Attorney General Alberto Gonzales approved plans to fire several U.S. attorneys in a November meeting, according to documents released Friday that contradict earlier claims that he was not closely involved in the dismissals. The Nov. 27 meeting, in which the attorney general and at least five top Justice Department officials participated, focused on a five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors, Justice Department officials said late Friday. There, Gonzales signed off on the plan, which was crafted by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson.
....The five-step plan involved notifying Republican home-state senators of the impending dismissals, preparing for potential political upheaval and naming replacements and submitting them to the Senate for confirmation.
...Gonzales was not involved in the process of selecting which prosecutors would be asked to resign. On March 13, in explaining the firings, Gonzales told reporters he was aware that some of the dismissals were being discussed but was not involved in them. ''I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers -- where were the districts around the country where we could do better for the people in that district, and that's what I knew,'' Gonzales said last week. ''But that is in essence what I knew about the process; was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That's basically what I knew as the attorney general.''
Later, he added: ''I accept responsibility for everything that happens here within this department. But when you have 110,000 people working in the department, obviously there are going to be decisions that I'm not aware of in real time. Many decisions are delegated.'' The documents were released Friday night, a few hours after Sampson agreed to testify at a Senate inquiry next week into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year.
¡Adios, Albertito!
Wait wait! There's more. Look what Muckraker has this evening:
President Bush shut down an internal Justice Department investigation into the administration's warrantless wiretapping program against the advice of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, according to a letter sent by a senior Justice Department official to Congress yesterday. To Democrats, it's yet another example of why Gonzales should step down.
...For no apparent reason, Bush shut down an internal DoJ investigation that would have examined his administration's possibly illegal wiretapping program. And the guy who heads up that department, whose job is to uphold the rule of law, objected, but let it happen.
Isn't that obstruction of justice? On Bush's part, too? Or just Gonzo's?
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