Justice Dept. probe flays White House

Harsh report calls for more investigation of prosecutor firings

By Richard B. Schmitt | Los Angeles Times

September 30, 2008

WASHINGTON - As U.S. attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales and his top deputy, Paul J. McNulty, "abdicated their responsibility" in the 2006 dismissals of nine federal prosecutors, were aloof and uninformed about the process, and offered the public reasons for the firings that were "inconsistent, misleading and or inaccurate," Justice Department investigators concluded yesterday.

The authors of the long-awaited report, prepared by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility, were unable to determine conclusively whether crimes were committed as part of the politically charged firings, and they called for further investigation, particularly into the role of the White House.

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, responding to that request, named Nora R. Dannehy, a career prosecutor with a record of investigating corruption cases, to continue the probe.

"The report describes a disappointing chapter in the history of the department," Mukasey said, adding that Dannehy, the acting U.S. attorney in Connecticut, would "pursue this wherever the facts and the law require."

The 392-page report details the circumstances surrounding the unprecedented midterm firing of the nine U.S. attorneys but leaves unresolved basic questions - such as who ordered the dismissals and why. At the same time, the report found "substantial evidence that partisan political considerations played a role in the removal of several of the U.S. attorneys."

Expressing frustration that they were operating with incomplete information, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and H. Marshall Jarrett, the head of the Office of Professional Responsibility, laid much of the blame at the doorstep of the White House, which refused to provide internal documents about the firings. Several former officials - including Karl Rove, President Bush's longtime political adviser, and Harriet E. Miers, White House counsel when the firings occurred - also declined to be interviewed.

"We believe our investigation was able to uncover most of the facts relating to the reasons for the removal of most of the U.S. attorneys," Fine and Jarrett said. "However ... there are gaps in our investigation because of the refusal of certain key witnesses to be interviewed by us."

The report describes Gonzales - who once dismissed the controversy as an "overblown personnel matter" - as "remarkably unengaged."

Gonzales claimed "an extraordinary lack of recollection about the entire removal process," the report found - unable, for example, to recall any details of a November 2006 meeting in his office where the list of the prosecutors to be fired was finalized.

McNulty, who as the department's second-ranking official supervised all of the U.S. attorneys, failed to challenge the method used for identifying those to be fired after he learned about the plan, the report concluded.

The report scored the Justice Department for following an ad hoc process in deciding which prosecutors were to be removed and for offering after-the-fact explanations that were often contrived.

Some of the harshest language concerned Gonzales' former chief of staff, Kyle D. Sampson, who oversaw the firings. The report said he had engaged in "misconduct" by making misleading statements to Congress and investigators, who questioned the credibility of his claims that he could not recall why certain attorneys were added to the list.