According to Frank Rich, the pet name Mr. Bush has given to the Attorney General is Fredo. Alberto Gonzales, who likes to be called The Judge, and who unfriendly writers call Gonzo, was named by Mr. Bush for the high-living and treacherous brother from The Godfather. It seems pretty appropriate that the least positive name for this Republican paragon of law, would be one given by The Decider. And, that Mr. Gonzales statements under oath could lead to unraveling the Bush administration, over the issue of firing people who he normally would have the authority to fire at will.
Of course, 2007 is not a normal year. There is a limitation in the President’s ability to fire a US Attorney: The firing can be done at any time and for any reason, except it cannot be done to stop or impede a criminal investigation. In brief, if a President is sufficiently careful, he might be able to pick 93 people to be US Attorneys, who are entirely loyal, entirely without morals, people with no professional self respect and no patriotic loyalty to the United States. But if he screws up and hires one US Attorney who is doing a good job, and causes some unhappiness among Republicans for doing a competent job, that individual cannot be fired while working on that case.
The fact is that when Bill Clinton took office, he fired 92 US Attorneys, which is normal. He kept on one Bush 41 appointee, in New Jersey, who was working on an important case.
For the last six years, Mr. Bush and his people have consistently made mistakes that were to the detriment of the United States. But they have been very successful in all of the things they attempted, that were good personally for the President and his cronies. This time, however, Mr. Bush seems to have screwed up on a matter that will be important to him. Because if he makes a mistake with US Attorneys, and ten per cent of the appointees have some kind of integrity, he cannot just fire them, he must keep them until they finish their work. And that work might include putting some of Mr. Bush’s friends in serious trouble.
The Gonzales 93 issue is going to be more troublesome to Mr. Bush than the Valerie Plame matter, in the next two years. There are eight people who were let go. None of those people seems to be pleased about it, and now that all the names are in the public domain, they each are going to be asked questions. Unlike Valerie Plame and her husband, they cannot be attacked as Democrats.
David Iglesias, the dissed and dismissed US Attorney in New Mexico, wrote a piece in the NY Times. Iglesias was very angry that the Department of Justice described him as less than fully competent. There is no question that Iglesias was up to the job. The question was about his loyalty to the Republican cause. The question was, “Does David Iglesias give more attention to his loyalty to the Republicans than he gives to his oath of office?” That is exactly where David Iglesias failed the President, who clearly has not interest in oath of office.
Mr. Bush fired Carol Lam from her post as US Attorney in San Diego, while Lam was actually pursuing a criminal case against Dusty Foggo, a Bush political appointee to the CIA, who was put there to establish Republican control of that agency. Firing Iglesias for failure to go after Democrats is the worst kind of political hatchet-job, but firing Lam for going after evil-doers high up in the government is a serious crime. It is an impeachable offense.
Firing the eight US Attorneys is very bad. Replacing them with Republican hacks, that might be even worse. Senator Arlen Spector, who was the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, says that he did not slip in the provision of the Patriot Act that permits the President to appoint any US Attorney without Senate confirmation. At the time the deed was done, Arlen Spector was, in fact, undergoing chemotherapy, and certainly looked like he was not up to the job. Spector says he does not know who slipped that provision into the Patriot Act. Diogenes thinks that there are not very many people who could have done this. Diogenes thinks that if it is not a crime to make a serious alteration to a piece of legislation that already had some serious defects, it ought to be a crime. Whether it is or not, we need to have a serious investigation, complete with television lights, about how such a stupidly conceived piece of legislation got passed. By the way, Diogenes always enjoyed watching District Attorney Arthur Branch discuss his conservative political philosophy on Law and Order. DA Branch was always very careful with the letter of the law. Interestingly, Fred Thompson, the actor and real-life lawyer who was a member of the US Senate majority that passed the Patriot Act in a fever, apparently never saw any problems with it at the time, either.
Bad, Bad, Worse!
Diogenes thinks that the most pernicious aspects of the Gonzales 93 affair have not yet been made public. One of the US Attorneys on the original pink-slip list was Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is now the hero of many Americans who believe in truth and justice. Diogenes wonders, as the Plame Jury wondered, why was Lewis Libby the only person charged in this matter? The story we understand is that a reporter called Karl Rove one night, and told Rove that Fitzgerald knew that he was lying about some of his Grand Jury testimony. As if by magic, Rove awakened from a trance, and he was able to tell the Grand Jury some things that he did not remember in four previous long days of testimony. Perhaps it was a coincidence that some random reporter wanted to undermine the safety of the nation and give that little weasel a chance to avoid indictment. Diogenes thinks not. Diogenes thinks that someone who knew, had a call made to Rove to tell him.
Diogenes notices that Fizgerald’s name did not stay on the list, and that he is still a US Attorney – and presumably is on the list to become a Federal Judge soon. This is a more serious crime than merely replacing some political appointees. We know that there was a criminal conspiracy in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. We know that conspiracy included Karl Rove. We know that when Libby tried to recruit Ari Fleischer into the conspiracy, Fleischer went to the prosecutor. We do not know who else was a member of the conspiracy, in addition to Cheney.
For that matter, if the list of US Attorneys was drawn up to include Fitzgerald, and if Fitzgerald wanted to stay on the GOP good list, how hard would the fearless investigator have pushed to achieve justice? Fitzgerald would not be the first US attorney to bow to Bush administration pressure. He would not even be the first to show up in the news. Debra Wong Yang, a former US Attorney in California, was investigating a corrupt Republican member of Congress, Jerry Lewis, who was connected by money trail to former House member and current felon Randy Cunningham. Yang was not on the list of eight. When the investigation heated up, Yang was recruited out of her US Attorney job, and into a partnership with Gibson Dunn, a very large, very powerful Los Angeles law firm, whose very rich and very powerful client list includes Congressman Jerry Lewis.
Diogenes thinks that there is plenty for a House or Senate committee to look into in the matter of the eight fired US Attorneys, the 85 who were not fired, and the one with a magical Republican headhunter.
