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Monica Goodling's long-awaited testimony may have had less sizzle and pop than I wanted, but there are plenty of questions to explore further --
- Did Deputy AG Paul McNulty willfully obscure in previous testimony the depth of White House involvement in the attorney firings?
- Did AG Alberto Gonzales attempt to suborn Ms. Goodling's testimony?
Next up: Paul McNulty and Rove's former aide Susan Ralston, who provides a White House connection to the Jack Abramoff bribery scandals.
Far as I'm concerned, the real meat here is recovering the Rove emails, and getting Rove before Congress under oath to answer questions about the politicization of DOJ and why he used the GOP email servers for the conduct of official business.
As the naturalist John Muir once observed, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."
Attorneygate - WP: "Goodling Says She 'Crossed the Line'"
.......... - "Officials Describe Interference by Former Gonzales Aide"
.......... - Dana Milbank: "Monica's Own Monica Problem"
.......... - Paul Kane: "Goodling's lawyer told Dems to ask about AG"
.......... - Dan Froomkin: "What Monica Doesn't Know"
.......... - David Iglesias: "On U.S. Attorney Firings, Goodling Testimony"..... - NYT: "Ex-Aide Admits Political Slant in Justice Role"
..... - Truthout: "Goodling Broke Law in Some DOJ Hirings, Testimony Reveals"
.......... - "Former Rove Aide Susan Ralston Seeks Immunity Pact"
..... - OpEd, LAT: David Iglesias (fired US Attorney): "'Cowboy up,' Alberto Gonzales"
-- Dan Damon
Will the top-to-bottom politicization of the Department of Justice under George W. Bush be this administration's undoing?
News cropping up over the weekend set Congress up to put the Bush administration in the center of a classic pincer movement.
On the one hand, we have the continued unraveling of the explanations for the US Attorney FIRINGS --
- Now we learn from Newsweek that Karl Rove was involved in coaching a Gonzales deputy, William Moschella, before his Congressional testimony on the firings. Though a White House meeting to prep Moschella was previously known of, no mention of Rove had been made before last week.
- Further, new details on the firing of the US Attorney in Seattle published in the Seattle Times are casting more doubt on AG Alberto Gonzales' account of the firings.
- Finally, the Boston Globe points out, Bradley Schlozman is emerging as a key player in the firings as part of a Rovian strategy to put political appointees in place and to gin up voter fraud cases ahead of the 2006 elections. Schlozman was sent to Missouri under the sneaked-in provision in the renewed Patriot Act allowing for placement of deputy US Attorneys without Senatorial consent.
On the other hand, there is new evidence that RECRUITMENT and PLACING of attorneys was politically guided --
- Here Schlozman appears to be the nexus of both the firings and hirings, as pointed out by the McClatchy wire service.
- Further, the Boston Globe has shown that about a third of new US Attorney appointments are administration insiders, including 10 top aides to AG Gonzales.
- Conservative Republican appointees like former DOJ attorney Ty Clevenger have told McClatchy that Schlozman advised them to doctor their resumes and resubmit them in an effort to hide conservative affiliations.
Add to this what we already know of Monica Goodling's involvement and the expectation of new and perhaps startling revelations when she testifies before Congress, and we have the makings of an enormous pincer movement.
To which the final pieces would be the recovery by Congress of the missing Rove (and other White House employees') GOP-server based emails and a public appearance by Rove before Congress and under oath.
A much-studied classic example of the pincers or double envelopment tactic is the Battle of the Cowpens during the American Revolution.
The American commander, Brig. Gen. Daniel Morgan, brilliantly exploited his forces' strengths and weaknesses as well as the unique terrain of the Cowpens and the weaknesses of the British opposing force, under Cornwallis' deputy Col. Banastre Tarleton, to wrest a decisive victory.
The victory of the colonists marked a psychological turning point of the war for the Americans, who never looked back after this moment, and a decisive blow to Cornwallis' hopes for victory over the rebels.
Will Congress have the nerve, insightfulness and execution of Morgan, or will it snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and lose in the Cowpens of 2007?
More Attorneygate reading:
-- Dan Damon
You know you're in trouble when your mental energy channels to the New York Times editorial staff.
That was TBM's fate. Upon opening Sunday's Times to the editorial pages, he found the editors also had concluded that Rove and his POLITICAL machinations are at the heart of all things Bush. As well as the BRAIN of all things Bush. And it wasn't an April Fool's joke.
Here is the full text:
Turn over a scandal in Washington these days and the chances are you’ll find Karl Rove. His tracks are everywhere: whether it’s helping to purge United States attorneys, coaching bureaucrats on how to spend taxpayers’ money to promote Republican candidates, hijacking the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for partisan politics, or helping to organize a hit on the character of one of the first people to publicly reveal the twisting of intelligence reports on Iraq.
Whatever the immediate objective, Mr. Rove seems focused on one overarching goal: creating a permanent Republican majority, even if that means politicizing every aspect of the White House and subverting the governmental functions of the executive branch. This is not the Clinton administration’s permanent campaign. The Clinton people had difficulty distinguishing between the spin cycle of a campaign and the tone of governing. That seems quaint compared with the Bush administration’s far more menacing failure to distinguish the Republican Party from the government, or the state itself.
This was, perhaps, the inevitable result of taking the chief operative of a presidential campaign, one famous for his scorched-earth style, and ensconcing him in the White House — not in a political role, but as a key player in the formation of policy. Mr. Rove never had to submit to Senate confirmation hearings. Yet, from the very start, photographs of cabinet meetings showed him in the background, keeping an enforcer’s eye on the proceedings. After his re-election in 2004, President Bush formally put Mr. Rove in charge of all domestic policy.
In that position, as David Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg reported in The Times, Mr. Rove took a lead role in selecting federal judges and the hiring — and firing — of United States attorneys. Mr. Rove’s staff maneuvered to fire the prosecutor in Arkansas and replace him with a Rove protégé, and also seems to have been involved in the firing of a United States attorney in New Mexico who refused to file what he considered to be baseless charges of election fraud against Democrats.
Mr. Rove’s efforts to maintain one-party rule go deep into the government. Last week, we learned about a meeting set up by Mr. Rove’s staff with officials of the General Services Administration that was wildly inappropriate and perhaps illegal. The aim, as outlined by Mr. Rove’s deputy, Scott Jennings, seems to have been to take advantage of the billions of dollars in contracts put out by the agency every year to return Republicans to the majority in Congress in 2008. It included PowerPoint slides on vulnerable House and Senate seats.
This sort of behavior should not be all that surprising. It was not that long ago that the Bush White House embraced the priorities of the Republican governor of Mississippi and virtually ignored the far greater needs of Louisiana’s Democratic governor after Hurricane Katrina.
Mr. Rove retreated a bit from the public eye in the heat of the Lewis Libby trial, but after avoiding indictment, he seems to have regained his confidence. Take a look at YouTube to see his bizarre, humor-challenged gyrations as “MC Rove” at an annual media dinner in Washington the other night.
The investigation of the firings of the United States attorneys seems to be closing in on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who should have been fired weeks ago. But Congress should bring equal scrutiny to the more powerful Mr. Rove. If it does, especially by forcing him to testify in public, it will find that he has been at the vortex of many of the biggest issues they are now investigating.
Editorial, NYT, Sunday 4/1/2007: "The Rovian Era"
-- Dan Damon
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Bull Moose, Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are The Bull Moose, Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
While the mainstream media waited breathlessly over the last few days for the appearance of Kyle Sampson, formerly Alberto Gonzales chief aide, there was a lot of speculation over what role his testimony might play and whether and how soon Gonzales would be, as they say, GONE-zales.
The Bull Moose has always thought, though, that Sampson was merely a lone hoplite and Gonzales just a flunky for Bush's brain -- Karl Rove.
Someone wondered whether Sampson would successfully 'thread the needle' with his testimony. TBM was drawn to the metaphor, probably because as a child his grandmother taught him to use a darning egg to mend his socks, which meant learning how to thread a needle. Threading one is not that easy without one of those little gizmos that cheat, but the reward is that once threaded, one can pull a much thicker thread through.
Hence the image of Sampson making way for Gonzales and others to escape danger.
Sampson failed. In fact, he looked like a sheep being led to slaughter. Remember, many of these Senators have been prosecutors themselves at some point in their careers.
In any event, the BIG CHEESE, as TBM has always held is Karl Rove. And he is the one that needs to be got on the hot seat. (See my "The Monica in Bush's Future" elsewhere.)
In that, I'm with Jim and Teddy.
James Farmer, Jr., the Star-Ledger columnist and Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, that is.
See what they have to say below.
-- Dan Damon, TBM
Rove Role Sampson Testimony
The Firings
Fallout
Politico: "Republicans Fear 2008 Meltdown"
