Letters to the Editor

• Let's review...

  [Read the article: A bigger purge?]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  "Senior congressional aides who have seen unedited internal documents say the Bush administration considered firing at least a dozen U.S. attorneys before settling on eight late last year.

  The four who escaped dismissal came from states that the White House considered political battlegrounds in the last presidential election: Missouri, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

  And the one who was discharged from the Western Deistrict of Michigan was NOT from a 'battleground state'?

  Two of the four said they resigned voluntarily before eight U.S. attorneys were fired on Dec. 7. Two continue to serve as federal prosecutors.

  The latest revelation could provide new fodder to critics who contend that politics, not policy or performance, played the determining role in the firing decisions. At the very least, it opens new avenues of inquiry for investigators from the House of Representatives and Senate Judiciary Committees.

  The White House and the Justice Department have denied repeatedly that politics played any role in the firings.

  I don't know what to say about that. If the filings WERE "political," so what? What I want to know is whether any of the firings were ILLEGAL. This story gets us nowhere closer to that issue. It seems that this entire story is, and will remain, about nothing.Somebody needs to tell the Angry Left that they need to "Move On"...

  The congressional aides, who asked not to be identified because they weren't authorized to discuss the information publicly, on Friday confirmed to McClatchy Newspapers that former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves of Kansas City, Mo., and U.S. Attorney Thomas Marino of Scranton, Pa., were among the 12 whose jobs were in jeopardy.

  So we have congressional aides doing something we KNOW is wrong; disclosing unauthorized leaks. But we're going to keep on after the administration over something that has not been shown to have been a crime, and for which no crime is even imaginable?

  Graves resigned in March to return to private legal practice. Marino kept his job as the chief federal prosecutor in central and eastern Pennsylvania.

  Aha! The old "purge", Bush-style. The Philadelphia Gulag. The White-shoe Archipelago. Some kinda purge...

  Graves said Friday he was surprised to learn that he had been considered a possible target for dismissal, but he expressed relief that he was no longer with the Justice Department.

  "The current environment at the department can only be described as toxic. ... What is going on now in D.C. is a three-ring circus, and I don't want anything to do with it," he told The Kansas City Star.

  Okay, and with that kind of loyalty to the administration, this is the kind of guy they should be keeping as their US Attorney?

  Marino didn't respond to requests for comment Friday.

  Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse declined to discuss any of the redacted names. He said the Justice Department withheld the names of prosecutors who had been considered for possible dismissal to protect their reputations and "their ability to function effectively as U.S. attorneys or professionals in other roles."

  McClatchy previously identified two other prosecutors who were dropped from the final list: former U.S. Attorney Thomas Heffelfinger of Minneapolis and U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic of Milwaukee. Heffelfinger resigned in February to go into private legal practice. Biskupic remains at his federal post in Wisconsin.

  It's not clear why any of the four prosecutors who were dropped from the list were initially targeted or what led to their reprieves. Biskupic and Heffelfinger have said that they were unaware that they were at risk of losing their jobs.

  Wow, what a toxic, fearful atmosphere. They were "unaware."

  The administration has declined to disclose the full list of U.S. attorneys who had been considered possible targets for dismissal, but redacted documents that the administration released to Congress left no doubt that other prosecutors had been targeted.

  The names of three possible targets were edited out of a Jan. 9, 2006, internal Justice Department e-mail, leaving blank spaces on a list that included four prosecutors who were later forced out. But some congressional investigators were allowed to review unedited department documents.

  Well now there is a policy that needs to be reviewed. Because apparently, when you let "some congressional investigators" review documents, they turn them into McClatchey news stories.

  I say the one clear investigation that needs to be undertaken is to find the "senior congressional aides" who fed this story, anonymously, because they "were not authorized" to say what they did.

  In Missouri, a traditional battleground state, Graves won good reviews from law enforcement officials and local prosecutors before he announced his decision to step down. The Bush appointee came under fire from Missouri Democrats in 2005 when Republican Gov. Matt Blunt awarded a $2.6 million no-bid contract to Graves' wife, Tracy, allowing her to run a state motor vehicle fee office.

  The family connection to Blunt became a problem for Graves when the governor was caught in a corruption investigation involving state contracts. Graves recused himself, and Cummins, the top federal prosecutor in neighboring Arkansas, took over. He ultimately dropped the case without issuing any indictments.

  Graves was replaced by an interim prosecutor until U.S. Attorney John Wood, a distant cousin of Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., took the job in April.

  In Pennsylvania, Marino had considered stepping down earlier this year to run for his old job as a state district attorney in Lycoming County. He decided against it and continues to serve as a federal prosecutor.

  Sheeesh! And this is a hot story at Salon?

  Permalink Sunday, April 29, 2007 07:28 PM