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The White House under Investigation
// Attorney general may get fired for political firings
There is a storm brewing around the White House for plans to purge the justice system of more than a hundred U.S. attorneys that the president had lost confidence in. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove are at the center of the scandal. Even though the White House is trying to downplay the situation, it has severely undermined Gonzales's standing and shaken the White House's position again. Kommersant Washington correspondent Dmitry Sidorov has the details.
It became known last week that, two years ago, the Bush administration made a blacklist of 101 U.S. attorneys to be replaced by more loyal supporters of the Republican Party. The White House's problems began after Democrats in Congress got hold of 25 pages of e-mail, including some from Gonzales and Rove, detailing their efforts to realize an administration plan to purge the ranks of U.S. attorneys. Those efforts were not fully successful. Of the 101 attorneys marked for elimination, only eight, one several months ago and seven in December, were fired. Eight dismissals are already a scandal, however. No explanation was given for their removal and they were warned not to create a fuss. Those phone calls from Gonzales's office were taken by the attorneys as intimidation, as the Democrats have since learned.
Gonzales tried to make peace with the former attorneys by expressing regret at the manner in which they were dismissed. His efforts were insufficient as Democrats turned their attention to them. The Democrats have made it clear that Gonzales, who has additional problems in connection with illegal FBI invasion of privacy, is not their only target. Rove is in their sights as well. Leaders of the Democratic Congressional majority that Rove should be the subject of Congressional hearings.
Observers say that there is no chance that the White House will agree to have Rove questioned. It has stated that it will cooperate with the investigation, but only by providing the documents it considers necessary for it. “Clinton replaced all 93 when he took office. We've appointed 128. Clinton did 123. Because seven were [replaced] all at once, people wanted to play politics with it,” Rove huffed. The replacement of U.S. attorneys is the dream of every president. Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to replace them is 1937 also caused loud protest. A Kommersant source in the Congress commented that “the demand that Karl Rove give evidence before Congress is a purely political gesture, since everyone understands that he did not break any laws.”
Gonzales is in a less secure position, however. When the news broke about the U.S. attorneys, few congressmen called for his resignation, but the tide turned against him when it was discovered that the former White House legal advisor made the suggestion to fire the attorneys before he was even confirmed by Congress in February 2005. Now he is seen as using his former office for illegal political games. The resignation of his chief of staff Kyle Sampson last week failed to take pressure off Gonzales, although the White House clearly intended that. Observers say that, after the departure of defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld last year, no one's job in the administration is off limits.
Dmitry Sidorov
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 19, 2007
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