Now that, thanks to Henry Waxman, a number of emails and other documents that were passed around the Bush White House regarding the dismissed attorneys are available for review, there's one odd case that I noticed and wanted to bring to the DKos community's attention.
If you go through the documents, available here, you'll find lots of chatter and lots of names blotted out, but if you pay a little closer attention, you start to notice a few other things.
One such thing is Kevin Ryan, now former US Attorney from the Northern California District, and how his name suddenly appeared on the list to dismiss. Follow me below the fold to see how this story unfolds...
All the names of those who we do not know were being considered for dismissal have been blotted out, leaving only the names of those we know have been asked to leave. On a document titled "Plan for Replacing Certain United States Attorneys," dated November 15, 2006, Step One lists the following US Attorneys:
Paul Charlton
Carol Lam
Margaret Chiara
Dan Bogden
John McKay
David Iglesias
Notice who's missing?
The next time the same document appears online, a handwritten note appears at the top which states "Created 11-7-06; Modified 12-4-06." And the list of US Attorneys now includes, you guessed it, Kevin Ryan.
So, two questions come to my mind.
(1) Anyone remember what happened on 11-7-06? I do. We took back the House and Senate.
(2) What happened between 11-7-06 and 12-4-06 that caused Kevin Ryan to be added to the list?
Regarding Question 1, I think the obvious inference is that all of what we're seeing now with this set of instructions created on election day indicates that there were political motives. Remember how Donald Rumsfeld was ditched the day after the election? Yeah, nothing to see here. Move along.
Regarding Question 2, I've done a little research, and you might be interested to see what might very well be the reason for Ryan's dismissal.
Here's an article, dated Nov. 30, 2006, from the San Francisco Chronicle, which quotes Kevin Ryan on his digging into the stock-option backdating story:
Kevin Ryan, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California who in July created a task force to pursue potential criminal charges against companies embroiled in the stock option backdating scandal, told a securities litigation conference on Thursday that the way a company responds to such allegations could be crucial to whether it will be indicted.
According to the Associated Press, Ryan said prosecutors would "look at whether the corporation has impeded the investigation while purporting to cooperate."
Ryan has said in the past that he would rely on the Thompson memo, written after the scandals involving Enron Corp. and WorldCom Corp. by former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, which directs prosecutors to consider whether a company cooperates with an investigation.
Ever heard of the Thompson Memo? It's a controversial document that the Department of Justice re-wrote only weeks after Kevin Ryan made this statement. In all fairness, DOJ had to re-write the memo, because a Federal Judge had declared in July that the instructions were unconstitutional but, as you'll see in a moment, all DOJ did was require that US Attorneys have to get the O.K. from the Deputy Attorney General when moving forward with the techniques specified for these kinds of investigations.
Back to our timeline... the same day that Kevin Ryan made the statement above, the Washington Post reported that the DOJ was revising the Thompson Memo:
Amid growing criticism over the aggressive tactics used in prosecuting corporate crime, Larry Thompson discussed his eponymously named 2003 memo at a Heritage Foundation conference yesterday. According to the New York Times, Thompson, a former deputy attorney general and now GC of Pepsi, said the instances in which prosecutors should ask companies to waive the attorney-client privilege should be "extremely limited."
Yesterday’s Washington Post reported that the DOJ is in the process of revising the Thompson Memo, and the changes could be unveiled by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty before year-end.
On December 2, an email was sent around which added another person to the list of US Attorneys to dismiss. The name was blocked out of the emails (included in the document dump provided to Waxman's Committee), but the only name added to the list after the December 4 revision was Kevin Ryan.
On December 12, the Wall Street Journal reported on the new McNulty Memo, highlighting the key changes:
The McNulty Memo requires that when federal prosecutors seek privileged attorney-client communications or legal advice from a company, the U.S. Attorney must obtain written approval from the Deputy Attorney General.
The new memorandum also instructs prosecutors that they cannot consider a corporation’s advancement of attorneys’ fees to employees when making a charging decision. An exception is created for those extraordinary instances where the advancement of fees, combined with other significant facts, shows that it was intended to impede the government’s investigation. [emphasis mine]
Paul McNulty is the Deputy Attorney General, a Bush appointee, and was sworn into office on March 17, 2006.
Are you following this timeline? Just making sure.
Kevin Ryan's announcement of leaving his office came in mid-January.
In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle published December 24, 2006, Kevin Ryan fielded the following question and answer:
Q: There is the perception that you are more reluctant to go after some individuals and companies than others. Does the prominence or the importance of a person to an industry or a company factor into the investigation and your decision to take action?
A: I have been in law enforcement my entire career. My position is that if someone has violated the law and there is sufficient evidence to bring forth charges under our guidelines then that's what's going to happen. As long as I'm U.S. attorney, that's what's going to happen. Sometimes we have to make difficult calls involving prominent people, powerful people. [emphasis mine]
It makes you wonder if someone behind the scenes knew something was up and tacked him on to the list just when he was getting ready to take the next step to try and get indictments from the grand jury.
Now we'll never know.
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A related caveat...
I just noticed a comment in one of the emails (page 37 of the PDF) that I thought y'all might find interested, related to the David Iglesias case, which is receiving a lot more of the media attention.
From: Kelley, William K.
Sent: Thursday, December 7, 2006, 10:29AM
To: Sampson, Kyle
Subject:
Domenici's [Chief of Staff] is happy as a clam and will get us [replacement] names forthwith.
Left message for Ensign's [Chief of Staff]. Said I needed to talk to him, but didn't give details.
"happy as a clam"? No doubt. Domenici had only hung up on Iglesias a month and a half before when the US Attorney told him he wouldn't be pressured to expedite indictments on several local Democratic politicians.
And it turns out that Ensign was pissed that his choice for US Attorney, Bogden, got pushed out. Fascinating stuff.