"I would never, ever make a change in the United States attorney position for political reasons," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in Senate testimony in early January. In a Feb. 6 hearing, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told lawmakers, "When I hear you talk about the politicizing of the Department of Justice, it's like a knife in my heart."
Sure. Right.
At least three of the eight fired attorneys were told by a superior they were being forced to resign to make jobs available for other Bush appointees, according to a former senior Justice Department official knowledgeable about their cases. That stands in contradiction to administration claims that the firings were related either to job performance or policy differences. A fourth U.S. attorney was told by a top Justice Department official that the dismissal in that attorney's case was not necessarily related to job performance. Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in New Mexico -- who officially steps down from his post on Wednesday, and who says he was never told by superiors about any problems with his work -- plans to go public with documentation of the achievements of his office. "I never received any indication at all of a problem" regarding performance or policy differences, Iglesias told Salon on Monday. "That only leaves a third option: politics."
As Mark Follman writes in today's Salon, the politics will continue and "justice" in the Justice Department will continue to be compromised by a radical right philosophy.
If other recent appointees are an indication, the administration may be intent on installing conservatives with close ties to the White House. According to a Jan. 26 report by McClatchy Newspapers, since last March the administration has named at least nine U.S. attorneys who fit that profile, most of them hand-picked by Gonzales under the little-noticed provision of the Patriot Act that has since become law. ...And some critics expect that, despite the recent uproar ...the Bush White House will continue to find ways to erode the independence of the Justice Department.
