Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Monday appointed a federal prosecutor to continue an investigation into the dismissals of nine federal prosecutors in 2006 as an internal Justice Department inquiry concluded that political pressure drove the action against at least three of them.
The internal investigators said that the White House’s refusal to cooperate in the high-profile investigation produced significant "gaps" in the understanding of who was to blame and that they did not have enough evidence to justify recommending criminal charges in the affair. Now the task of determining if anyone should be prosecuted will fall to Nora Dannehy, the federal prosecutor in Connecticut.
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The inspector general of the Justice Department and the department's Office of Professional Responsibility has, so far, provided the fullest account of the Bush administration scandal which is accused of politicized the federal justice system by ousting prosecutors considered to be disloyal.
The story of David C. Iglesias, former New Mexico prosecutor, was of particular interest to investigators. As Iglesias says:
....United States attorneys have a long history of being insulated from politics. Although we receive our appointments through the political process (I am a Republican who was recommended by Senator Pete Domenici), we are expected to be apolitical once we are in office. I will never forget John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, telling me during the summer of 2001 that politics should play no role during my tenure. I took that message to heart. Little did I know that I could be fired for not being political.
Politics entered my life with two phone calls that I received last fall, just before the November election. One came from Representative Heather Wilson and the other from Senator Domenici, both Republicans from my state, New Mexico.
Ms. Wilson asked me about sealed indictments pertaining to a politically charged corruption case widely reported in the news media involving local Democrats. Her question instantly put me on guard. Prosecutors may not legally talk about indictments, so I was evasive. Shortly after speaking to Ms. Wilson, I received a call from Senator Domenici at my home. The senator wanted to know whether I was going to file corruption charges — the cases Ms. Wilson had been asking about — before November. When I told him that I didn’t think so, he said, "I am very sorry to hear that," and the line went dead....
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After Wilson and Domenici called on Iglesias to no avail, his name was added to a list of United States attorneys asked to resign.
Iglesias observes that during the process of testimony before congress of fired prosecutors such as Daniel Bogden of Las Vegas; Paul Charlton of Phoenix; H. E. Cummins III of Little Rock, Ark.; Carol Lam of San Diego; and John McKay of Seattle; and Iglesia himself, "a disturbing pattern began to emerge. "Not only had we not been insulated from politics, we had apparently been singled out for political reasons."
Cummings is one of the prosecutors under consideration by the inspector general, along with Todd P. Graves of Missouri:
In Missouri, Todd P. Graves was removed as the United States prosecutor after complaints from the staff of Senator Christopher S. Bond, a Republican, about Mr. Graves’s refusal to intervene in a dispute between Mr. Bond’s staff and Mr. Graves’s brother. And in Arkansas, H. E. Cummins III, the United States attorney, was let go in order to make room for a protégé of Mr. Rove, J. Timothy Griffin.
About 90 people were interviewed in the past 18 months. Three senior administration officials, Karl Rove, Harriet E. Miers and Monica M. Goodling, have refused to be interviewed.
Special Prosecutor Dannehy has, so far, received favorable press:
Federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy has taken on Connecticut's most powerful politicians, sending a governor, a state treasurer and others to prison for corruption. Now the nation's top law enforcement official wants her to pursue possible criminal charges against Republicans involved in the firings of nine U.S. attorneys.
Colleagues and adversaries say she's up to the task.
"No one will outwork her. No one is going to be smarter than her," said Mike Clark, a retired FBI agent who investigated former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland. "No one will conduct the investigation with more integrity than her."
.... Dannehy, a graduate of Harvard Law School who has been with the U.S. attorney's office in Connecticut since 1991, is known for avoiding the media and prefers to let colleagues speak for the record. Dannehy and the U.S. Attorney's office declined comment on her appointment.
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