If you're a news junkie and you haven't yet made McClatchy's Washington Bureau part of your daily fix, you really need to do something about that. Tonight, for example, they have three must read stories.
One: Administration considered firing at least 12 U.S. attorneys but cut list down
Congressional sources who have seen unedited internal documents say the Bush administration considered firing at least a dozen U.S. attorneys before paring down its list to eight late last year. The four who escaped dismissal came from states considered political battlegrounds in the last presidential election: Missouri, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Two of the four said they resigned voluntarily before the mass firings of U.S. attorneys on Dec. 7. Two continue to serve as federal prosecutors.
The latest revelation could provide new evidence to critics who contend that politics, not performance, played the determining role in the firings. The White House and the Justice Department have repeatedly denied that politics played any role.
Congressional sources, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly, Friday confirmed two additional names to McClatchy Newspapers: U.S. Attorney Todd Graves of Kansas City, Mo., and U.S. Attorney Thomas Marino of Scranton, Pa.
Graves resigned in March to return to private legal practice. Marino kept his job as the chief federal prosecutor in central and eastern Pennsylvania.
McClatchy had previously identified two other prosecutors who dropped off the final "hit" list - former U.S. Attorney Thomas Heffelfinger of Minneapolis and U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic of Milwaukee.
If you've been following the coverage of this story over at Josh Marshall's TPM empire, these names and locations should all be very, very familiar. After his abrupt resignation, Graves was replaced by Bradley Schlozman, the man who turned the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division into quite literally the antithesis of its original intent. One example should be enough to convince you of the man's M.O.: in an effort to pursue what we now know were bogus claims of vote fraud, he encouraged the adoption of a voter registration law in Georgia that the courts have equated to a Jim Crow-style poll tax. Anyway, Schlozman was installed as the "interim" USA in Missouri in March of 2006 using that secret provision of the Patriot Act that removed the need for Senate confirmation, just in time for him to attempt to influence the critical election for the Senate seat in Missouri.
If you hadn't yet been convinced that this scandal really is a major scandal, this should do it for you. To summarize:
Graves was on the list to be fired. Then he suddenly resigned. Using a super-double-secret provision of the Patriot Act, a partisan operative who specialized in creating schemes designed to suppress minority turnout was installed as his replacement in a key swing state. Over the next six months, he brought a series of bogus vote fraud cases. Then, less than six months after the election, he was called back to DOJ headquarters and given a big promotion.
And that's just one of ten or more similar stories here.
Want more? This story hits just as we're learning of another massive DoJ document dump. Is this going to be a regular Friday night occurrence around here?
Second McClatchy story....
Justice Department official resigns as Abramoff probe heats up:
A senior Justice Department official has resigned after coming under scrutiny in the department's expanding investigation of convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to a Justice Department official with knowledge of the case.
Making the situation more awkward for the embattled department, the official, Robert E. Coughlin II, was deputy chief of staff for the criminal division, which is overseeing the department's probe of Abramoff.
He stepped down effective April 6 as investigators in Coughlin's own division ratcheted up their investigation of lobbyist Kevin Ring, Coughlin's longtime friend and a key associate of Abramoff.
When contacted at his home in Washington, Coughlin said he resigned voluntarily because he was relocating to Texas. "I was not asked to resign," he said in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers. "It's important to me that it's made clear that I left voluntarily."
He said he couldn't comment on the Abramoff investigation, nor on whether he has a job lined up in Texas. He referred all other questions to friend Michael Horowitz.
Horowitz, a criminal defense attorney and former Justice Department official and public corruption prosecutor, did not respond to questions, including about whether he is representing Coughlin. Coughlin also would not say whether he had hired a lawyer.
McClatchy's source at the Justice Department asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the case.
Coughlin appears to be the first Justice Department official to come under scrutiny in the wide-ranging probe that has implicated a veteran congressman, a deputy Cabinet secretary, a White House aide and eight others. Abramoff has pleaded guilty to three counts in the corruption probe and could face up to 11 years in prison.
I had read reports earlier this week that Abramoff was really "singing," but this is incredible. The man who headed up the division overseeing the Abramoff probe is implicated? Is there anyone in this administration who isn't corrupt?
Also, this would most definitely seem to confirm my suggestion from a few days back the the attorney firing scandal had taken the brakes off of a whole series of corruption investigations. The momentum that seems to be building here really is amazing.
Last but not least, an unrelated but nevertheless crucial story...
Annual terrorism report will show 25% rise in attacks:
State Department report on terrorism due out next week will show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 to more than 14,000, almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday.
The annual report's release comes amid a bitter feud between the White House and Congress over funding for U.S. troops in Iraq and a deadline favored by Democrats to begin a U.S. troop withdrawal.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top aides earlier this week had considered postponing or downplaying the release of this year's edition of the terrorism report, officials in several agencies and on Capitol Hill said.
Ultimately, they decided to issue the report on or near the congressionally mandated deadline of Monday, the officials said<...>
Based on data compiled by the U.S. intelligence community's National Counterterrorism Center, the report says there were 14,338 terrorist attacks last year, up 29 percent from 11,111 attacks in 2005.
Forty-five percent of the attacks were in Iraq.
Worldwide, there were about 5,800 terrorist attacks that resulted in at least one fatality, also up from 2005.
The figures for Iraq and elsewhere are limited to attacks on noncombatants and don't include strikes against U.S. troops.
I can already guess what the White House's response will be: if we judge success in the war on terror by the number of acts of terrorism, the terrorists will have already won. Bush has already used it once this week, so why not try it again?
And what's with the "Rice wanted to ignore the law and delay the report because it contained politically inconvenient truths" bit?
And while I'm asking questions... why aren't we counting terrorist acts against military targets? I thought our soldiers were in Iraq to fight the war on terror? Is the State Dept admitting that is false? That the people we are fighting in Iraq are not terrorists? What gives?
Last but not least, for those of you who have not yet watched Bill Moyer's new documentary on the US media in our post 9/11 world, you absolutely must go and watch it. Only one news organization got the pre-Iraq story right. It was McClatchy (formerly Knight-Ridder). There aren't many heroes left in the media world, but these guys definitely qualify.
Posted by Alex on April 27, 2007 8:33 PM to Corruption , Iraq War , Judiciary , Media , Politics | Permalink |
http://blog.alexwhalen.com/blogarchives/2007/04/3_big_stories_tonight_from_mcc.php
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