Malcolm X is remembered for an incendiary quote regarding the assassination of President Kennedy, commenting that the “chickens had come home to roost.” What Malcolm X meant at the time was that the tacit support of a subculture of lawlessness and corruption by the ruling establishment had allowed the shadowy elements to conspire and bring down the President of the most powerful nation on the planet. He alluded to a cancer within government and within society. The phrase has become synonymous with being forced to face the consequences that grow out of prior malfeasance and neglect.
That phrase is apt when discussing the current furor over Attorney General Gonzalez and the Justice Department. The Chief Legal Officer and Chief Prosecutor of the United States is supposed to be, first and foremost, loyal to upholding and protecting the US Constitution. Although appointed by the President, the holder of that office is duty bound to follow and enforce the laws of the Nation, regardless of what the president may wish them to be and without regard to the position or person who violates those laws.
When Anthony Gonzalez was nominated as Attorney General, there was little doubt that his primary qualification for the job was not his legal acumen or tough-minded independence as a legal prosecutor and guardian of the Constitution. His performance record patently revealed an intensely loyal political operative who would bend and shape the law to its breaking point or beyond in order to protect the interests and career of his “boss” George W. Bush. At the time of his nomination and confirmation to the Attorney General post, there had already been public disclosure of his involvement in authoring and approving a memorandum that suggested that his “boss” could get away with torture of prisoners of war and that the Geneva Conventions could be circumvented. He was instrumental in providing practical advice to the White house that might minimize convictions for War Crimes based upon actions that he knew they planned to take or support.
It comes as no surprise, therefore, to learn that certain US Attorneys were “rated” on a list exchanged between White House Counsel and the Justice Department, based upon their political loyalty to the GOP agenda and whether they were aggressive enough in prosecuting Democratic opponents prior to the 2004 and 2006 elections. The hand of Karl Rove has also been exposed in urging the Justice Department to take a “serious look” at identified US Attorneys who might be pushed out for lack of greater enthusiasm for advancing the GOP political agenda than advancing the fair and independent enforcement of the laws of his country. Rove was involved in communicating to Gonzalez that the White House backed complaints from GOP Senators and representatives that they were not getting adequate political support from the US Attorneys in attacking their political rivals.
Current headlines blare the “news” that the White House was intimately involved in the recent firings of at least eight US Attorneys. Many of the firings cannot be rationally justified by any reason other than arbitrariness and a desire to further a GOP political agenda. The White House calls this a question of “performance” in adhering to the Administration “policies.” Unfortunately everything that is clearly bad is not necessarily illegal. The GOP controlled Congress slipped an obscure provision into the Patriot Act reauthorization that allowed the Attorney General to make “indefinite” interim appointments of US Attorneys without going through the usual process of input from Senators and confirmation by Congress. We now know that the provision was a set piece in a strategy advanced by White House Counsel to permit the summary firing of ALL US Attorneys and replacing them with political hacks and operatives who would enforce the laws against targeted opponents and in compliance with White House directives. This was another tool of the Imperial Presidency scheme.
Congress, now in ostensible control of Democrats, is set to hold hearings on the purported scandal concerning the political firings of supposedly independent US Attorneys. The REAL story lies in the negligence and failure of these same members of Congress to protest in emphatic terms the appointment of Gonzalez in the first place. This outcome was clearly predictable, given the track record of the Attorney General appointee. Calls for ouster of Gonzalez at this point are quite tardy. At the risk of sounding a bit cynical, why would bush want to fire a fierce loyalist who is the first line of defense against the likely prosecution of Administration officials for malfeasance in office? Patrick Fitzgerald was an aberration that surprised the Administration by indicting Scooter Libby. But even his level of ”independence” was not sufficient to permit him to indict Rove and Cheney for what is not manifest violation of the law in deliberately disclosing the identity of a covert CIA operative. It is illogical to expect that Bush and Rove would voluntarily abandon the prophylactic net they have constructed against prosecution. For Democrats and Congress as a whole, the chickens have now come home to roost. And the evidence is a very bad egg sitting in the middle of the nest.
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