NYT: A New Mystery to Prosecutors: Their Lost Jobs

[Laura PourMeADrink]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/washington/04attorneys.html?hp

A New Mystery to Prosecutors: Their Lost Jobs


By DAVID JOHNSTON, ERIC LIPTON and WILLIAM YARDLEY
Published: March 4, 2007
WASHINGTON, March 3 — After Daniel G. Bogden got the call in December telling him that he was being dismissed as the United States attorney in Nevada, he pressed for an explanation.

Mr. Bogden, who was named the top federal prosecutor in Nevada in 2001 after 11 years of working his way up at the Justice Department, asked an official at the agency’s headquarters if the firing was related to his performance or to that of his office. “That didn’t enter into the equation,” he said he was told.

After several more calls, Mr. Bogden reached a senior official who offered an answer. “There is a window of opportunity to put candidates into an office like mine,” Mr. Bogden said, recalling the conversation. “They were attempting to open a slot and bring someone else in.”

The ouster of Mr. Bogden and seven other United States attorneys has set off a furor in Washington that took the Bush administration by surprise. Summoning five of the dismissed prosecutors for hearings on Tuesday, the newly empowered Congressional Democrats have charged that the mass firing is a political purge, intended to squelch corruption investigations or install less independent-minded successors.

The motivations for the dismissals appear more complicated, according to interviews with several of the prosecutors, Justice Department officials, lawmakers and others. Like Mr. Bogden, some believe they were forced out for replacements who could gild résumés; several prosecutors heard that favored candidates had been identified.

Other prosecutors may have been vulnerable because they had had run-ins with Washington, not over corruption cases against Republicans, but on less visible issues.

Paul Charlton in Arizona, for example, annoyed F.B.I. officials by pushing for confessions to be tape recorded, while John McKay in Seattle had championed a computerized law enforcement information-sharing system that Justice Department officials did not want. Carol C. Lam of San Diego, who successfully prosecuted former Representative Randy Cunningham, had drawn complaints that she was not sufficiently aggressive on immigration cases.
more....