Lawmakers on the Line --WaPo Editorial (Domenici and Wilson)

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/05/AR2007030501312_pf.html



Lawmakers on the Line
Mr. Domenici and Ms. Wilson called a U.S. attorney, and Congress needs to investigate.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007; A18



WHEN MEMBERS of Congress call, people listen -- especially if those people are political appointees who owe their positions in part to support from the lawmaker at the other end of the line. That is why the phone calls made to David C. Iglesias, the since-replaced U.S. attorney in New Mexico, by home-state Republicans Sen. Pete V. Domenici and Rep. Heather A. Wilson are so troubling. The Senate and House ethics committees have a duty to investigate.

Mr. Domenici has acknowledged calling Mr. Iglesias, as did Ms. Wilson in a statement to The Post yesterday. Inquiring about the status of a criminal investigation would be ethically dicey under any circumstance, but this was not any old criminal investigation. It was a corruption probe that involved a local Democrat, and the calls were made in the run-up to last November's election, in which Ms. Wilson's seat was in peril amid a swirl of allegations involving congressional Republicans. So when Mr. Domenici says he simply asked the prosecutor "if he could tell me what was going on in that investigation and give me an idea of what time frame we were looking at," the query was not a simple act of senatorial curiosity. It was an ill-advised intrusion into an ongoing criminal investigation.

Mr. Domenici says that "at no time in that conversation or any other conversation with Mr. Iglesias did I ever tell him what course of action I thought he should take on any legal matter. I have never pressured him nor threatened him in any way." Simply placing the phone call was pressure enough, and if Mr. Domenici didn't mean to exert improper pressure on the prosecutor, he should have realized that his actions were nonetheless susceptible to that interpretation.

Mr. Domenici's initial response to the allegations of Mr. Iglesias was to tell reporters, "I have no idea what he's talking about." As his statement on Sunday demonstrated, Mr. Domenici knew full well that he had talked to the prosecutor, and his failure to be forthcoming adds to the questions about his conduct. As for Ms. Wilson, her repeated refusal to answer questions about "that personnel matter" did not reflect well on her. Now she says she had merely been relaying constituent complaints that the prosecutor was "intentionally delaying corruption investigations." She owes her constituents and colleagues an explanation.

Mr. Iglesias should have reported the lawmakers' phone calls to the Justice Department in Washington, as protocol dictates. He is to testify on Capitol Hill about the calls today. That may be illuminating. But more urgent is for the Justice Department to stop hiding behind vague assertions of "performance-related issues" and explain, finally and clearly, why Mr. Iglesias and seven other U.S. attorneys were dismissed.