At Justice: Making A List, Checking It Twice
U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald made the list. Well, not the list because he still has his job as a federal prosecutor in the wake of the controversial firings of eight of his colleagues last December. But a list. The Washington Post reports this morning that Fitzgerald was ranked by Justice Department officials in March 2005 as having "not distinguished" himself at his post. The ranking, the Post reported: "placed Fitzgerald below 'strong U.S. Attorneys . . . who exhibited loyalty' to the administration but above 'weak U.S. Attorneys who . . . chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.,' according to Justice [Department] documents."
Fitzgerald's role as special prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation no doubt gave him some job security back in early 2005. And since the "ranking" his role as lead prosecutor in the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of former White House official I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby no doubt has given him some more. In fact, given what has happened at the Justice Department over the past two years, you could make a decent case that Fitzgerald ought to be the next Attorney General instead of the warmed-over candidates the White House reportedly is considering to replace the hapless Alberto Gonzales.
But I digress. There are two disturbing and disappointing components to this new news about Fitzgerald. First, on the merits, the ranking is preposterous. Fitzgerald, a Bush appointee, is widely perceived by lawyers and judges alike to be one of the best federal prosecutors in the country, if not the best. This view is eloquently made in the Post story by Mary Jo White, who was Fitzgerald's boss when they both worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan. White told the paper that ranking Fitzgerald "`as a middling prosecutor' lacks total credibility across the board… It casts total doubt on the whole process. It's kind of the icing on the cake.'"
Second, this information about Fitzgerald was not included in the thousands of pages of material released late last night by the Justice Department in response to Congressional requests. Instead its contents were leaked to the Post by an anonymous source. So the question they'll be asking around Washington today, and perhaps for quite some time, is this: what else has the Justice Department and the White House chosen on executive privilege grounds to refrain from releasing to the legislative branch and, by extension, to us? You are going to hear that question like a mantra over the next few days.
That's why the ballyhooed disclosures of the material last night is not likely to do much to quell the furor over the dismissal of those prosecutors. To paraphrase former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Congress despite the new material still doesn't know what it doesn't know about the firings—but it does know that it doesn't know all it needs to know. In Washington, that's a recipe for a lot of whining, a lot of posturing, and at least a few more pitched battles to come. As for Fitzgerald? All I can think of is Woody Allen's famous line: "I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to be a member."