Murray Waas: Aborted DOJ Probe Probably Would Have Targeted Gonzales

[babylonsister]

http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0315nj1.htm

Internal Affairs
Aborted DOJ Probe Probably Would Have Targeted Gonzales

By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, March 15, 2007

Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.

Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.

It is unclear whether the president knew at the time of his decision that the Justice inquiry -- to be conducted by the department's internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility -- would almost certainly examine the conduct of his attorney general.


Had it not been quashed, a Justice Department inquiry into the domestic eavesdropping program would likely have examined the actions of Alberto Gonzales.

Sources familiar with the halted inquiry said that if the probe had been allowed to continue, it would have examined Gonzales's role in authorizing the eavesdropping program while he was White House counsel, as well as his subsequent oversight of the program as attorney general.

Both the White House and Gonzales declined comment on two issues -- whether Gonzales informed Bush that his own conduct was about to be scrutinized, and whether he urged the president to close down the investigation, which had been requested by Democratic members of Congress.

Current and former Justice Department officials, as well as experts in legal ethics, question the propriety of Gonzales's continuing to advise Bush about the investigation after learning that it might examine his own actions. The attorney general, they say, was remiss if he did not disclose that information to the president. But if Gonzales did inform Bush about the possibility and the president responded by stymieing the probe, that would raise even more-serious questions as to whether Bush acted to protect Gonzales, they said.

more...

[havocmom]

1. Bookmarked

thank you!

[habitual]

2. K & R n/t

[Kber]

3. Regarding Gonzales's ever more likely successor

1. Who would we want?
2. Who would we settle for?
3. Who are we afraid we might get?

'cause it's starting to look like it might happen.

[babylonsister]

5. I think it doesn't matter a whit who 'we' want, but that's a really good

question for people to speculate on, deserving of its own thread.

[Kber]

7. You're certainly right (about it not really mattering what we want)!

I was thrilled when Ashcroft left. Shows what I know, huh?

[Norquist Nemesis]

4. Guess what? Congress KNEW about it!

At least one member of Congress did. Yesterday, when Rep. Hoekstra gave his remarks about the Whistleblower Protection bill, he said that an employee working with the NSA came to him and told him about the things they were doing with the wiretapping. He was Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

But, he didn't start an investigation into wrong doing, though. Nope! He passed the info on then, supposedly, fought for the guy to not be punished.

[calimary]

6. My take on it...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3163069

Humbly submitted, and with gratitude.

[Patsy Stone]

8. Murray Waas

is a national treasure. K&R!

[KoKo]

9. A little more from the article:

(March 14, 2007 -- 11:44 PM EDT)

It's hard to match this hilarity.

In the evolving story of the US Attorney Purge, you know that a principal part is played by this little known provision of the USA Patriot Act which allows the Attorney General to appoint US attorneys without senate confirmation (TPMmuckraker played the central role uncovering how the provision ended up in the bill). Up until -- what? days ago? -- the White House was promising to veto any attempts to overturn this critical bit of legislation packed with constitutional import and critical to the prosecution of the war on terror. Now, says the Justice Department, in the words of McClatchy News Service, the provision was "designed by a mid-level department lawyer without the knowledge of his superiors or anyone at the White House."

It's like some pulsing gyre of Anglomania -- George Orwell meets Monty Python, with Benny Hill along for the ride.

The separation of powers issue is just down the memory hole. Now it was just some Justice Department lawyer freelancing.

So not withstanding the fact that we now have emails of the Attorney General's Chief of Staff discussing the importance of using the AG's new power to avoid senate confirmation, apparently this is how the whole thing came about ...

The e-mails released Wednesday show Moschella corresponding in 2004 with a Los Angeles attorney named Daniel Collins, who had previously worked for the Justice Department.

In telephone interviews, Moschella and Collins both said Collins had floated the idea of taking district judges out of the vacancy-filling process back in 2003, when he was still at Justice. A former assistant U.S. attorney, Collins said the ability of a district court judge to appoint an interim U.S. attorney if the Senate did not confirm a nominee raised constitutional questions about the separation of powers.

In 2004, Collins said Moschella e-mailed him saying he wanted to pursue such a change. Collins said he did not ask Moschella what triggered his interest and Moschella did not volunteer it.

Collins warned Moschella that if district judges lost their appointment power, the Justice Department would have to figure out how to fill the vacancies. Among the options were making rolling appointments; putting the deputy U.S. attorney in the job temporarily, or allowing the interim appointee to remain indefinitely, Collins said Wednesday.

Collins said that the last option "was certainly never my intention." He added that he did not know why Moschella chose to draft the provision that way.

Just sort of thinking out loud. Just the sort of option two pals come up with when brainstorming about how to solve a critical separation of powers issue that had never occured to anyone before.

[havocmom]

10. Kick for the night shift

:kick: