Inside the Scandal at Justice

By Karen Tumulty and Massimo Calabresi

It takes a lot to get mild-mannered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hot under the collar. That's why it was telling when word went out to his top aides in February that something had set him off. "The Attorney General is extremely upset with the stories on the U.S. Attorneys this morning," his spokesman Brian Roehrkasse wrote in an e-mail. The papers that day were full of news about the testimony that his deputy Paul McNulty had given to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the firing last year of eight U.S. Attorneys. Gonzales had previously suggested that all of them had been dismissed for poor performance, but McNulty allowed that at least one of them, Bud Cummins of the Eastern District of Arkansas, had been removed to make room for Tim Griffin, a Karl Rove protege who had headed the opposition-research operation at the Republican National Committee. Gonzales was upset, his former chief of staff Kyle Sampson has told congressional investigators, that McNulty's revelation put "in the public sphere" the uncomfortable fact that the White House helped engineer the dismissal.

That went right to the real question that is being exposed as the controversy over last year's purge of U.S. attorneys enters its fifth month: Did Gonzales, the consummate George Bush loyalist, politicize the workings of one of the most sensitive and traditionally independent agencies in government, the Department of Justice (DOJ)? While it's true the President has always picked an ally to run the department and populated its upper echelons with political appointees, the bureaucracy has fiercely guarded a unique and proud tradition of insulating from partisanship those who are charged with making sure that the laws of this country are fairly and evenly enforced. Though every Attorney General has faced pressure to use the DOJ's awesome power to punish the President's enemies and help his allies, critics inside the department and out say Gonzales has yielded to it more than most.

At a minimum, he has handed an extraordinary amount of authority, particularly over hiring and firing, to young, lightly credentialed and fiercely partisan aides who appear to have put politics ahead of the public interest. One of those aides was Sampson, 37, who assembled the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired and who was himself bucking for a U.S. ttorney post, despite the fact that he had limited experience as a prosecutor. The other was Monica Goodling, 33, the department's White House liaison, the product of a law school where more than half her graduating class flunked the bar exam on the first attempt. A March 2006 memo signed by Gonzales delegated authority to the two of them over the hiring and firing of 135 non-civil service Justice Department staffers. Amid the scandal, both have resigned.

What Gonzales' team wanted in U.S.attorneys, according to an e-mail that Sampson sent to the White House, was "loyal Bushies." And thanks to a provision they quietly slipped into last year's reauthorization of the Patriot Act, they were able to put their candidates in without going through the customary route of Senate confirmation.

Seven of the eight fired had one thing in common: they were in districts where there were close electoral contests. In New Mexico, for instance, David Iglesias was fired after two Republican lawmakers, Senator Pete Domenici and Congresswoman Heather Wilson -- who was in a tight House race -- called him to inquire about a corruption investigation that could have hurt Wilson's Democratic opponent. Iglesias claims Domenici went so far as to ask whether charges would be filed before the November balloting. A few weeks later, after complaints from Rove reached Sampson, Iglesias' name was added to the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired. When Iglesias was booted with the others on Dec. 7, William Kelley, a deputy to then White House counsel Harriet Miers, sent Sampson an e-mail saying that Domenici's chief of staff "is happy as a clam" about the move. A week later Sampson replied that "Domenici is going to send over names [for a replacement] tomorrow (not even waiting for Iglesias's body to cool)." Both Domenici and Wilson have denied acting improperly.

At the center of all the intrigue is the role that Rove might have played in the department's decisions. The White House says an untold number of e-mails related to the firings may have gone missing, thanks to the fact that Rove and his aides were using separate e-mail accounts at the Republican National Committee, possibly violating the law. So the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Gonzales to hand over any e-mails to, from or copied to the President's chief political strategist that relate to the investigation. According to a Justice Department "privileged log" of e-mails not yet given Congress, Rove was among the recipients of at least one relevant message that showed up in Sampson's inbox from Scott Jennings, a special assistant to the President. Dated Feb. 28 -- the day Iglesias went public with his accusation that Domenici and Wilson had improperly inquired about the corruption investigation -- it is described in the log as: "Discussion re: telephone call received from Sen. Domenici's COS [chief of staff] re: Iglesias press conference."

Meanwhile, it increasingly appears that Gonzales' underlings were taking political affiliation into account even when considering applicants for entry-level career positions that are supposed to be filled strictly on merit. As recently as March, Jeffrey Taylor, the top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, sources say, wanted to know why it was taking so long to hire a lawyer he had recruited. The answer he got from Goodling was that the candidate had been deemed unacceptable because the applicant appeared to be a Democrat. Goodling's lawyer refused to comment, citing Goodling's right to remain silent.

With every new revelation, the calls by lawmakers of both parties for Gonzales' resignation have grown louder. But Bush has been unwilling to cut him loose, a testament to the intense personal bond that he and Gonzales have felt for each other since the newly elected Texas Governor plucked the Harvard-educated son of migrant farm workers from a prestigious Houston law firm to become his counsel. Every one of the increasingly powerful jobs Gonzales has held since then -- Texas secretary of state, state supreme court justice and White House counsel -- has been bestowed on him by Bush. When he has been asked how running a 110,000-person department was different from his job as White House counsel, Gonzales has replied, balefully, "Well, I miss the President. I don't get to see him as often as I did when I was in the White House."

It is not unusual or necessarily undesirable for a President to put a loyalist in the nation's top law-enforcement job. John Kennedy, at his father's insistence, gave the post to his brother. When Robert Kennedy resisted, the newly elected President told him that he needed someone he could talk to in a Cabinet in which everyone else was a stranger. Gonzales has argued that his friendship with Bush makes him more effective as an Attorney General. "When a friend tells someone, 'No, you can't do that,' you're much more likely to listen to that and to accept it," Gonzales told the National Journal last year. "I've got that kind of relationship with the President." Another advantage of putting an ally in the post is knowing that he or she will pursue the priorities upon which the President was elected, just as a Pentagon chief or Secretary of State is expected to do. "You want the Attorney General to be politically accountable," says Orin Kerr, a legal scholar who teaches at the George Washington University Law School. "Imagine if a President is elected to pursue terrorism cases, and the A.G. decides, 'I don't like terrorism cases. I want to pursue bank fraud cases.'"

But critics say, under Bush, the connection between the White House and Justice became so close that it had to be formalized. When Gonzales testified last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a former U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island, produced documents and charts showing that under Bill Clinton, a policy was carried out that allowed only four people at the White House -- the President, Vice President, White House counsel and deputy counsel -- to discuss pending criminal cases with anyone at Justice and only with the top three officials of the department. Under Bush, that policy was loosened so that 417 White House staffers had that authority and could contact more than 30 people at Justice.

Justice Department officials say that changes were made after 9/11 to improve coordination of investigations in cases regarding national security and that contacts occur only on those cases. But there were no such issues at stake when the U.S. Attorney for Seattle, John McKay, was making the case to be nominated for a federal judgeship last August. McKay claims the first question he got from Miers was "why Republicans in the state of Washington would be angry with me." The answer, McKay believed, was that during a very tight Governor's race in 2004, he had decided there was no merit to voter-fraud accusations that Republicans had lodged against the Democrats.

McKay also believes his refusal to prosecute those claims is why he wound up on the list of U.S. attorneys who were fired. "We expected to be supported by people in Washington, D.C., when we make tough decisions like that," McKay told Tim Russert in March on Meet the Press. McKay had every reason to be surprised by his dismissal. Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, the tough-minded Bush appointee who supervised McKay at the Justice Department from 2003 to 2005, has described him as a strong performer. "I was inspired by him," Comey told a House Judiciary subcommittee. He had similar praise for most of the others who were fired. "One of the best," he said of Paul Charlton of Arizona. "Straight as the Nevada highway and a fired-up guy ... He was loved in that community," of Daniel Bogden in Las Vegas. "Very straight, very able," Comey said of Iglesias in New Mexico.

As the U.S. attorney scandal unfolds, it may point to some things that are much more long-lasting: a political transformation of the department from the bottom rungs up, including nonpolitical career jobs. Nowhere has that been more evident than in the civil rights division, which has historically been the most fiercely apolitical division in the department and where voting-rights cases, among other things, are handled. In 2003, the Administration changed the rules to abolish the hiring committees made up of veteran career lawyers and gave that job instead to political appointees. Last year the Boston Globe, analyzing hiring data it had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reported that the ranks of the division were being filled with lawyers who had strong conservative credentials but little civil rights experience. That has shown up in the direction the division has taken, says Joseph Rich at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law.

Rich, a former chief of the voting section in the civil rights division who worked at the Justice Department for 35 years before leaving in 2005, says that from 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African-American or Native American voters. Instead, he alleges, U.S.attorneys were told to give priority to voter-fraud cases, which civil rights groups have long contended are actually meant to depress voter turnout in minority communities.

"In all the years I was in the Department of Justice, there was nothing close to the type of politicization that's occurring in this Administration," says Rich. "Outright hostility to career employees who disagreed with the political appointees was evident early on. Seven career managers were removed in the civil rights division. I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the Administration."

Rich has been particularly critical of Bradley Schlozman, who was chief of the division until March 2006, alleging that Schlozman tried to suppress minority voting in Missouri by filing indictments of activists who were registering voters. Justice points out that two of those indicted have since pleaded guilty. Schlozman, who did not reply to requests for comment, has been called to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee May 15. Justice insists it has vigorously enforced civil rights laws. Spokesman Dean Boyd said evaluations of department personnel have long involved "the input of both career management and political appointees."

As the congressional investigation of the Justice Department deepens, Gonzales is certain to be getting more questions about the role that political appointees may have played in compromising the legally neutral mission of the department. Shortly before Goodling resigned, congressional sources say, she broke down in tears in the office of a colleague. "All I ever wanted to do," she sobbed, "was serve this President, this Administration, this department." What she didn't understand then was that she had her priorities backward.

with reporting by Brian Bennett, Mark Thompson and Adam Zagorin/Washington