A Culture of Deniability

Bush's intervention -- though not Gonzales's apparent personal jeopardy -- was first disclosed in July. As I groused in my July 19, 2006 column, it never made the front pages of major newspapers (and then dropped off the radar entirely) even though, as I wrote: "It is not common for a president to personally intervene to stop an investigation of his own administration. The most notorious case, of course, was the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973, during which President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor who had been appointed to investigate the Watergate scandal."

But now, with Gonzales on the ropes and Congress back in the business of oversight, this could simply turn out to be a cover-up with a very long fuse.

Exposed

Dan Eggen writes in The Washington Post: "In testimony on Jan. 18, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Justice Department had no intention of avoiding Senate input on the hiring of U.S. attorneys.

"Just a month earlier, D. Kyle Sampson, who was then Gonzales's chief of staff, laid out a plan to do just that. In an e-mail, he detailed a strategy for evading Arkansas Democrats in installing Tim Griffin, a former GOP operative and protege of presidential adviser Karl Rove, as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock. . . .

"The conflict between documents released this week and previous administration statements is quickly becoming the central issue for lawmakers who are angry about the way Gonzales and his aides handled the coordinated firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year. . . .

"The inconsistencies between Justice's positions and the documents are numerous. On Feb. 23, for example, a Justice legislative affairs aide wrote to Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) that the department 'was not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin.' But internal Justice e-mails show that 'getting him appointed is important' to Rove and was closely monitored by political aides in the White House.

"Last week, senior Justice official William E. Moschella told a House Judiciary subcommittee that the White House was not consulted on the firings until the end of the process."

Blogger Josh Marshall, who has dogged this story from the very beginning, concludes: "Simply put, they lied to Congress. As Eggen correctly notes, prosecutions for lying to Congress are uncommon. And the standards of proof might well be too great to sustain one. But by common sense standards it's clear that neither man testified truthfully when they answered senators' questions earlier this year. Even the emails now public make that clear. That visible deceit in covering up an emerging scandal will be too much for them to stay in office."

Unanswered Questions

Jess Bravin writes in the Wall Street Journal: "The administration has said its initial explanation -- that the prosecutors were fired for poor performance -- wasn't fully accurate. Emails and internal documents provided to Congress this week show that senior White House and Justice Department aides carefully planned last year's dismissals while seeking to contain any political damage and to minimize the Senate's role in selecting their replacements.

"But neither the administration's public statements nor the documents explain why the dismissals became a priority for senior officials, including former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, who resigned over the matter this week."

Richard A. Serrano writes in the Los Angeles Times: "The day news broke that a federal corruption probe in Southern California was spreading to Republican Rep. Jerry Lewis, the chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales fired off an e-mail to the White House about the federal prosecutor who had begun the investigation.

"'The real problem we have right now is Carol Lam,' D. Kyle Sampson told White House Deputy Counsel William Kelley on May 11. 'That leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires.'"