All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Robert Hendin is a CBS News producer in Washington who covers the Department of Justice.

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The flight to Guantanamo Bay is in a word, long. Sitting side by side in web seats in the middle of a C-130 cargo plane for more than five hours was an adventure in itself. After arriving and getting an ID badge, the group of 60 or so journalists boarded buses, which were then driven to a ferry for a short ride across the bay.

The bay itself is beautiful. Rolling hills frame the clear blue waters on all sides. Guard posts and American flags dot the landscape. After arriving at the other side of the base, we made our way to an old airplane hangar that is serving as the media center.

From here, most of us will watch tomorrow’s historic hearing. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men will be formally charged with the conspiracy of 9/11 – that they conceived it, planned it, trained the hijackers, helped the 19 hijackers getting into the United States and sent them money to carry our the attacks that killed 2,973 people. They could face the death penalty.

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Robert Hendin is a CBS News producer in Washington who covers the Department of Justice.

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The flight to Guantanamo Bay is in a word, long. Sitting side by side in web seats in the middle of a C-130 cargo plane for more than five hours was an adventure in itself. After arriving and getting an ID badge, the group of 60 or so journalists boarded buses, which were then driven to a ferry for a short ride across the bay.

The bay itself is beautiful. Rolling hills frame the clear blue waters on all sides. Guard posts and American flags dot the landscape. After arriving at the other side of the base, we made our way to an old airplane hangar that is serving as the media center.

From here, most of us will watch tomorrow’s historic hearing. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men will be formally charged with the conspiracy of 9/11 – that they conceived it, planned it, trained the hijackers, helped the 19 hijackers getting into the United States and sent them money to carry our the attacks that killed 2,973 people. They could face the death penalty.

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Stephanie Lambidakis is a CBS News producer based in Washington.

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Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his deputy Paul McNulty held a party today to celebrate the accomplishments of the Corporate Fraud Task Force -- which in the five years since its creation, has racked up an impressive record: 1,236 fraud convictions including guilty verdicts and stiff prison terms for 214 CEOs. For several years, it seemed like one continuous perp walk. There was the parade of Enron execs in handcuffs, Martha Stewart with a $10,000 Hermes purse on her courthouse arm, and "telecom Cowboy" Bernie Ebbers, whose 11-Billion dollar fraud at WorldCom left pensioners penniless.

While there is no let-up in the corporate fraud crackdown, there was an unmistakable air of back-patting in the stately Great Hall today. Gonzales presented the head of the Corporate Fraud Task Force, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, with an actual medal. Then there was a reception, which by the brown-bag standards of the federal workforce, seemed downright lavish. This was a fully-catered affair with waiters in black tie and chafing dishes filled with giant shrimp, smoked salmon in puff pastry, and scallops wrapped in bacon. The staple of Justice Department functions, the pink punch was replaced by elegant glasses of iced tea and refreshing lemonade.

It was the kind of event that a Bernie Ebbers or Martha Stewart would instantly feel at home attending. McNulty's office spent several thousand dollars on the reception -- this in addition to the costs incurred with flying United States Attorneys to Washington to bask in the glow of the five year anniversary. This comes at a time when US Attorneys all across the country are begging for more resources and are being told money is too tight. Sure, this wasn't a $2-million dollar toga party thrown by now-imprisoned Tyco chief Dennis Kozlowski, but in a department that has cracked down on corporate excess, the sight of officials holding china piled high with hors d'oeuvres during the middle of a workday seemed excessive in its own way.

Stephanie Lambidakis is a CBS News producer based in Washington.

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Even though the controversy over the firings of the U.S. Attorneys has cooled, senior Justice Department officials are still bailing out.

Richard Hertling, the Acting chief of the Office of Legislative Affairs, has been responsible for communicating with lawmakers about the investigation and sending the thousands of pages of documents to the Hill. Hertling leaves the Department this Friday to work for Fred Thompson's as-yet unofficial presidential campaign. Hertling's an investigations' veteran going back to his days as deputy spokesman for Thompson during the probe of the Clinton administration's fundraising practices.

Just last week Rachel Brand, a senior policy advisor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, announced her departure. Brand's name surfaced in emails because Gonzales gauged her interest in being the US Attorney in Michigan where Margaret Chiara was getting the axe. No reason was given, but Brand will soon give birth to her first child.

The most-talked-about departure these days, however, involves someone whose name will never surface in a controversial email. Her name is Eloise Parker, and for 30 years until her retirement last week, Mrs. Parker, as she is called, ran the department's store, a kind of mini 7-11 that dispensed snacks and sundries and department memorabilia. During her going-out-of-business sale, the first items to go were the tee-shirts and sweatpants and golf towels bearing the US Attorney logo.

Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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Forgive me for not jumping on the anti-Supreme Court bandwagon when it comes to Tuesday's big employment discrimination case. Yes, I believe the result in the Ledbetter case is absurd — how in the world can an employee be responsible for suing in a timely manner for discrimination if he or she is unaware of the discrimination? But I do not blame the court’s conservative majority for the problem. I blame Congress and the administration-- and you should, too.

The court’s majority did not create out of thin air the rules that say you have to sue within 180 days of the initiation of the discrimination in the workplace (whether you know about it or not). The pro-corporation firm of Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Scalia did not go out of its way to stick it to employees for the benefit of employers (although you'd be forgiven for thinking so given their track records in cases like this).

The justices simply followed the fairly clear reading of the federal laws that applied to the case. And the federal law was enacted by Congress and implemented by the White House through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. If you want to blame someone or something for poor Ms. Ledbetter’s plight, blame the lawmakers and the bureaucrats at the EEOC. Heck, blame the White House itself. But don’t blame the justices.

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Remember the United States Supreme Court? The nine justices who make up our high court and their small cadre of law clerks and other official helpers are falling noticeably behind in their work. There are only six weeks or so of official business left before the 2006-2007 term expires and the world is waiting on about 30 decisions in cases argued since last October. As the great Court watcher Tony Mauro put it: “it’s going to be a busy June.”

Actually, strike that. It is going to be a busy late May.

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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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Only a few short years ago, they both shared a brilliant future- two smart, young, good-looking, seasoned federal prosecutors, tremendously successful and politically connected; shoo-ins for the highest level of public office. And, indeed, they both rocketed to the top of the Justice Department as Deputy Attorney General, one after the other. It was there that their paths diverged.

The first, James B. Comey, served President George W. Bush for about two years, from 2003 to 2005, and then left for private practice with a sterling reputation for fairness and integrity intact. In fact, years after his departure, Comey still is remembered with great reverence by some Justice Department lawyers for his principled stand in the legal war on terror. It was Comey, acting on behalf of a hospitalized John Ashcroft, who famously refused to sign off on the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program because he believed it violated the law. It is Comey whom many Washington insiders believe should be the next U.S. Attorney General should the current one, Alberto Gonzales, finally succumb to political pressure and his own conscience and resign his post.

The second, Paul J. McNulty, served President Bush for about 18 months, from 2005 until yesterday, and leaves the post in disgust if not disgrace. Once himself a high-profile U.S. Attorney, Virginia’s poster child in the legal war on terrorism, McNulty becomes the latest but probably not the last casualty in the still-burning scandal over the dismissal last year of eight—some now say nine—U.S. Attorneys. No matter what his official explanation may be for his decision to get out of Dodge, and no matter what he says from here on in, McNulty now is linked forever with this terrible mess. It will follow him all the rest of his professional days. That is because when it was his turn to stand up for the independence of the Justice Department, McNulty remained seated and kept others from rising as well...

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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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Another week means another round of troubles for the beleaguered Justice Department and its barely-hanging-on chief, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. First came word on Good Friday of the resignation of Monica Goodling, the high-ranking Justice official who helped choreograph the dismissal last year of eight U.S. Attorneys. She is thus no longer under the control of the government and now, theoretically anyway, is free to cut her own deal with Congress if she decides to cooperate with the investigation into the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of the federal prosecutors. Don’t bet on that. But it’s more likely today than one week ago.

Next came word over the weekend of the extraordinary influence at the Justice Department of graduates of a law school called Regent University School of Law, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson. Even if you put the religious angle aside, even if you are comfortable with the idea of federal lawyers having such close ties to religious ideology, it is not exactly a high-water mark for the Department that it is recruiting candidates from a school ranked in the “fourth-tier” of law schools around the country—136th to be exact. Gone, apparently, are the days when the Department sought after and obtained the best and brightest legal minds...

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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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Even before he testified this morning on Capitol Hill, D. Kyle Sampson, the now-deposed chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, was explaining to us in his own words precisely why we all are making too big a deal out of the decision last year by the White House and Justice Department to fire eight U.S. Attorneys. “Politics,” “job performance,” it all amounts to the same thing, Sampson told us, and anyway, he added, since all federal prosecutors serve “at the pleasure of the President” the executive branch never really needs a reason in the first place to fire them at will.

More specifically, Sampson argues that a federal prosecutor's job performance is necessarily determined in part by her political fealty to the administration that appointed her. So, the argument goes, a U.S. Attorney can be deemed to be below certain professional performance standards if that prosecutor is not going along with the administration's political priorities even if she is otherwise doing a great job of helping enforce existing federal laws. This is a devastatingly short-sighted position for any executive branch official to take and the Congress (and the nation's community of lawyers and judges, for that matter) should reject it immediately...

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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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Following a weekend of dramatic disclosures and denials in the expanding controversy over the Justice Department’s firing of eight federal prosecutors, and amid growing Republican unease over the tenure of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Monday’s reasonable question is this: at what point should a president’s longstanding loyalty to an old friend give way to the practical requirements of governance in this time of terror and age of anxiety? Let me be even blunter: At what point should we again expect an attorney general to be coherent and competent instead of merely convenient and a crony to the man he serves?...

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