The beleagured Justice Department is in no position to be withholding 171 documents from Congress, which it revealed last night. Its stated reason for withholding the documents is because they involve "congressional and media inquiries" about the U.S. Attorney purge. But it is because of media and congressional inquiries (started here at Kos and in other sections of the blogosphere) that the scandal came to light. Surprise, surprise, these 171 documents include e-mails about hotly-contested issues in the scandal like "Discussion re: Sen. Pryor meeting with AG re: [Rove's top aide] Griffin's candidacy for USA" and "Request for information from Sen. Ensign re: dismissal of Bogden."
To see the list of withheld documents and their description: http://hosted.ap.org/...
The Justice Department sent a letter last night to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees , providing a list of 171 documents it is withholding from Congress because the documents involve "congressional and media inquiries" about the purge of U.S. Attorneys. (To see the list of withheld documents, go to .http://hosted.ap.org/...). The documents really concern damage control strategy.
Here's one of my favorites: "Notifying FBI of Union-Tribune article re: Lam's resignation." Now why would the Justice Department refer a newspaper article to the FBI? Because someone leaked, as evidenced by the subject matter of another e-mail, "Discussion re: press leak re: Lam resignation". This Administration hates leakers, something to which I can personally attest because of the way I was punished unmercifully (criminal investigation, referred to state bars, put on "no-fly" list) for leaking "missing" Justice Department e-mails to Newsweek in the case of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. (Articles verifying this can be found at http://www.patriotictruthteller.net).
The Justice Department has no shame considering 1) some of the most critical e-mails on "gwb43.com" accounts are missing, 2) this scandal blew wide open thanks to "congressional and media inquiries," 3) these 171 documents include one of the more controversial e-mails from Gonzales' former chief-of-staff Kyle Sampson about a disputed/"can't recall"/"do not remember" meeting in December between Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) (Pryor said Gonzales lied to him by reassuring that Justice had no plans to circumvent Senate confirmation for the proposed new U.S. Attorney, Rove's buddy Tim Griffin, to replace Bud Cummins), 4) the 171 documents show that senior DOJ officials spent a great deal of time on orchestrated damage control, and 5) even the description of these e-mails indicate incriminating information.
There is no "embarassment privilege" for withholding this documents. They were deliberately not included in the 6,000-page document dump a few weeks ago. Yes, I have a bee in my bonnet about selectively withheld and "missing" e-mail within the DOJ, , but I also have an objective understanding of valid reasons to withhold documents from Congress, and the stemming-the-blood-flood is not one of them.