None of the above obstacles are insuperable. First, a limited number of U.S. Attorneys could be targeted for removal and replacement, mitigating the shock to the system that would result from an across-the-board firing. Second, the Department of Justices Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA) could work quietly with targeted U.S. Attorneys to encourage them to leave government service voluntarily; this would allow targeted U.S. Attorneys to find work in the private sector and “save face” regarding the reason for leaving office, both in the Department of Justice Community and in their local legal communities.

In March, Graves abruptly resigned his position as U.S. Attorney, saying he wanted to get more involved in the 2008 presidential election, a project we have heard nothing about since.

In April, when Sampson presented an updated list of targeted U.S. Attorneys, he makes reference to the fact that two of the names included in his original list of targets for ouster have already left government service. [Snip]

In the intervening period, only three U.S. Attorneys left office, and one of them went on to become a U.S. Magistrate, so clearly, Todd Graves was one of the redacted names.

So it looks like Todd Graves was removed because he was investigating the corruption of a Republican Governor. But like Debra Yang, he went quietly into the private sector.

It is interesting that the January 9, 2006 email to Harriet Miers and Bill Kelly (both on the White House staff) lays out a quiet way to fire the non-political U.S. Attorneys. Two conclusions can be drawn from this email. First, the White House knew exactly what was going on. Harriet Miers was the Counsel to the President. Second, something must have happened to cause the Department of Justice to change from this quiet and gradual method of firing U.S. Attorneys. That "something" was probably the shock of the November 2006 election returns. For the Democrats to gain control of the Senate was a real long shot going into November, yet they did. What the White House and the Republicans had been doing to win elections was clearly not enough, so they had to step up their actions.

So they bribed Debra Yang to quit, and fired the U.S. Attorneys removed in the Pearl Harbor Day Massacre.

But doing it all at once exposed their plan. The current imbroglio with Alberto Gonzales would not have occurred if the DoJ had not fired so many U.s. Attorneys all at once. Even then it was a near thing. The mainstream media was going to drop the issue, but Talking Point Memo kept picking at it until became clearly a lot more than just a "minor personnel issue."

The above report and analysis is still just a part of the tip of the iceberg. This just points the direction we need to be investigating.

If anyone has material on other U.S. Attorneys beside those in the Pearl Harbor Day Massacre, Debra Yang and Tod Graves, please email me or leave a comment.