Little Landmines

Big news in the US Attorneys case. The great reporter Murray Waas has uncovered that Abu Gonzales gave Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling the power to hire and fire "most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department." Gonzales really was an absentee figurehead, delegating the responsibility for hiring and firing to two young movement conservative pups who were clearly interested in politicizing the office.

The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level. Department records show that the personnel authority was delegated to the two aides at about the same time they were working with the White House in planning the firings of a dozen U.S. attorneys, eight of whom were, in fact, later dismissed.

A senior executive branch official familiar with the delegation of authority said in an interview that -- as was the case with the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the selection of their replacements -- the two aides intended to work closely with White House political aides and the White House counsel's office in deciding which senior Justice Department officials to dismiss and whom to appoint to their posts. "It was an attempt to make the department more responsive to the political side of the White House and to do it in such a way that people would not know it was going on," the official said.

This would drop little landmines in the Justice Department that would resonate for decades. The Attorney General himself has said he could not keep track of the 100,000 employees who work under him. That was an important nugget of truth, and clearly what the political shop at the White House was counting on. There would be Goodling and Sampson clones subverting the next President on all kinds of issues, particularly (IMO) voting rights issues. They could work that angle for years and not get caught. But the high-profile nature of firing the USAs brought this all crumbling down.

The evidence mounts...