Congress Releases U.S. Attorney E Mail On Possible Justice Department ‘Retaliation’

Did the BushAdministrationthreaten ‘retaliation’if any of the firedU.S. attorneysspoke out?

Congress Releases U.S. Attorney E-Mail On Possible Justice Department ‘Retaliation’By Cliff Montgomery – Mar. 14th, 2007The recent Washington beltway fallout over the Bush Administration‘s firing of 8 U.S. attorneys–even though most had apparently received glowing job evaluations–is becoming more and more of an embarrassment to the Bush boys.And no wonder. Just as the Senate ethics committee began a preliminary inquiry into a questionable communication by Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) to former federal prosecutor David Iglesias to complain about the pace of his public corruption investigations, Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) acknowledged that she also had contacted Iglesias about the matter.If that sounds improper but possibly benign to you, perhaps you should get an added perspective from this Washington Post quote:”Wilson denied allegations from former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias that she pressured him to speed up a political corruption investigation involving Democrats in the waning days of her tight election campaign last fall.”The telephone calls to Iglesias by the two Republican lawmakers appear to be a breach of congressional ethics rules, which bar contacts with federal agency officials during most active investigations.A change in law does allow Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to appoint “interim prosecutors” for an indefinite period of time; but Democrats counter they believe many, if not most, of the prosecutors were fired for refusing to play Republican power politics.On March 6th, 2007, the Senate Judiciary Committee released the text of a February email written by one of the eight prosecutors. Former U.S. attorney Bud Cummins–who resigned in December and was replaced by Karl Rove assistant Timothy Griffin–sent this Feb. 20th email to five other fired U.S. attorneys after receiving a phone call from the Justice Department following comments he made to The Post for an article printed on Feb. 18th. The paper quoted him as saying:”They’re entitled to make these changes for any reason or no reason or even for an idiotic reason. But if they are trying to suggest that people have inferior performance to hide whatever their true agenda is, that is wrong. They should retract those statements.”We print the text of Cummins’ email below:From: H.E. CumminsSent: Tue 2/20/2007 5:06 PMTo: Dan BogdenPaul K. CharltonCarol LamMcKay, John (Law Adjunct)Subject: on another noteMike Elston from the DAG’s (Deputy Attorney General’s) office called me today. The call was amiable enough, but clearly spurred by the Sunday Post article. The essence of his message was that they feel like they are taking unnecessary flak to avoid trashing each of us specifically or further, but if they feel like any of us intend to continue to offer quotes to the press, or organize behind the scenes congressional pressure, then they would feel forced to somehow pull their gloves off and offer public criticisms to defend their actions more fully. I can’t offer any specific quotes, but that was clearly the message. I was tempted to challenge him and say something movie-like such as “are you threatening ME???”, but instead I kind of shrugged it off and said I didn’t sense that anyone was intending to perpetuate this. He mentioned my quote on Sunday and I didn’t apologize for it, told him it was true and that everyone involved should agree with the truth of my statement, and pointed out to him that I stopped short of calling them liars and merely said that IF they were doing as alleged they should retract. I also made it a point to tell him that all of us have turned down multiple invitations to testify. He reacted quite a bit to the idea of anyone voluntarily testifying and it seemed clear that they would see that as a major escalation of the conflict meriting some kind of unspecified form of retaliation.I don’t personally see this as any big deal and it sounded like the threat of retaliation amounts to a threat that they would make their recent behind doors senate presentation public. I didn’t tell him that I had heard about the details in that presentation and found it to be a pretty weak threat since everyone that heard it apparently thought it was weak.I don’t want to stir you up conflict or overstate the threatening undercurrent in the call, but the message was clearly there and you should be aware before you speak to the press again if you choose to do that. I don’t feel like I am betraying him by reporting this to you because I think that is probably what he wanted me to do. Of course, I would appreciate maximum opsec (operational security) regarding this email and ask that you not forward it or let others read it.Bud