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 News from Around the Americas | May 2007 
US Justice Department No. 2 Resigns
 Dan Eggen - Washington Post
| | The resignation of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez's right-hand man Paul McNulty has invigorated Democrats who want to see more heads roll in a deepening scandal over the sacking of federal prosecutors. (Larry Downing/Reuters) |
McNulty is 4th to quit since disputed firings.
Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty announced his resignation yesterday after 18 months on the job, becoming the fourth senior Justice Department official to quit amid the controversy surrounding the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys last year.
In a one-page letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, McNulty said he will leave his post in late summer because of the "financial realities" brought on by "college-age children and two decades of public service."
McNulty, 49, said in an interview that the political tumult over the prosecutor dismissals - including his role in providing inaccurate information to Congress - did not play a part in his decision. He said he has not lined up a job but is considering his options.
"It's been a big issue for the past few months, but the timing of this is really about other things," McNulty said. He said he timed the announcement to coincide with a prosecutor conference in San Antonio, which he attended, and sought to leave enough time for an orderly transition before his departure.
"I've been completely blessed with a wonderful career, and I'm hopeful that my efforts over the last 20-plus years will be viewed by folks in the right way and that things will be put into context," he said.
Nine U.S. attorneys were forced to resign last year, including seven on one day in December, as part of a two-year effort by senior White House and Justice Department officials to remove prosecutors based in part on their perceived disloyalty to Bush administration policies.
The dismissals have caused an uproar among Democrats and some Republicans in Congress and have led to a Justice Department inquiry into possible criminal wrongdoing by a former aide to Gonzales.
McNulty began work as Gonzales's deputy in November 2005. McNulty became a central figure in the furor after he told the Senate Judiciary Committee in February that the White House played only a marginal role in the dismissals - a characterization that conflicted with documents later released by Justice and with subsequent testimony.
He also said most of the prosecutors were fired for "performance-related" reasons. That statement angered many of the former U.S. attorneys, most of whom had sterling evaluations and had remained largely silent about their departures.
The fallout has led to a deepening rift between Gonzales, who was upset by the testimony about former U.S. attorney Bud Cummins, and McNulty, whose supporters believe he has been tarred by missteps and possible wrongdoing by former Gonzales aides, according to numerous Justice officials. McNulty has told congressional investigators that D. Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales's chief of staff, and Monica M. Goodling, then the department's White House liaison, did not brief him fully before his testimony.
Sampson and Goodling have resigned. Michael A. Battle, the senior Justice official who carried out the prosecutor firings, has also quit, though he and Justice officials said his departure had been planned for some time.
Gonzales, who turned to McNulty after an earlier choice dropped out under pressure, said in a statement yesterday that he has been "a dynamic and thoughtful leader" and "effective manager of day-to-day operations." Gonzales cited his efforts at overseeing investigations into corporate and taxpayer fraud.
McNulty's pending departure may add to the tumult at the upper reaches of the Justice Department, where only Gonzales and a handful of others involved in the prosecutor dismissals remain. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.) and other top Democrats have indicated that they will not confirm any senior Justice nominees until they receive e-mails they have demanded from the White House and are allowed to conduct interviews about the firings.
"Mr. McNulty's resignation is a sign that top-level administration at the Justice Department may be crumbling under the pressure of ongoing revelations, and what is yet to be disclosed," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.). "With this news and as we press on with our investigation, we look forward to his cooperation."
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has led the call in Congress for Gonzales to resign, said that McNulty "at least tried to level with the committee," whereas Gonzales, "who stonewalled the committee, is still in charge."
McNulty, a Pittsburgh native, has worked for 22 of the past 24 years on Capitol Hill or in the executive branch, getting his start in 1983 as a Democrat and counsel to the House ethics committee. McNulty eventually became a Republican and served as chief counsel and communications director for House impeachment proceedings of President Bill Clinton.
He helped shepherd John D. Ashcroft through a contentious confirmation as attorney general in 2001 and was appointed the U.S. attorney in Alexandria three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. McNulty, who had no trial experience, presided over a dramatic expansion of that office over the next four years before taking over as Gonzales's second-in-command.
During his Feb. 6 testimony, McNulty strongly defended the firings of the U.S. attorneys and said allegations that the department was being politicized were "like a knife in my heart."
Although McNulty and his aides had hoped to tamp down the furor, his testimony served only to escalate it, in large part because most of the departing prosecutors felt that their reputations had been publicly disparaged. A cascade of revelations followed, from the White House's central role to two prosecutors' allegations of improper contact by GOP lawmakers or their staff.
Some fired prosecutors have accused McNulty's chief of staff, Michael J. Elston, of later making phone calls that they found threatening. Elston has denied wrongdoing.
In a private interview with congressional aides on April 27, McNulty said he was surprised to learn about plans for the dismissals in late October and did not know why certain individuals were chosen. Sampson testified that the firings were part of a consensus process that included McNulty.
Goodling has invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to testify, citing McNulty's allegation that she did not fully brief him. A federal judge last week cleared the way for her to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, which has granted her limited immunity from prosecution.
Washingtonpost.com staff writer Paul Kane and Washington Post staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
McNulty, Davis Resignations a Blow to Bush
Michael Isikoff - Newsweek
In a blow to the Bush administration, the deputy attorney general and the only Democrat on the White House's Privacy and Civil Liberties Board have resigned.
The White House was hit by two sudden resignations late Monday when Paul McNulty, a top Justice Department official, and Lanny Davis, the only Democratic member of the president’s civil liberties watchdog board, announced they were stepping down. Both resignations are likely to fuel allegations of White House political meddling in law enforcement and national security issues.
McNulty, the deputy attorney general, cited the “financial realities of college-age children” as the reason for his resignation. But a close associate, who asked not to be identified talking about private conversations, said that McNulty’s decision to leave now was prompted in part by his disenchantment with both Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and top White House officials over their handling of the U.S. attorney controversy.
In particular, McNulty was stunned last March to discover that Gonzales’ former top aide, Kyle Sampson, and White House officials—including deputy counsel Bill Kelley in a crucial March 7 strategy session—had failed to inform him and one of his deputies about the early White House role in the decision to remove the prosecutors, the associate said.
At the same time, Davis, a former Clinton White House official who had been named by President Bush to serve on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, sent a letter to the White House and his fellow board members protesting the panel’s lack of independence. In recent months, Davis has had numerous clashes with fellow board members and White House officials over what he saw as administration attempts to control the panel’s agenda and edit its public statements, according to board members who asked not to be identified talking about internal matters. He also cited in his letters criticisms by the former co-chairs of the September 11 commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, that the board had interpreted its mandate too narrowly and was refusing to investigate issues such as the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere around the world.
Davis’s frustration reached a peak last month when White House lawyers engaged in what he described in his letter as “substantial” edits of the board’s annual report to Congress. Davis charged that the White House sought to remove an extensive discussion of recent findings by the Justice Department’s inspector general of FBI abuses in the uses of so-called “national security letters” to obtain personal data on U.S. citizens without a court order. He also charged that the White House counsel’s office wanted to strike language stating that the panel planned to investigate complaints from civil liberties groups that the Justice Department had improperly used a “material witness statute” to lock up terror suspects for lengthy periods of time without charging them with any crimes.
When Davis protested the attempted deletions, he said the board was told that the White House lawyers feared that because the material witness law was used by U.S. attorneys, a new probe of that issue would become a part of the larger controversy over the firing of U.s. attorneys. “I found this reason to be inappropriate—and emblematic of the sincere view, with which I strongly disagreed, of at least some administration officials and a majority of the Board that the Board was wholly part of the White House staff and political structure, rather than an independent oversight entity,” Davis wrote in his letter.
Carol Dinkins, the chairman of the board, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that the White House counsel’s office had in fact objected to the language in the report about the material witness statute and that she had sent an internal email to other board members suggesting that a board probe of the Justice Department’s handling of the issue “might be construed” by others as complicating Gonzales’s problems at the Justice Department. But Dinkins, a former deputy attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department and a former law partner of Gonzales’, noted that, after Davis’s objections, much of the language announcing the board’s intention to investigate the Justice Department’s material witness law was restored. (The final report also included language about the inspector general's findings relating to national security letters.) “I’m disappointed that Lanny felt he needed to resign because we’ve had a very collegial and hard working board,” she told NEWSWEEK.
Asked to comment, White House spokesman Tony Fratto told NEWSWEEK that "McNulty's letter made it clear that he was leaving for personal and financial reasons. I think that speaks for itself." On Davis, Fratto added: "We appreciate his service and all the work he did. We respect his decision to resign."
The five-member civil liberties panel was created by Congress in November 2004 as part of a series of government-wide reforms recommended by the September 11 Commission. Its purpose is to monitor whether new counter-terrorist measures are unduly infringing on civil liberties. But critics said from the outset that the panel was a toothless watchdog because it was placed within the Executive Office of the President and staffed by White House aides—an arranagement that some critics said made it impossible to be independent. But Dinkins told NEWSWEEK she disagreed. “I think the board can function very well in its current construct, as part of the White House,” she said. Lanny Davis plainly disagreed. |
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