Gonzales met with aides on firing prosecutors

Gonzales met with aides on firing prosecutors
By David Johnston and Eric Lipton
Copyright by The International; Herald Tribune
Published: March 24, 2007


WASHINGTON: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and senior advisers discussed the plan to remove seven U.S. attorneys at a meeting last Nov. 27, 10 days before the dismissals were carried out, according to a Justice Department calendar entry disclosed Friday.

The previously undisclosed meeting appeared to contradict Gonzales's previous statements about his knowledge of the dismissals. He said at a news conference on March 13 that he had not participated in any discussions about the removals, but knew in general that his aides were working on personnel changes involving U.S. attorneys.

Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman, told reporters on Friday evening that Gonzales's attendance at the hourlong meeting was consistent with his past remarks.

"He tasked his chief of staff to carry this plan forward," Scolinos said. "He did not participate in the selection of the U.S. attorneys to be fired. He did sign off on the final list."

Scolinos said the meeting was in Gonzales's conference room at the Justice Department. The meeting focused on "rollout" of the dismissals, she said, and from available records was not a meeting in which a final target list was determined.

Another department official said that Gonzales did not recall the meeting and that his aides had been unable to determine whether he approved the dismissal plan then.

The meeting took place as Gonzales's aides awaited final White House approval of a detailed dismissal plan that had been drafted by D. Kyle Sampson, Gonzales's chief of staff. His plan was sent to the White House on Nov. 15, according to previously released e-mail. Harriet Miers, the White House counsel at the time, approved Sampson's proposal on Dec. 4, and the dismissals were carried out three days later.

The calendar entry was among more than 280 pages of Justice Department documents released Friday night and immediately provoked further criticism of Gonzales in Congress, where the Senate and House Judiciary Committees have authorized subpoenas for sworn public testimony of presidential aides and senior department officials.

Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat who has led the congressional investigation into the dismissals, said, "If the facts bear out that the attorney general knew much more than he admitted, he simply cannot continue as the attorney general."

Sampson, who played a central role in the dismissals, has agreed to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He resigned this month because of what he later said was a failure to prepare Gonzales for questions about the ousters.

In another development, Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said Friday that the department would begin an internal review of the conduct of lawyers involved in the dismissals. The inquiry will be conducted jointly by the inspector general, Glenn Fine, and the Office of Professional Responsibility, a department watchdog unit.

The dismissals have created the gravest crisis of Gonzales's time in office, with calls for his ouster from Republicans and Democrats, even as President George W. Bush has offered his firm public support. Gonzales has sent reassuring signals to the ranks of prosecutors, but the strength of his support within the Justice Department is difficult to gauge.

Department officials said there had not been an intentional effort to delay the release of the new material. Instead, they said, the e-mail messages were overlooked in past searches of office files and computers. Many, they said, were copies of e-mail that had already been disclosed. The latest batch of documents shows just how completely the department misjudged what the reaction would be to the dismissals.

"I think most of them will resign quietly," said Scolinos, the department's chief spokeswoman, in a Nov. 17 e-mail message, a few weeks before the dismissals. "It's only six U.S. attorneys (there are 94) and they don't get anything out of making it public they were asked to leave in terms of future job prospects. I don't see it as being a national story — especially if it phases in over a few months."

Speaking with reporters on Friday evening, Scolinos said that when she sent that message she had only a fragmentary understanding of the plan to dismiss the prosecutors.

At a news conference this month, Gonzales was repeatedly questioned about the extent of his participation in the ousters. He said he was aware that his staff had been evaluating the performance of different prosecutors, but on several occasions he said that it was not a matter that he had been following closely.

"So far as I knew, my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers," he said. "Where were the districts around the country where we could do better for the people in that district, and that's what I knew."

But describing himself like a chief executive of a major corporation, he said he was not involved in the details of the performance review effort.

"That is in essence what I knew about the process; was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on," he said. "That's basically what I knew as the attorney general."

Reporters expressed disbelief that as the department's top official, he would not be closely monitoring such an important matter, and pressed Gonzales again to describe his involvement in the effort.

"Many decisions are delegated," he said. "We have people who were confirmed by the Senate who, by statute, have been delegated authority to make decisions."

Gonzales then repeated: "I never saw documents. We never had a discussion about where things stood. What I knew was that there was ongoing effort that was led by Mr. Sampson, vetted through the Department of Justice, to ascertain where we could make improvements in U.S. attorney performances around the country."

The latest e-mail shows preparations for the Nov. 27 meeting at 9 a.m. to discuss "U.S. Attorney Appointments."

Department officials said that the participants at the only formal meeting known to have been held to discuss the firings included Gonzales; Sampson; Paul McNulty, the deputy attorney general; Monica Goodling, the department liaison to the White House; William Moschella, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs; and Michael Battle, then head of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys.

Battle has since resigned, and Goodling has taken a temporary leave of absence.