Of course, we still aren't getting the full story. We still don't know who was responsible for the list of U.S. attorneys to fire, what the list-making process entailed, or why exactly the prosecutors were fired. And the fact that neither Gonzales nor Kyle Sampson, his former chief of staff, has given a straight, coherent answer certainly lends itself to the already plausible theory that the idea came from within the White House.
This seems all the more likely when you trace the finger-pointing. Gonzales claimed today that he had "limited involvement" in the task of figuring out who to fire, and largely delegated it to Sampson. Sampson, in his testimony before the same committee a few weeks ago, acknowledged that he "was responsible for organizing and managing the process by which certain U.S. attorneys were asked to resign." This led to an entertaining-slash-infuriating between Sampson and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI):
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: [D]id you keep one file where you kept information related to this project?
MR. SAMPSON: [J]ust as, sort of, a drop file in my lower right hand desk drawer.
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Did somebody else keep it for you?
MR. SAMPSON: No. There really was no file. There really was no documentation of this. It was an aggregation of views and various lists and notes at different points in time. As the process finalized in the fall of 2006, it became a little more formalized, but only in the sense that we were working in the senior leadership of the department to finalize the list.
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: So this was a project you were in charge of, this was a project that lasted for two years, this was a project that would end the careers of eight United States Attorneys, and neither you nor anybody reporting to you kept a specific file in your office about it?
MR. SAMPSON: Senator, I didn't keep a specific file on this issue.
You know, I would just toss stuff in there -- it wasn't like I was doing anything complicated, like analyzing the prosecution records of U.S. attorneys. When I had a chance, I'd jot a note on a napkin and drop it in the drawer. I kept Skittles in there, too!
So if Gonzales claims that this project was mostly Sampson's job, but Sampson didn't really seem to be, you know, doing that job in a meaningful way, then it certainly stands to reason, giving what we know so far about this scandal and about this administration's tendency to consolidate power, that Gonzales and Sampson may have been taking their orders from on high. In other words, the reason they weren't diligently reviewing the U.S. attorneys' records was because they weren't really the ones making the final decisions.
The immediate consensus from everyone who watched the proceedings today was that Gonzales did very poorly and that he has managed to further diminish his reputation. Well, not everyone:
President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General's testimony today. After hours of testimony in which he answered all of the Senators' questions and provided thousands of pages of documents, he again showed that nothing improper occurred. He admitted the matter could have been handled much better, and he apologized for the disruption to the lives of the U.S. Attorneys involved, as well as for the lack of clarity in his initial responses. The Attorney General has the full confidence of the President, and he appreciates the work he is doing at the Department of Justice to help keep our citizens safe from terrorists, our children safe from predators, our government safe from corruption, and our streets free from gang violence.
That's a press release from the White House. Good to know that Gonzales "again" cleared this up. How many times does he have to do that before those annoying Democrats (and Republicans -- props to Messrs. Specter and Coburn [EDIT: the Times just posted a story about this here]) understand that there was nothing untoward in the extremely irregular, almost completely undocumented firings of several well-qualified, highly regarded U.S. attorneys?
What I love is that this is now the second time (at least) that a widespread acknowledgment of incompetence is the best the administration can hope for. That is to say, the best-case scenario for Bush and Rove is that everyone nods and agrees Gonzales and Sampson are terrible at their jobs. There's a parallel between how Gonzales is handling this scandal (or being asked to handle it) and how the administration dealt with the WMD fiasco. In both cases, the guilty parties came at their inquisitors with an aw-shucks, shrugging attitude: "Ugh. I can't believe we handled this in such a silly way! Well, you live and learn." If the focus is not on the possible motives but on the sloppiness of the administration, then the absolute worst that can happen in that certain people lose their jobs. No one will ever figure out who is really pulling the strings, why, and the radical means they're pursuing to fulfill their ends. That's why it makes infinitely more sense for Gonzales to sit up there and take his punishment, for he and Sampson to hem and haw and confuse even themselves, than it does for them to come clean. Looking incompetent is part of the ploy itself.
Hell, you can even add Abu Ghraib to the list of scandals to which this tactic applies. There, it was stupid, careless, angry soldiers inflicting torture. They were the problem, not the government's policy on detainee treatment itself. And what became of that policy? Sure, it was discussed in angry voices by legislators. But was it ever really reformed?
Fall guys left and right.
PS - I forgot to mention this, but it's pretty important: Arlen Specter sounds a lot like Admiral Ackbar.
"IT'S A TRAP!"
1 comment:
When someone makes the "Man, mistakes were made. Their bad." argument, they aren't appealing to effective oversight, and they aren't appealing to a relevant and operational congressional committee, and they aren't appealing to the (apparently nonexistent) channels of oversight and review that are supposed to exist within the executive branch.
They're appealing to the People. Written and organizational power is only power if it is applied and acted upon, but public opinion is omnipresent. The real coup here is that for lack of effective oversight, Cable News somehow became the forum for ensuring adequacy, competence, and ethical conduct in the highest levels of government, a role for which it is grossly unqualified.
Those are the Real Crimes here - not the incompetent bungling of incompetents, but the fact that these incompetent bunglers were placed in positions of authority at all. It's a systemic problem of delegation and review, one that rides all the way up.
Perhaps the most damning bit of that utterly, bafflingly incompetent circus of failure that was Gonzalez's testimony was Whitehouse's chart about the expansion of interconnectedness between the DOJ and the White House - proof positive that this culture of corruption is not native to the DOJ, as it was not native to the military command, as it was not born and bred in Abu Ghraib.
All roads of inquiry lead to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and I suspect Senator Leahy and Representative Waxman intend to make a visit.
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