Newsweek: Disorder in King George's Court

[ProSense]

Disorder in King George's Court

Pressure Builds: As questions over the White House role in firing eight U.S. attorneys increase, can Gonzales (right) keep his job?

By Michael Isikoff, Richard Wolffe And Evan Thomas
Newsweek

March 26, 2007 issue - At highly charged moments, attorney General Alberto Gonzales can seem placid, passive—at times, just plain out of it. In the summer of 2002, high-level Bush administration officials met to debate secretly a delicate issue: how aggressively could the CIA interrogate terror suspects? While the lawyers from Justice, Defense and the vice president's office hotly debated definitions of torture (at times discussing specific interrogation techniques), Gonzales, who was then the White House counsel, sat by and said virtually nothing. The attorney general's behavior was typical, say administration officials who have worked with him. His defenders say he likes to keep his counsel. Others wonder if he's ill prepared, insecure or simply has nothing to say.

Last week Gonzales's bland, what-me-worry? smile seemed to fade. He appeared slightly forlorn as he answered hostile questions from reporters at a hastily called press conference. He was asked about the role of the White House in firing a group of U.S. attorneys. "As we can all imagine," he began, "in an organization of 110,000 people, I am not aware of every bit of information that passes through the halls of the Department of Justice ... " He was aware, he said, that there was "a request from the White House as to the possibility of replacing all the U.S. attorneys. That was immediately rejected by me." The impression was that Gonzales was merely responding to the ill-considered scheme of his successor as White House counsel (Harriet Miers); that he, personally, had not been in the loop for a series of controversial decisions that have set off a congressional brouhaha over the dismissal of one U.S. attorney in the summer of 2006 and seven more in December.

Two days after that presser, however, the White House turned over newly discovered e-mails showing that Gonzales, while he was still on the job at the White House in January 2005, had "briefly" discussed the idea of firing U.S. attorneys. (A Justice Department spokeswoman said Gonzales had "no recollection" of that.) The e-mails showed that Kyle Sampson, then a top aide to Attorney General John Ashcroft and later Gonzales's chief of staff, talked about the possible purge of "15-20 percent" of the U.S. attorney corps deemed not to be "loyal Bushies." The e-mails also showed that Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, had "stopped by" to ask a White House lawyer "how we planned to proceed regarding US Attorneys, whether we are going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc." Sampson warned that firing all the U.S. attorneys could cause political problems. "That said," Sampson wrote, "if Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, then so do I."


The e-mails inflamed lawmakers who have long felt misled or ignored by the Bush White House. At least two Republicans have publicly demanded Gonzales's firing or resignation. And Democrats who now control Congress want to know more about Rove and other White House officials. At the time Rove was asking questions, he was himself under investigation by a U.S. attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the Valerie Plame leak case. (Last week Rove dismissed the controversy over his role in firing the U.S. attorneys as "a lot of politics.")

more...

[AndyTiedye]

1. Is That a Subpoena in your hand, Chairman Conyers?

[AuntPatsy]

2. You know, that man has been fighting against incredible odds from day

one if you ask me, he just does not get enough recognition for his obvious true patrioism, I get tired of hearing the Dems do nothing when many such Dems, Conyers one of many have been doing what they could for quite some time, I blame the complicity of the media in attempting to do what they can to silence this adminstrations critics and have been doing it since Clinton...

[gatorboy]

4. He's one of the true fighters.

Wasn't he on Nixon's "Enemies List"?

[Cerridwen]

3. K & R

I think it's of interest that a "mainstream" publication is referring to shrub as King George and this misadministration as his Court.

Maybe we could make a few changes to the Declaration of Independence and rather than split from King George, we could appropriate his holdings and those of his family, use the ill-gotten gains to clean up some of his messes and send him and his family to Iraq to help re-build that from which they've profited; with their own hands and by the sweat of their brow. Now, who could we send as an overseer?

[bread_and_roses]

10. I had the same thought, Cerridwen

They know he's cooked. But in my bleaker moments, I wonder if there isn't more to it...if the big money hasn't decided the costs are too high, the natives are getting too restless, and it's time to bring a Democrat in, throw the proles a few bones, before they start storming the castles.

[bleever]

5. "Devil take the hindmost" has consequences.

Looks like Alberto's turn to pay them.

[jazzjunkysue]

6. Let's see the MSM ignore this headline and story. Let Newsweek get the

scoop. "We don't want Karl mad at us. Let's have lower ratings. Ok!"

[AndyTiedye]

8. They Have Been Ignoring Ratings In Favor of Making Nice to the Regime for Years

Ratings aren't everything. Not when the CEO of the network gets a phone call from Karl Rove.:scared:

[ProSense]

7. From TPM Muckraker:

DoJ Officials Point to Sampson, Sampson Points Back

By Paul Kiel - March 18, 2007, 10:07 AM

<...>

Sampson's lawyer, of course, released a statement late Friday that significantly dispersed the blame. According to him, "a number of other senior officials at the Department, including others who were involved in preparing the Department's testimony to Congress" knew about the White House involvement. They didn't bring it up, says Sampson, because "no one focused on it or deemed it important at the time."

But that certainly doesn't sound like McNulty and Moschella's view of things. Fortunately, all three men are scheduled to make appearances before the House and Senate judicial committees, so they'll have plenty of chances to lay blame.

link

[PinkyisBlue]

9. It sounds like Al Gonzalez and W were old drinking and coke buddies.

The way Al is described, he's missing more than a few brain cells: "...Gonzales sat by and said virtually nothing...Others wonder if he's ill prepared, insecure or simply has nothing to say." "Last week Gonzales's bland, what-me-worry? smile seemed to fade."

He seems to be pretty daft (not unlike Bush). But at least Bush gets to read his cue cards.