How Political Warfare in Missouri Led to Prosecutor's Firing

The tension escalated after Todd Graves refused to get involved, telling Van Eaton during the telephone call, "I'm not playing in your reindeer games." Van Eaton, who is now a political consultant, said last night, "I don't remember any conversation like that from four years ago."

The report says that Bond's legal counsel at the time, Jack Bartling, subsequently called the White House counsel's office at least twice in 2005 to request Graves's ouster. Bartling told investigators the calls were not provoked by Bond but by a "staff issue."

By December 2005, though, Bartling apparently became nervous that his phone calls might become embarrassing. He contacted an aide to the deputy attorney general to ensure "that the Senator's role in requesting White House action on Graves was not being disseminated within the Department," according to the report.

After Graves was fired in January 2006, he began asking about Bond's involvement. Bartling heard about them, and -- evidently worried that Graves had received leaked information -- he e-mailed the Justice aide, Michael J. Elston, to ask who had been talking to Graves and "what happened to Plan B?"

The report said Bartling could not recall precisely what "Plan B" referred to, but he speculated that it was an agreement to throw people off Bond's scent by suggesting, falsely, that Graves was dismissed for ethical improprieties.

Elston later told investigators that he did not probe deeply into the reasons for Graves's ouster because by then, Bond's office was courting him to take the prosecutor's job. Bartling, who is now a deputy assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the Treasury Department, declined to comment this week.

Investigators said in the report that "we found no documentation memorializing the request for Todd Graves' resignation or the reasons for it." But they charted a bout of finger-pointing and false statements that began shortly after the fired prosecutor began to publicly protest.

D. Kyle Sampson, the attorney general's chief of staff, who oversaw the forced resignations of other U.S. attorneys, initially blamed Graves's departure on Monica S. Goodling, then a top aide to Gonzales. She refused to cooperate with the inspector general but said in congressional testimony that Sampson was to blame.

Sampson later said he recalled that a lawyer in the White House counsel's office "was the person that was responsible for this . . . and that he was speaking with Senator Bond's office." But the lawyer, Richard Klingler, who now works in the Washington office of Sidley Austin, also refused to cooperate with investigators.

"No one [at the White House or the Justice Department] discussed with Graves Senator Bond's alleged concerns," the report said. "It also appears that no one considered whether Graves was an effective U.S. attorney before seeking his removal."

Roe said he finds the episode "a real weird situation" and considers it "breathtaking" that a senator's office would arrange the ouster of a U.S. prosecutor "to settle a petty personal vendetta."

Graves declined to comment in detail. "I understand why this is important," he said. But "if I can lose my prosecutor's job over something as silly as this, it wasn't worth having. I think it diminishes the entire institution."