
Pressure Builds Over Gonzales, Rove
Michael Isikoff, Richard Wolffe And Evan Thomas
Last week Gonzales's bland, what-me-worry? smile seemed to fade. He appeared slightly forlorn as he answered hostile questions from reporters at a hastily called press conference. He was asked about the role of the White House in firing a group of U.S. attorneys. "As we can all imagine," he began, "in an organization of 110,000 people, I am not aware of every bit of information that passes through the halls of the Department of Justice ..." He was aware, he said, that there was "a request from the White House as to the possibility of replacing all the U.S. attorneys. That was immediately rejected by me." The impression was that Gonzales was merely responding to the ill-considered scheme of his successor as White House counsel (Harriet Miers); that he, personally, had not been in the loop for a series of controversial decisions that have set off a congressional brouhaha over the dismissal of one U.S. attorney in the summer of 2006 and seven more in December.
Two days after that presser, however, the White House turned over newly discovered e-mails showing that Gonzales, while he was still on the job at the White House in January 2005, had "briefly" discussed the idea of firing U.S. attorneys. (A Justice Department spokeswoman said Gonzales had "no recollection" of that.) The e-mails showed that Kyle Sampson, then a top aide to Attorney General John Ashcroft and later Gonzales's chief of staff, talked about the possible purge of "15-20 percent" of the U.S. attorney corps deemed not to be "loyal Bushies." The e-mails also showed that Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, had "stopped by" to ask a White House lawyer "how we planned to proceed regarding US Attorneys, whether we are going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc." Sampson warned that firing all the U.S. attorneys could cause political problems. "That said," Sampson wrote, "if Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, then so do I."
The e-mails inflamed lawmakers who have long felt misled or ignored by the Bush White House. At least two Republicans have publicly demanded Gonzales's firing or resignation. And Democrats who now control Congress want to know more about Rove and other White House officials. At the time Rove was asking questions, he was himself under investigation by a U.S. attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the Valerie Plame leak case. (Last week Rove dismissed the controversy over his role in firing the U.S. attorneys as "a lot of politics.")
The controversy was in some ways Beltway political theater. Appointed for four-year terms, U.S. attorneys serve "at the pleasure of the president," but their loyalties have long been mixed. These high-profile prosecutors are sometimes protégés of U.S. senators and routinely have their own political ambitions and law-enforcement agendas. Tension between independent-minded U.S. attorneys and their nominal bosses at the Justice Department is the norm. Presidents are within their rights to remove prosecutors deemed to be poor performers or political mavericks.
But in two or three cases, the Bush administration may have gone over the line. In New Mexico the administration canned David Iglesias, a clean-cut former Navy lawyer who had been the model for the Tom Cruise character in the movie "A Few Good Men." Iglesias has told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was getting political pressure from lawmakers to indict Democrats in a local corruption case before the November elections. In Washington state, the ousted U.S. attorney, John McKay, has said that he took heat from local Republicans for failing to bring voter-fraud charges in a deadlocked gubernatorial race.
As Congress probes deeper, real crimes, like obstruction of justice, may be exposed. But for now, the scandal is perhaps best understood as the late-term agonies of an unpopular president - made more poignant by the possibility that President Bush will have to dump Gonzales, one of his oldest friends in politics. And if nothing else, the flap is one more instance of administration bumbling.
Judging from the e-mails released last week, the White House knew a backlash was coming. In December, as the Justice Department was preparing to sack seven U.S. attorneys, Gonzales's chief of staff Sampson e-mailed Harriet Miers, "Prepare to Withstand Political Upheaval." Sampson warned that "U.S. attorneys desiring to save their jobs (aided by their allies in the political arena as well as the Justice Department community) likely will make efforts to preserve themselves in office. We should expect those efforts to be strenuous."
The message to be careful apparently did not sink in. Or perhaps, after six years of a Republican-controlled Congress, the Bush White House thought it could be highhanded with newly elected Democratic congressional leaders. In hindsight, the controversy might have been muted by a more straightforward approach to Congress.
Instead, a pair of senior Justice officials gave accounts to lawmakers that were, at best, incomplete. At a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, William Moschella, a top aide to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, vigorously defended the firings of the U.S. attorneys as a purely managerial move that had originated within the Justice Department. He said nothing about any nudging from the White House. McNulty had earlier given similar testimony, saying the attorneys had been let go for "job performance" reasons, an assertion that infuriated the fired prosecutors. But the two Justice officials have told colleagues that when they saw the e-mail accounts showing the attorney-purge idea had originated in the White House, they were surprised and appalled. "I felt sick," Moschella told NEWSWEEK. "I basically saw my professional life flash before my eyes." Moschella and McNulty blamed Sampson. The attorney general's chief of staff had sat in as they prepped for their testimony and "never said a word," according to a Justice Department official who wished to remain anonymous discussing a private meeting. Sampson resigned last week. His lawyer, Brad Berenson, says Sampson believed he had "let the attorney general down," but that other senior Justice officials knew about White House involvement. "Kyle did not mislead anyone," the lawyer said.
The conflicting accounts have spurred congressional investigators to cry cover-up. Democrats are now pushing to get White House officials, especially Rove, on the witness stand. The White House will probably argue that it would set a bad precedent to allow congressmen to grill the president's personal advisers and rummage through their files. But since the White House has already started releasing confidential e-mails, it will have more difficulty making the familiar case for Executive Privilege.
The man chosen by the president to handle this delicate task - Fred Fielding, who replaced Miers as White House counsel last month - has plenty of experience. He was a young White House lawyer during Watergate in the Nixon administration and counsel to President Reagan during the Iran-contra scandal. Fielding, 67, is regarded as a savvy lawyer who believes in getting out ahead of a scandal. Fielding is also seen as a Washington establishment figure brought in to rescue Bush from the mistakes of his old Texas cronies, Rove, Miers and Gonzales.
One of Fielding's tougher tasks may be to push out Gonzales. It is doubtful that Bush himself will have the stomach for it. (According to the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, voters are evenly divided: about a third think Gonzales should resign, a third say he should stay on and a third are undecided.) As governor of Texas, Bush appointed Gonzales to be his counsel and then elevated him to become Texas secretary of State and then justice of the state Supreme Court. Bush sees Gonzales as a classic American success story, the son of Mexican immigrants who overcame childhood poverty. The president is personally close to Gonzales and his family. And he owes Gonzales a debt of gratitude: in 1996, Gonzales pulled off a skillful courtroom maneuver to allow Bush to escape jury duty in a drunken-driving case. Bush's lawyer made the clever argument that the governor had a conflict of interest, since he might be called on one day to pardon the defendant (a dancer at a local strip club). Had Bush gone through the normal jury voir dire, he might have had to disclose a 1976 DUI arrest, thereby jeopardizing his presidential ambitions.
There is one more catch to shoving out Gonzales: finding a replacement who can be confirmed by the Democratic-controlled Senate may be difficult. A former senior White House aide who is knowledgeable about current thinking inside the White House (but did not wish to be quoted discussing it) says that one of the few possible contenders is Bill Barr, who was attorney general in the Bush 41 administration. But any contender would have to want the job - in the last two years of a weakened administration - and President Bush can be touchy about any suggestion that he needs to be rescued by his father's former aides.
Recently, a trio of senators - Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy; Arlen Specter, the senior Republican on the committee, and Democrat Charles Schumer - sat down with Gonzales in his wood-paneled conference room to discuss the firings of the U.S. attorneys. Gonzales was initially combative and defensive. "Why do I have to prove anything to you?" he demanded at one point, according to a source who was in the room but does not wish to be identified revealing a private conversation. He insisted that only poor performers had been fired. "Everyone was in the bottom tier," he said. "Everyone?" asked Schumer. What about David Iglesias of New Mexico? (The department's internal evaluations had given Iglesias glowing marks.) Gonzales hesitated. "I believe so," he said, but he seemed uncertain. As the meeting was breaking up, Gonzales suddenly switched tacks and seemed to want to be cooperative. "How can we make this better?" he asked. "What can we do?" According to this source, the attorney general seemed to some in the room to be genuinely befuddled.