Former U.S. Attorney Fires Back

Justice Department communications director Brian Roehrkasse is one of the few senior officials in that agency to survive the prosecutor-firings scandal that consumed his last boss, former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales.

So one of the fired U.S. attorneys, Bud Cummins of Little Rock, has taken the unusual step of calling on Roehrkasse to step down.

Cummins, one of the nine prosecutors whose removal last year led to Gonzales's resignation, contended in a recent speech and in a new magazine article that Roehrkasse was a central part of the Bush administration's "deception" campaign about the firings.

"Roehrkasse did more than perhaps any other DOJ official to disseminate the avalanche of untruths," Cummins said in an article posted yesterday on Washington Monthly's Web site, adding that "the department's reputation can't be restored if its chief spokesperson isn't credible."

Roehrkasse, who worked on President Bush's 2000 election campaign and was a spokesman for the departments of Transportation and Homeland Security, responded to Cummins's criticism yesterday with a one-sentence written statement.

"I've always strived to provide truth and accuracy in my statements based on the best information available to me," Roehrkasse wrote. He declined further comment.

Earlier this year, Roehrkasse and other Justice Department officials said that much of the information they initially provided about the U.S. attorney firings was incomplete or inaccurate because senior Gonzales aides were not forthcoming about the extent of White House involvement. They denied any intent to mislead the public or lawmakers.

In an interview, Cummins said he has never met Roehrkasse and does not intend the criticisms as a personal attack. But Cummins said he is alarmed by the number of misstatements that he attributes to Roehrkasse in connection with the firings scandal, including some on several episodes in which Cummins was personally involved.

Cummins also noted that Roehrkasse was promoted by Gonzales in August to be the department's head of public affairs even though more than a dozen other senior aides had resigned in the wake of the firings and related controversies.

"It's not my nature to go after somebody like that, where it's unavoidable that it's somewhat personal," Cummins said. "I couldn't help but notice that there were a repetition of statements by him that were obviously deceptive. . . . This whole thing is about the damage to the credibility of the department."

Cummins pointed to several examples of allegedly misleading statements by Roehrkasse that are tangled in the details of the firings.

For example, Cummins noted that Roehrkasse at one point issued a statement denying that Justice officials had attempted to use a new law to install a U.S. attorney in Arkansas without approval from the Senate. Documents and testimony later showed that senior Gonzales aides had endorsed doing just that.

Cummins also pointed to an early-March story in The Washington Post based on information provided by the Justice Department that was later revealed to be wrong or incomplete. Internal e-mails show Roehrkasse receiving congratulations for the story.

Cummins said he first heard of Roehrkasse when the spokesman was quoted as saying that a senior prosecutor in Little Rock was not chosen to replace Cummins because she was on maternity leave.

In fact, as testimony, e-mails and other documents later showed, White House and Gonzales aides had planned all along to replace Cummins with a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove. Maternity leave had nothing to do with it.

"Many folks in Arkansas were incredulous at this explanation," Cummins wrote.