Did Mary Beth Buchanan use her DOJ position for political purposes?

From the 4/23/07 edition of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

“Cracking down on drugs and pornography was big business in former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s Department of Justice.

When federal prosecutors in California passed on cases involving glass bongs and hard-core sex movies, Pittsburgh-based U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan swooped in and stole the show.

Critics blasted “Operation Pipe Dreams,” calling the nationwide sting on drug paraphernalia trafficking a waste of resources. Buchanan charged on, though, and in 2003 won a conviction against Tommy Chong — the Los Angeles actor made famous by the marijuana-laced “Cheech and Chong” movies.

That same year, she charged Extreme Associates and the California owners of the porn production company in the first major federal obscenity prosecution in more than a decade. Critics again wailed about resources and the government fiddling with constitutional freedoms.

The Justice Department and Ashcroft praised both cases. Buchanan was rewarded with a string of lofty posts, one of which — director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys — has landed her at the forefront of a congressional investigation into a group firing of fellow Republican prosecutors.

Buchanan will not discuss the firings or the House investigation but said the priorities of the Justice Department are those of her office — including pursuing public corruption cases. The Justice Department is reviewing a House Judiciary Committee request to speak to Buchanan and seven other Justice Department officials. She has not met with House investigators.

Democrats want to find out why the Bush administration sacked eight of the country’s 93 federal prosecutors. Democrats say they believe some U.S. attorneys were fired to interfere with public corruption cases in ways that might help Republicans.

The House Judiciary Committee has evidence that D. Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, consulted Buchanan as head of the Executive Office U.S. attorneys in 2004 and 2005 about whom to fire.

Heading the office was largely administrative and dull until 9/11, when the Justice Department began to use it to control U.S. attorneys, said Fred Thieman, a former U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh under President Clinton.

“I can’t understand why someone would want that position, unless there was some other purpose,” Thieman said.

Buchanan said she works hard and with determination, finding it an honor to serve President Bush and the Justice Department in whatever role necessary. Those who know Buchanan said she is a hard worker and does what’s needed to please her bosses.

“They ask, and she responds,” said Roscoe Howard Jr., former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. “Certainly, the objective evidence is that they like her.”

H.E. “Bud” Cummins, former U.S. attorney for eastern Arkansas and one of the eight forced to step down, said he likes and respects Buchanan. If she participated in the dismissals, though, she failed her colleagues by participating “in the completely ridiculous process of making a list of names” of people to be fired, he said.

Thomas J. Farrell, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh and frequent Buchanan critic, called Buchanan’s response to the House inquiry a litmus test for her.

“I hope she stands up for the integrity and competence of those U.S. attorneys who were fired,” he said.

Buchanan was appointed U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania by President Bush in September 2001.

Her office has opened at least five investigations into prominent Democrats over the past five years. Critics say she has ignored allegations against fellow Republicans during that time.

“It has been and remains the practice of my office to investigate and prosecute individuals who violate federal law without regard to their political affiliation,” Buchanan said.

Buchanan said all investigations and prosecutions are analyzed from a legal, not partisan, perspective.

She has prosecuted former Allegheny County Sheriff Pete DeFazio and aides in his office and former Allegheny County Judge Joseph Jaffe. An investigation of former Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy ended without charges being filed.

“There’s no greater adherent to using public corruption charges against the other party than Mary Beth Buchanan,” said Jerry McDevitt, a defense lawyer representing Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, a Democrat, against charges he abused his former public office as Allegheny County coroner for private financial gain.

Allegations of improper use of office staff have been leveled against two Republican politicians in her jurisdiction, U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy and former state Rep. Jeff Habay. Habay was prosecuted in Allegheny County Court. No federal charges have been filed against these men, but federal authorities are prohibited from saying whether either is being investigated. “

Battle contradicts Gonzales’ Statements on Firings

By Dan Eggen and Paul Kane, Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 16, 2007; A04

The former Justice Department official who carried out the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year told Congress that several of the prosecutors had no performance problems and that a memo on the firings was distributed at a Nov. 27 meeting attended by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, a Democratic senator said yesterday.

The statements to House and Senate investigators by Michael A. Battle, former director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, represent another potential challenge to the credibility of Gonzales, who has said that he never saw any documents about the firings and that he had “lost confidence” in the prosecutors because of performance problems.

Battle’s statements, relayed to reporters yesterday by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), came as Gonzales prepares for a make-or-break appearance on Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Prepared testimony released yesterday indicates Gonzales will apologize to the fired prosecutors for the way they were treated and will acknowledge that he has been “less than precise” in describing his role in the firings.

But Gonzales will also hold firm to his contentions that any missteps were “honest mistakes,” that “nothing improper” took place, and that most of the details were handled by his then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, according to the testimony.

“I have nothing to hide and . . . I am committed to assuring the Congress and the American public that nothing improper occurred here,” Gonzales says in his remarks.

“I made mistakes in not ensuring that these U.S. attorneys received more dignified treatment,” he adds later. “Others within the Department of Justice also made mistakes. As far as I know, these were honest mistakes of perception and judgment and not intentional acts of misconduct.”

Seven U.S. attorneys were fired on Dec. 7, and another was dismissed earlier, as part of a plan that originated in the White House to replace some prosecutors based in part on their perceived disloyalty to President Bush and his policies.

The uproar over the removals has grown amid allegations that some Republican lawmakers improperly contacted prosecutors about investigations and repeated misstatements by Gonzales and other Bush administration officials about the scope and nature of the dismissals. Democrats have also seized on presidential senior adviser Karl Rove’s connection to some of the firings, and on revelations last week that the White House and the Republican National Committee have lost e-mails that are supposed to be preserved under record-keeping laws.

Gonzales and his deputy, Paul J. McNulty, initially told Congress that the firings were due to “performance-related” problems. Subsequent e-mails and other documents released by Justice showed that most had positive job reviews, that they and other U.S. attorneys were ranked on whether they were “loyal Bushies,” and that Gonzales was more deeply involved in the process than he has sometimes acknowledged.

The statements by Battle, who left his job last month, are the first details to emerge from more than 20 hours of interviews with four top Gonzales aides over the past two weeks by staff members on the House and Senate Judiciary committees. The last of those interviews was conducted yesterday with Sampson, who testified publicly last month that he was only an “aggregator” of information on the firings and that ultimate responsibility rested with Gonzales.

Battle told investigators that he was “not aware of performance problems with respect to several” of the prosecutors when he called to fire them, Schumer said in a conference call with reporters yesterday.

Schumer said Battle also contradicted Gonzales’s assertion at a March 13 news conference that he had not seen any documents or participated in any discussions about the firings. A memo related to the dismissals was passed out at a Nov. 27 meeting attended by Gonzales and others, Battle told investigators.

“Mike Battle remembers a memo was distributed,” Schumer said.

In his prepared remarks for Tuesday, Gonzales says “my statement about ‘discussions’ was imprecise and overbroad, but it certainly was not in any way an attempt to mislead the American people.”

Gonzales also addresses new documents released Friday showing that Sampson had identified five potential replacement prosecutors in early 2006, which appeared to contradict testimony from Sampson and repeated statements from Justice officials that no such list had been drawn up. Gonzales will testify that he remembers being told about two possible replacements, but that neither was approved and no one was lined up when the last seven firings were carried out.

Schumer and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary panel, immediately criticized Gonzales’s planned testimony as falling short of answering key questions about the firings.

“The attorney general has offered another in a series of contradictory statements about the mass firing of U.S. attorneys,” Leahy said. “It has been impossible to discern the truth in this matter based on the shifting explanations and changing stories coming out of the Justice Department and White House.”

Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the committee’s ranking Republican, also said Gonzales should consider reinstating the fired U.S. attorneys.

Specter and fellow Republican Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) said Gonzales has an “uphill” climb to restore his credibility with Congress. Numerous Democrats and some Republicans have called on Gonzales to resign.

“He needs to explain what he did and why he did it,” Graham said yesterday on “Fox News Sunday.” “There are three or four different versions of his role in this, and he needs to bring clarity to what he did and why he did it.”

In a related matter yesterday, an attorney for Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), who faces an ethics inquiry into his role in the firings, declined to comment on an Albuquerque Journal report that Domenici directly contacted Rove to push for the firing of David C. Iglesias as New Mexico’s U.S. attorney.

The report said Domenici’s call to the White House came after a late October phone conversation with Iglesias about a local corruption case. Iglesias has testified he felt the call amounted to improper political pressure and believes it lies at the heart of his firing.

Domenici has acknowledged that he complained to Gonzales and McNulty about Iglesias, and has said he told the Justice Department he wanted Iglesias replaced “some months” before the call. But he has never acknowledged calling the White House about the issue.

Thousands of pages of documents released by Justice have yet to explain the rationale for Iglesias’s firing. In his testimony last month, Sampson could not recall why Iglesias was put on the list, which did not happen until Nov. 7, less than two weeks after Domenici’s call to Iglesias.

 www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/15/AR2007041500548_pf.html