U.S. Attorney-purge hearings and the view from peanut gallery

Sampson told the committee in no uncertain terms that Gonzales was involved in the discussions about the firings, despite Gonzales’ prior misleading statements to the media.

But even though Sampson now finds himself in the hot seat over the brewing scandal that is renewing serious questions about Gonzales’ veracity, he almost certainly was not the individual who initiated the policy that prompted the dismissal of the eight U.S. Attorneys.

That does seem to be the million dollar question in all of this: Who was really behind it and why?
A number of pundits following the scandal suspect the purge plan was initiated out of the White House as part of a larger political calculation masterminded by none other than the elusively clever presidential advisor Karl Rove, which is why Congress is loaded for bear on the subpoena front to force Bush’s right-hand man, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and their two deputies to appear in the bright lights of an oversight hearing — despite a presidential threat to force a constitutional showdown over that effort.

But as with most things political, that confrontation is likely to lead nowhere absent the right ammunition to bring the big bear down.

It’s pretty clear Sampson was too much of a bit player in this fiasco to provide the Senate much more than a little bird shot, which ain’t much use against a bear — or even a hunting partner, as Vice President Dick Cheney demonstrated in an earlier White House drama. The other bit player in the spotlight, Gonzales’ former senior counsel and White House liaison Monica Goodling, has already flown the coop by taking the 5th and refusing to testify before Congress.

And the emails that have been provided to Congress by the Bush administration to date about the firing scandal, with their convenient date gap (18 days of missing emails between mid-November and early December) have proven to be more of a source for media speculation than a body of convincing evidence shedding light on the underpinnings of the U.S. Attorney purge.

But then Senators and U.S. Representatives bent on oversight in the true Watergate spirit of the term can prove to be cagy opponents for the perpetrators of a cover-up. After all, ferreting out the truth is more like engaging in a game of chess than a hunting excursion; if played well, each move reduces the options for the opponent until finally the king is placed in checkmate.

In such a game, it is wise to pay attention to all the pieces on the board, even if the current moves are directed at the pawns. With that in mind, it might be worth examining the DOJ’s side of the chessboard with an eye toward identifying more than the usual suspects.

Some more pieces

By now, most folks who read Narco News are well aware of U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, who helped to orchestrate the House of Death cover-up.

On the surface, the 46-year-old Sutton could be dismissed as just another one of the 93 U.S. Attorneys who might be deemed potential victims of the next purge.

But that would be a serious miscalculation of this chess piece’s power in this game.

Sutton is, in fact, a rising star in the Bush machine with close ties to both Gonzales and the president. The former Texas Longhorns left-fielder has been at home for years playing in right field for the Bush team.  During Bush’s reign in Texas, Sutton served as W.’s Criminal Justice Policy Director (while Gonzales served as general counsel and senior advisor to the compassionate conservative governor). When Bush made the move to the White House, Sutton’s fortunes rose as well, leading to his appointment to the U.S. Attorney’s post for the Western District of Texas — after a stint as an associated deputy attorney general with the Department of Justice (DOJ).

So Sutton has a high level of job security, despite his role in the House of Death cover-up and the recent backlash against him by conservative causes due to his over-zealous prosecution of two Border Patrol agents who shot a drug smuggler in the butt cheek.

And if you doubt that, a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle should alleviate that lack of faith.

From the Chronicle story:

Gonzales and Bush seem much more committed to keeping on their team U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton. It was his office that prosecuted the case of ex-Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who went to prison for shooting a drug smuggler.

"(Sutton) will continue to have my full support," Gonzales said. "We've known each other for many years. ... Johnny is a law-and-order kind of guy. He does what he thinks is right."

Gonzales is also committed to the case. "What happened here was not Border Patrol agents doing their jobs," he said. "They broke the law. ... This was not just a question of agents shooting at an unarmed man, running away from them, who posed no deadly threat to their safety, but they lied about it. They covered it up. They concealed it. We can't tolerate that."

However, it does seem Gonzales, and his boss Bush, can tolerate Sutton retaliating against the DEA whistleblower who sought to expose the federal government’s complicity in the brutal mass murder of a dozen people at the House of Death in Juarez, Mexico, and a related threat against the lives of a DEA agent and his family in that same Mexican border town. That carnage, and Sutton’s role in the resulting cover-up (assisted by high-level officials at DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security) in their eyes, is deemed justifiable because…. Well, I guess because they have done a good job to date of keeping Congress out of their dirty laundry.

But what does all that have to do with the U.S. Attorney purge?

Well, two other names that show up in the DOJ emails released to date about the purge need to be connected with Gonzales and Sutton in this game of chess.

Think of Bush as the king, Rove as his queen and Gonzales as the bishop of DOJ. Sutton is one of the rooks aspiring to a higher rank; then add Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty as a knight, and Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA) Michael Battle as yet another rook with higher aspirations.

Now, in this struggle for power on their side of the chessboard, Sutton, McNulty and Battle all have a common starting place. Each served (or in the cases of Sutton, still serves) as a U.S. Attorney — Battle as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York from 2002 to May 2005, when he was named director of the EOUSA; McNulty served as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia from 2001 to March 2006, when he was named Deputy Attorney General.

Gonzales, as you recall, moved from his White House Counsel post to Attorney General in February 2005. So it appears Battle and McNulty moved into high-power DOJ insider roles in tandem with Gonzales' assent to the reigns of power at the department. That alone proves nothing, but there is more to this board.

The EOUSA’s mission is to provide the 93 U.S. Attorneys with administrative, policy development and operational support and oversight. Another key role of the EOUSA is to provide the 17-member AGAC with assistance and support. And the AGAC, whose members are hand-picked by the Attorney General, plays a major role in determining policies and programs for the DOJ.

So the AGAC is the board where these pieces all come together — Gonzales, McNulty, Sutton and Battle — over the very issue of U.S. Attorney policies and programs.

And to further cement the connections, Battle, McNulty and Sutton all serve or served on the AGAC. In fact, McNulty was appointed chairman of the committee in May 2005 at the same time Sutton was appointed vice chairman. Sutton was then named by Gonzales to replace McNulty as chair of the committee in March 2006 — and Sutton still holds that position.

In addition, in the emails provided by DOJ to Congress concerning the U.S. Attorney purge, the names Battle, Sutton and McNulty appear more than a few times in the context of being in the know about the plan to fire the eight U.S. Attorneys.

So is it possible that these Gonzales coattail huggers and Bush administration insiders have no clue about the answer to the big question in this scandal: Who was really behind it and why?

(And, yes, McNulty already did appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on this matter in February, but can we really buy his claim that he misinformed the committee about crucial aspects of the purge because he was misled by the underlings on his staff? That tactic is not all that dissimilar from the word-mincing Gonzales is now employing to slither away from statements he made to the press claiming he was not briefed about the purge — a claim now shown to be lacking in veracity by the DOJ emails. But remember, in Gonzales' case, it's not a crime to lie to the press.)

Samson and Goodling are only pawns in this game. It seems if Congress really wants to probe deeper into this scandal, to outmaneuver Queen Rove, they might want to summon Sutton and Battle to an oversight hearing to clear the air on what they knew and when they knew it — and then run McNulty through the ringer one more time.

If this was my chess game, that would be my next move to set up checkmate.

But then I’m just watching this game from the peanut gallery, wondering why our elected leaders are still pursuing the pawns in the U.S. Attorney purge as opposed to striking at the major pieces by holding Gonzales, Sutton and other co-conspirators at DOJ and Homeland Security accountable for their complicity in the House of Death mass murder.

I guess it’s because engaging in political theater is almost always more entertaining, and less threatening, than confronting grim reality.