GovernmentExecutive.com

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that departing Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty was primarily responsible for recommending the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year, saying that McNulty's personal knowledge of the prosecutors and his role as manager of the department set his advice apart from other senior officials who participated in the process.

"At the end of the day, the recommendation reflected the views of the deputy attorney general," Gonzales said during an appearance at the National Press Club. "He signed off on the names, and he would know better than anyone else ... about the qualifications and experiences of the United States attorney community."

While offering warm words of praise as McNulty prepares to leave his position -- he announced his resignation Monday, citing personal reasons -- Gonzales said he had structured the department so that McNulty acted as the chief operating officer. He added that McNulty was "a former colleague of all of these United States attorneys" who knew them well.

"The one person that I would care about would be the views of the deputy attorney general, because the deputy attorney general is the direct supervisor of the United States attorneys," Gonzales said.

As he has previously, Gonzales acknowledged that he should have been more involved. Pressed repeatedly on why he was not, Gonzales spoke of the busy nature of his job. But he said that if he had to do it again, he might have put McNulty in charge of the process instead of his former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson.

He said he also would have truncated the process, specified with whom Sampson should consult, issued clear guidelines about factors that should be considered, and directed Sampson to meet face-to-face with the attorneys and get their reactions to criticisms.

Gonzales also indicated that while Sampson and former White House liaison Monica Goodling played key roles in the process of determining who would be fired, he did not consider them "top aides."

Even as officials leave the department in the wake of the scandal, Gonzales brushed aside a question about whether he should resign, saying this was a decision for the president to make. Though several of the fired U.S. attorneys were targets of complaints that they were not pursuing voter fraud cases aggressively enough, Gonzales said he was aware of no "concentrated effort" by the White House to promote voter fraud prosecutions.

COMMENTS

• Forget about these firings. Of much more concern, I read in the Washington Post over these two days that in 2004 White House Attorney Gonzales and Chief of Staff Card went to a hospital's intensive care unit to get bedridden Atty General Ashcroft to sign off on a surveillance program that the Justice Department determined was illegal. When to his great credit, Secretary Ashcroft refused, this adininistration went ahead and implemented it anyway. These people don't need to just be fired or impeached-- they need to be imprisoned for violating their oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. They have held US Citizens in prison for treason. Treason has more than one definition. Secretary Gonzales did a terrible thing in firing Prosecutors for political reasons. White House Attorney Gonzales' activities are criminal and he should be prosecuted by the very Department he has attempted to subjugate to the whims of partisanship. HR Specialist Posted May 17, 2007 2:23 PM
• I don't get it. What's the problem with firing the attorneys? Why is this a Congressional matter or considered a scandal? So what if it is some sort of payback because they were not pursuing cases that their direct supervisor or the Attorney General or the President wanted them to. I'm sure Gonzales and any other Attorney General does have more important matters than to micro-manage the attorney staff. I would think that if someone said they needed to go and stated logical business reasons, then they should have gone. I don't know if they were career or appointee but I would think that each Administration would want to put in appointees that would not be inclined to put out stuff to the press just to embarrass an Administration that they did not agree with. I'm not saying that these people did that or that they were incompetent. I'm just saying that top officials such as these should be picked by the current Administration -- whatever it is, Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, etc. I am more upset about the classified information that gets passed to the public by the press from Federal workers that gives terrorist information just to embarrass the current Administration. I did not like President Clinton's handling of many matters and did not agree with his direction for the country, but the last thing I wanted was disgruntled Republican sympathizers to pass on information that embarrassed or compromised the country. I think this whole matter of the attorneys is trivial and so do many of my friends and acquaintances. It's just a way for the Democratic Congress to just try to find some sort of thing from all the requests for documents to embarrass or find some way to bring about impreachment proceedings on Bush. It's a waste of taxpayers time and money. He'll be gone soon and the Democratic Congress has shown it can keep him pinned down on the mat so that he will be pretty much ineffective for the rest of his term. Brenda Coblentz Posted May 17, 2007 10:52 AM
• Has the mark of a good "government" leader become the ability to blame your shortcomings on the employee underneath you? What happened to a leader taking responsibility of what happens on "your watch"? Especially if you sign off on it! Stephen Coffman Posted May 17, 2007 10:33 AM