New E-Mails Shed Light On Firings

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales clung to his job as documents his Justice Department sent to Congress spelled out fears in the Bush administration that the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys might not stand up to scrutiny.

Particularly worrisome, according to some references in the 3,000 pages of e-mails and other material released late Monday, was the prospect of former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins testifying before Congress.

"I don't think he should," Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, wrote in a Feb. 1 e-mail. "How would he answer: Did you resign voluntarily? Who told you? What did they say?"

Cummins was relieved as U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Ark., and replaced by Tim Griffin, a former assistant to top White House aide Karl Rove.

The e-mails show Gonzales to be "out of the loop," reports CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante.

Republican officials – at the request of the White House – have reportedly begun interviewing candidates to succeed Gonzales.

According to CBS News partner Politico.com, the candidates being considered by administration officials to replace Gonzales include White House anti-terrorism coordinator Frances Townsend, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former Solicitor General Ted Olson, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein, federal appeals judge Laurence Silberman, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox and PepsiCo attorney Larry Thompson, who was the government's highest ranking black law enforcement official when he was deputy attorney general during Mr. Bush's first term.

Republican sources involved in the search told Politico.com's chief political correspondent Mike Allen that it may come down to who will
take the job and who can be confirmed.

Asked if Gonzales had contained the political damage from the firing of eight federal prosecutors, White House spokesman Tony Snow said Monday, "I don't know." Snow declined to predict how long Gonzales would stay in his job but reiterated President Bush's support of him.

"No one's prophetic enough to know what the next 21 months hold," Snow said. "We hope he stays."

CBS News Justice Department producer Stephanie Lambidakis reported that as the documents were being sent to Capitol Hill, the Justice Department released to the media a very small set of documents they say help illustrate that the firings were not for any kind of political purpose.

Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman who is also a lawyer, describes the release of the documents as a "virtually unprecedented step" and stresses that the "Department did not remove the U.S. Attorneys for improper reasons, such as to prevent or retaliate for a particular prosecution in a public corruption matter."

According to CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen, "There is no "smoking gun" defense here for the White House or the Justice Department.

"I am not sure that emails with the words "US ATTORNEY PLAN" in the subject header are going to make people feel a lot better about how the firings of the US Attorneys went down last December," Cohen said.

In his e-mail to colleagues, Sampson listed more questions that Cummins might have to answer if he were to testify to Congress: "Did you ever talk to Tim Griffin about his becoming U.S. attorney? What did Griffin say? Did Griffin ever talk about being AG appointed and avoiding Senate confirmation? Were you asked to resign because you were underperforming? If not, then why?"

The documents that Congress will focus on in the coming days show that Gonzales was unhappy with how Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty explained the firings to the Senate Judiciary Committee in early February.

"The Attorney General is extremely upset with the stories on the US Attys this morning," Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse, who was traveling with Gonzales in South America at the time, wrote in a Feb. 7 e-mail. "He also thought some of the DAG's statements were inaccurate."

In a statement Monday night, Roehrkasse said he was referring to Gonzales' concerns over the firing of Bud Cummins in Little Rock, who he believed was dismissed because of performance issues. At the hearing, McNulty indicated Cummins was being replaced by a political ally.

Meanwhile, White house counsel Fred Fielding will be on Capitol Hill
Tuesday to continue working on a compromise to prevent testimony from Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers. But, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., insists they must appear under oath, Plante reports.

Neither of the two most senior Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are stepping forward to endorse Gonzales, but likewise are not calling for his ouster. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said he will reserve judgment until he gets all the facts. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah has not given interviews on the subject, his spokesman said.

"The problem now for the Judiciary Committees is that their members now are going to have to evaluate these documents knowing from the Justice Department itself that the information, the evidence is not complete, and that probably the most important and relevant information is still hidden behind executive privilege. That's why this controversy will not likely end with this document dump," Cohen said.

Among the e-mails released Monday was one McNulty received on Feb. 1 from Margaret Chiara, the U.S. attorney in Grand Rapids, Mich.

"Why have I been asked to resign?" she asked.

Early this month, she wrote McNulty again, saying that "I respectfully request that you reconsider the rationale of poor performance as the basis for my dismissal. It is in our mutual interest to retract this erroneous explanation."

She added: "Politics may not be a pleasant reason but the truth is compelling."

Chiara asked McNulty to "endorse or otherwise encourage my selection" as assistant director at the Justice Department's National Advocacy Center, which trains federal, state and local prosecutors.

In one uncomfortable exchange with Chiara, McNulty aide Mike Elston said, "our only choice is to continue to be truthful about this entire matter."

"The word performance obviously has not set well with you and your colleagues," Elston wrote. "By that word we only meant to convey that there were issues about policy, priorities and management/leadership that we felt were important to the Department's effectiveness."

The e-mails provide rich detail on what got some of the U.S. attorneys in trouble with their overseers in Washington.

John McKay, the prosecutor based in Seattle, circulated an Aug. 30, 2006, letter to McNulty that blasted the Justice Department for delays in creating a database allowing law enforcement to share information on terror cases. The letter was sent to at least some U.S. attorneys.

In an e-mail to McNulty, Chuck Rosenberg, the prosecutor based in Alexandria, Va., said that other U.S. attorneys "are chagrined and embarrassed" over McKay's letter and "are probably happy to let him take the heat."

In the run-up to the firings, McNulty questioned the dismissal of U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden in Nevada. 'I'm a little skittish about Bogden," McNulty wrote in a Dec. 7 e-mail to Sampson. "He has been with DOJ since 1990 and, at age 50, has never had a job outside government."

Still, McNulty concluded: "I'll admit have not looked at his district's performance. Sorry to be raising this again/now; it was just on my mind last night and this morning."

A report in the Washington Post – quoting an aide to a Nevada GOP senator – says Bogden is now talking to the Justice Department about the possibility of being hired for a new job.