What would we do without Murray Waas? Today he writes,

Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration’s warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.

Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.

My prediction: Although Bush will continue to stubbornly refuse to let him go, I suspect Alberto will be forced to resign eventually.

President Bush’s shutting down of the Justice Department probe was disclosed in July. However, it has not been previously reported that investigators were about to question at least two crucial witnesses and examine documents that might have shed light on Gonzales’s role in authorizing and overseeing the eavesdropping program.

There are a lot of juicy bits in Waas’s report, and you should read it all. But I want to crash ahead to “Hyper Hacks: What’s really wrong with the Bush Justice Department” by Lincoln Caplan at Slate.

The White House and DoJ are now under fire because, in disrespecting the post of U.S. attorney, they appeared to interfere with the independence of that office in a way that’s unprecedented. In the previous quarter-century, according to the Congressional Research Service, no more than five and perhaps only two U.S. attorneys, out of 486 appointed by a president and confirmed by the Senate, have been similarly forced out—in the middle of a presidential term for reasons not related to misconduct. “It would be unprecedented for the Department of Justice or the president to ask for the resignations of United States attorneys during an administration, except in rare instances of misconduct or for other significant cause,” White said when she testified in February about the Bush firings before much was known about them. Previous midterm removals include those of a Reagan U.S. attorney fired and convicted for leaking confidential information and a Clinton appointee who resigned under pressure after he lost a major drug case and allegedly went to an adult club and bit a topless dancer on the arm. This time, the stories are quite different.

Here’s a juicy bit I hadn’t heard before:

A previous low point for the Justice Department came almost two decades ago, during the Reagan years, when the switchboard sometimes answered, “Ninth Street Disillusionment Center” and the graffiti “Resign,” “Leave,” and “Sleaze” were scrawled on walls near the office of Attorney General Ed Meese. In 1988, six prominent Republicans resigned. Led by William Weld, then-head of DoJ’s criminal division and later the governor of Massachusetts, they said they believed that the Justice Department was too impaired to enforce the law. These political appointees left behind a dispirited bureaucracy. But Meese didn’t really tamper with the ranks of career attorneys, who don’t normally come and go with the president, or with the department’s basic apparatus for enforcement, including the U.S. attorneys’ offices.

Now, note this:

In the Bush years, by contrast, senior political appointees have applied a political litmus test to the work of career lawyers and punished them for failing it. William Yeomans, a lawyer in the department’s Civil Rights Division from 1981 until 2005, told part of this story in Legal Affairs, the magazine I edited. Many leading career attorneys—they number in the dozens—have been forced out, removed, or transferred. In a concerted effort by the Bush administration to remake the career staff, Yeomans says, these veterans were replaced by the hirees of political appointees, chosen with no input from the longtime career staff.

Yeomans also recounted the division’s retreat from defending traditional civil rights. Of many examples, the most dramatic involve lack of enforcement of the Voting Rights Act because the beneficiaries would likely support Democratic candidates.

Remember what Paul Krugman wrote awhile back —

Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny.

You should read all of the Caplan article, too. And finally, Sidney Blumenthal writes that “All Roads Lead to Rove.”

Rove was the conduit for Republican political grievances about the U.S. attorneys. He was the fulcrum and the lever. He was the collector of information and the magnet of power. He was the originator, formulator and director. But, initially, according to the administration, like Gonzales, he supposedly knew nothing and did nothing.

Even after the administration alibis had collapsed, the White House trotted out Dan Bartlett, the cool and calm communications director, to engage in a bit of cognitive dissonance. There was no plot, and maybe Rove was involved in the thing that didn’t happen. “You’re trying to connect a lot of dots that aren’t connectible,” Bartlett said, adding, “It wouldn’t be surprising that Karl or other people were receiving these complaints.” Thus the “dots” are invisible and Rove is at their center.

To the extent that the facts are known, Rove keeps surfacing in the middle of the scandal. And it is implausible that Sampson, the latest designated fall guy, was responsible for an elaborate bureaucratic coup d’état. Nor is it credible that Gonzales — or Harriet Miers, who has yet to be heard — saw or heard no evil. Neither is it reasonable that Gonzales or Miers, both once Bush’s personal attorneys in Texas, getting him out of scrapes such as his drunken driving arrest, could be the political geniuses behind the firings. Gonzales’ and Miers’ service is notable for their obedience, lack of originality and eagerness to act as tools. The scheme bears the marks of Rove’s obsessions, methods and sources. His history contains a wealth of precedents in which he manipulated law enforcement for political purposes. And his long-term strategy for permanent Republican control of government depended on remaking the federal government to create his ultimate goal — a one-party state.

Read all of Blumenthal, too.

I predicted above that Alberto Gonzales will be forced to resign eventually. As Blumenthal writes, the White House’s first instinct is always to protect Karl Rove. If it comes to that, Bush will sacrifice Alberto to protect Karl.

I don’t have much to say about the confessions of Khalid Sheik Mohammed that others haven’t already said; see, for example, Kevin Hayden and Taylor Marsh. Given the nature of the, um, inducements to the confessions, we have no way to know how much is true and how much is I’ll tell you anything you want to hear. All we know for certain is that the Bush Administration is, once again, waving the bloody shirt of 9/11 to distract us from its political problems.

The Talking Dog:

No one is denying that KSM, or perhaps all of the other 14 “high value terrorists”, are creeps and bastards, who should be brought to justice. The problem, of course, is that after five years of being tortured, and there is no doubt whatsoever that that is what we have done, that anything KSM, or anyone else who was a guest of our “CIA black prisons” says, is tainted by that torture thing. Indeed, part of KSM’s script was to note that he was subject to torture, “but is still making his confession freely and voluntarily.”

Er, no. In a real court, once you start poisoning the tree, you may as well pour the whole bottle in, because the tree and all its fruit are poisoned. Period. KSM’s confession would not hold up in a real court– which is why the Bush Administration, helped along by its friends Senators Graham and McCain (who will themselves also eventually have to answer to God, if not eventual war crimes tribunals for their role in turning our country back to the early Middle Ages), changed the rules for the kangaroo courts military tribunals at Gitmo to permit such evidence obtained by coercion… or less euphemistically, torture.

Which is neither here, nor there, because it is extraordinarily unlikely that KSM or the other 13 “high value terrorist suspects”TM will ever see even the inside of a kangaroo courtroom; the name of their game, like the Gitmo game in general, is to slowly trickle out the innocent rubes we are holding there (it’s down to 385 now; a few seem to be released each month) until January 2009, when this all becomes some other President’s problem.

It will be interesting to see if there’s much public reaction at all to this news. I think by now all but the most die-hard Bushies realize they are being jerked around.

Zbigniew Brzezinski accuses the Bush Administration of “Manachiean paranoia.”

Just a couple of quick notes on Rudy Giuliani — Rudy’s close buddy and one-time Director of Homeland Security nominee Bernie Kerik rejected a federal plea deal that would have required prison time. Bernie is suspected of mortgage fraud, tax fraud, conspiracy to eavesdrop and making false statements on his application to become U.S. Homeland Security Secretary. See No More Mr. Nice Blog for more.

Rudy also was a conspicuous no show at the International Association of Firefighters convention. Reuters reports:

Giuliani angered the 280,000-member union when he cut off efforts to recover the remains of September 11 victims before all had been found.

IAFF President Harold Schaitberger said Giuliani’s actions were “so egregious” that union leaders debated whether to invite him, although they ultimately did.

[Update: Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, is on Hardball right now saying that Daniel Bogden, the former U.S. attorney for Nevada, had been doing a superb job and should not have been fired. Senator Ensign said Bogden was fired for the “wrong reasons,” but he stopped short of saying Alberto Gonzales had done anything unethical. MSNBC is also saying that Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) is calling for Gonzales to resign.]

This Wall Street Journal editorial claims,

At the time, President Clinton presented the move as something perfectly ordinary: “All those people are routinely replaced,” he told reporters, “and I have not done anything differently.” In fact, the dismissals were unprecedented: Previous Presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, had both retained holdovers from the previous Administration and only replaced them gradually as their tenures expired. This allowed continuity of leadership within the U.S. Attorney offices during the transition.

Guess again. Six years ago today the Department of Justice issued this press release:

WHITE HOUSE AND JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
BEGIN U.S. ATTORNEY TRANSITION

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Continuing the practice of new administrations, President Bush and the Department of Justice have begun the transition process for most of the 93 United States Attorneys.

Attorney General Ashcroft said, “We are committed to making this an orderly transition to ensure effective, professional law enforcement that reflects the President ‘s priorities.”

In January of this year, nearly all presidential appointees from the previous administration offered their resignations. Two Justice Department exceptions were the United States Attorneys and United States Marshals.

Prior to the beginning of this transition process, nearly one-third of the United States Attorneys had already submitted their resignations. The White House and the Department of Justice have begun to schedule transition dates for most of the remaining United States Attorneys to occur prior to June of this year. President Bush will make announcements regarding his nominations to the Senate of new United States Attorneys as that information becomes available. Pending confirmation of the President’s nominees, the Attorney General will make appointments of Interim United States Attorneys for a period of 120 days (28USC546). Upon the expiration of that appointment, the authority rests with the United States District Court (28USC546(d)).

As for Reagan, according to the Associated Press Reagan fired all the sitting U.S. attorneys when he took office in 1981:

When the party in the White House changes hands, it is common for the new president to fire all the sitting U.S. attorneys, as Ronald Reagan did in 1981 and Bill Clinton in 1993.

I don’t have independent corroboration of what the AP says, so I am not going to assume the AP is right and the WSJ is wrong. But, surely, one of them is wrong. And if WSJ is wrong, then somebody should break the news to rightie blogger Macranger, who claims “Never in the history of US Attorney replacements has a President fired all 93 US Attorneys – never.” In the real world, “never” means pretty much every time the White House changes parties.

This afternoon President Bush made a statement about the U.S. attorney scandal —

I do have confidence in Attorney General Al Gonzales. I talked to him this morning, and we talked about his need to go up to Capitol Hill and make it very clear to members in both political parties why the Justice Department made the decisions it made, making very clear about the facts. And he’s right, mistakes were made. And I’m, frankly, not happy about it, because there is a lot of confusion over what really has been a customary practice by the Presidents. U.S. attorneys and others serve at the pleasure of the President. Past administrations have removed U.S. attorneys; they’re right to do so.

Think Progress says, um, no. It is not customary practice to fire attorneys in mid-term.

Mass firings are common when a president takes office. But as current and former administration officials have confirmed, Bush’s purge of well-qualified prosecutors is unprecedented.

See also McClatchy Newspapers.

Mass firings of U.S. attorneys are fairly common when a new president takes office, but not in a second-term administration. Prosecutors are usually appointed for four-year terms, but they are usually allowed to stay on the job if the president who appointed them is re-elected.

Even as they planned mass firings by the Bush White House, Justice Department officials acknowledged it would be unusual for the president to oust his own appointees. Although Bill Clinton ordered the wholesale removal of U.S. attorneys when he took office to remove Republican holdovers, his replacement appointees stayed for his second term.

Ronald Reagan also kept his appointees for his second term.

So, in the real world, “never” is “fairly common.” (Somebody really ought to tell Macranger.)

The WSJ editorial linked above is full of dark hints about Clinton’s interference with a pending indictment of Dan Rostenkowski (who was indicted, anyway) and slithering out of whatever the Clintons were guilty of regarding Whitewater. (How many years and how many million dollars did taxpayers spend investigating the Clintons’ involvement in Whitewater? And how many indictments were brought regarding the Clintons involvement inWhitewater? As I recall, none. Yet the righties still can’t believe the Clintons really weren’t guilty of something regarding Whitewater. Pathetic.)

But if we’re playing “my politician is less guilty than yours,” let’s pretend for a minute that tomorrow we turn up evidence that Bill Clinton really did intend to interfere with the indictment of Dan Rostenkowski. Unless appearances are extremely deceiving, the Bush White House would still be more guilty.

Appearances say Karl Rove and Co. were trying to turn the federal judicial system into a tool for getting Republicans elected and keeping Republicans in office. That’s a lot bigger deal than doing a favor for Dan Rostenkowski.

I say they’re worse.