Bush Picks Ex-Judge for Attorney General

President Bush, right, listens as Michael Mukasey, his choice for attorney general, speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, Sept. 17, 2007. Mukasey, 66, a retired federal judge from New York, currently serves as a judicial adviser to GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds) (Ron Edmonds - AP)

"Our focus now will be on securing the relevant information we need so we can proceed to schedule fair and thorough hearings," Leahy said. "Cooperation from the White House will be essential in determining that schedule."

Later Monday, Leahy said he had been assured by White House counsel Fred Fielding that the Senate panel would get at least some answers to its questions about Gonzales' conduct in the Bush administration's wiretapping program and interrogation methods.

Mukasey oversaw some of the nation's most significant terror trials in the years before and after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

He sentenced so-called "blind Sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman to life in prison for a plot to blow up New York City landmarks, and he signed in 2002 the material witness warrant that let the FBI arrest U.S. citizen Jose Padilla. That warrant marked the start of a case that wound its way through several federal courts as the government declared Padilla an enemy combatant and held him for 3 1/2 years before he was convicted last month on terrorism-related charges.

In an opinion article published last month in The Wall Street Journal, Mukasey criticized U.S. national security law as too weak in some areas by noting that prosecutors are sometimes forced to reveal details of cases at the risk of tipping off terrorists. He is also a supporter of the government's anti-terror USA Patriot Act, wryly writing in 2004 that the "awkward name may very well be the worst thing about the statute."

Yet Mukasey also criticized the Bush administration while he was on the bench.

In December 2002, Mukasey ordered the government to let Padilla talk to a defense attorney. Prosecutors who initially resisted were rapped three months later in a terse and sternly worded response from the judge.

"Lest any confusion remain, this is not a suggestion or a request that Padilla be permitted to consult with counsel, and it is certainly not an invitation to conduct a further 'dialogue' about whether he will be permitted to do so," Mukasey wrote in the March 2003 order. "It is a ruling _ a determination _ that he will be permitted to do so."

That ruling offered a glimpse of what colleagues describe as Mukasey's trademark brusqueness and impatience with people who waste his time. But it also endeared him to the liberal-leaning American Center for Law and Justice, which supports his confirmation, while raising a red flag for conservatives with whom Mukasey met Sunday to try to appease.

Sen. Arlen Specter, top Republican on the Senate Judiciary panel, urged his colleagues to begin Mukasey's confirmation quickly.

"There is no doubt that the Department of Justice has been in disarray for some time," said Specter, R-Pa. "So that I think it is very important to act promptly, not with undue haste, getting an opportunity to review Judge Mukasey's background."

Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler will serve as acting attorney general during Mukasey's confirmation process. Keisler, who has been nominated for a federal judgeship, had planned to resign from the Justice Department but agreed to stay on to free up Solicitor General Paul Clement _ the department's highest-ranking Senate-confirmed official _ to focus on Supreme Court hearings that begin next month.

Mukasey, a partner at New York-based law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, is also a close friend to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican. He is stepping down as an adviser to Giuliani's presidential campaign, on which he served as part of an advisory committee on judicial nominations.

Mukasey did not suffer fools lightly from the bench _ and probably wouldn't if confirmed to the 15-month stint at the Justice Department.

"He wanted to get right to the core of the issue," said Michael Horowitz, a former senior Justice Department prosecutor who argued several cases in front of Mukasey. "He was always prepared and he knew the issues. So he didn't need a lot of the background, a lot of the fluff that you often get in arguments."

Still, Mukasey may have some learning to do in Washington.

"The big question is whether he can successfully make the transition from a judicial mind-set to a political one," said Brad Berenson, a lawyer who formerly worked in the counsel's office of the Bush White House and called Mukasey honorable and smart. "The jobs of being a judge and a Cabinet official are very different, and so are the necessary approaches to leading and making decisions."