The Next Best Path

Rogers has another view of the situation. He said Iglesias was unaware of both widespread complaints and news reports on public corruption. He also says that Iglesias's mismanagement allowed the statute of limitations to run out on a number of cases. "He's made a whole collection of statements that have gone unchallenged," Rogers says. "David's colorful bumper-sticker statements have nothing to do with reality. I guess I like my heroes made of sterner stuff than Iglesias."

The sacking came without warning, on Dec. 7. He'd been in transit, ready to board a flight from Baltimore to Albuquerque, when his phone rang. Battle, the complimentary letter-writer, was on the phone, asking for his resignation. No explanation, Iglesias says, just word that the orders had come from "on high." He felt sucker-punched, angry and depressed; his four-hour flight seemed to go on for days.

Back home, he told his wife, Cyndy, and his shock became hers. For weeks she sat with him in their backyard hot tub, trying to retrace the steps. David could not sleep, nor could he concentrate at work. One day he found Cyndy weeping, face-down on the carpet of their bedroom closet.

"For me it was hard," Cyndy says over lunch at El Pinto, the restaurant where Iglesias first met then-candidate George W. Bush in 2000 and where he had his recent going-away party.

"[David] was the golden child of the Republican Party," Cyndy says. "The same group that rallied behind him, helped him get the nomination, turned on him. For me it was a real sense of betrayal."

A New Set of Friends

He hoped he would learn answers about what happened to him, and why, when Gonzales testified last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But "it was a huge disappointment," Iglesias says. "He made the impression that he didn't know what he was doing. He made it seem like he over-delegated, that he didn't know what was going on. I was hoping that at the end of the session we'd have an idea of who made the decision and when. Those two questions weren't answered."

Adding to her husband's comments, Cyndy says, "I would say my opinion changed from being really angry at him to feeling sorry for him. He just seemed so incompetent. All he said was 'I don't know, I don't know. I don't remember.' "

Such feelings extend well beyond Gonzales to the Republican Party itself. As a Hispanic evangelical Christian, Iglesias was "GOP gold," an Albuquerque Tribune columnist declared in 2001. Now a "disaffected Republican," Iglesias continues to support all the articles of modern Republican faith. But while Iglesias still opposes abortion and supports the rights of gun owners, he's developed a softer stance toward those on the other side of the aisle.

"I've seen how Democrats have really reached out and helped me," Iglesias says. "This whole scandal has really made me appreciate different people more. The people who stuck it to me are people who share [the same values]. The people who have helped me -- the Schumers, the Leahys, the Feinsteins -- have value systems different than mine."

But if betrayed by his onetime political allies, Iglesias has forged a new, tight kinship with the other former U.S. attorneys. Like other members of the group, he'd planned to step down quietly and slip into private life. He even asked for a recommendation from Gonzales through the attorney general's former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, which Sampson gladly approved.

That all changed when former U.S. deputy attorney general Paul McNulty -- who resigned May 14 -- said all but one of the dismissals were based on "performance" issues. In turn, McNulty's comments created a militant, galvanized, vocal force banded together from all over the country, out to put things right. Alone they were vulnerable. Together they've become a real-life Justice League -- without, you know, the masks and capes and superpowers. The group's members speak regularly with one another on conference calls and do public appearances together.

"I honestly believed if Paul McNulty had been honest that there were no issues of performance -- that there were some political reasons -- and briefed senators in private, this wouldn't have gone anywhere," Iglesias says. "We knew we were political creatures. We got there through a political process."