Democrats’ hearings uncover motives

Thursday, March 8, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

WASHINGTON - Democrats made the need for congressional oversight of the Bush administration a pillar of their campaign last year, and this week that oversight produced an unlikely result: Democrats presided over hearings that revealed motives inside Bush's Justice Department that had been kept from Republican lawmakers, including Nevada Sen. John Ensign.

Ensign had said that Justice officials told him they were firing Daniel Bogden, U.S. attorney for Nevada, because of his performance. But congressional testimony Tuesday revealed otherwise.

Indeed, House and Senate hearings into the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys by the Justice Department provided an odd spectacle in Washington - a Democratic Congress standing up for Republican-appointed prosecutors to determine why they had been fired by a Republican administration.

Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein said the display directly illustrated the points made in a best-selling book he co-authored last year about how Congress was essentially broken because it was failing to provide vigorous checks on the executive branch's power.

"It's the oversight, stupid," said Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Oversight is the key to all of these issues as to whether you administer government well or falter into scandal."

The word "unprecedented" was repeated throughout Tuesday's hearings. All sides agreed that U.S. attorneys serve at the will of the president, and can be removed at any time. President Bill Clinton dismissed all 93 attorneys upon taking office, Republicans note.

But the Dec. 7 telephone calls to the U.S. attorneys, most of whom are from Western states, were highly unusual. The federal prosecutors were not given reasons for their sudden ousters, prompting wide speculation - particularly because most of them had been involved in public corruption cases that displeased the Bush administration as either too aggressive toward Republicans or not aggressive enough toward Democrats.

Bogden testified before the House Judiciary Committee that he was told he was being fired because, with just two years left in Bush's term, the administration wanted "an opportunity to put others into those positions so they could build their resumes, get some experience as a United States attorney" so they would have a better chance to become federal judges or otherwise enhance their political futures.

Ensign did not return phone calls from the Sun on Tuesday or Wednesday. He said during a conference call with reporters last month that he was told Bogden was let go because of his performance.

Democrats have been pursuing the firings for weeks. In January, Senate Democrats asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the dismissals. He insisted that he would "never, ever make a change in a U.S. attorney position for political reasons."

His second in command testified the next month that all but the Arkansas attorney were fired for "performance-related reasons."

Democrats then demanded the performance reviews, which were mostly positive.

Did it really require a Democratic-controlled Congress to take on the issue?

Republican Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah called Tuesday's hearing a "show trial" for political gains.

Cannon said that if Republicans still had been in charge, they would have undertaken a staff investigation to clear up the clumsy way the Justice Department handled the situation.

"We would have done the looking, but it would not have been this great show trial that I think fell flat," Cannon said.

Republican Rep. Ric Keller of Florida said his party would have applied equal vigor to the issue. "We never treated the Justice officials with kid gloves when the Republicans were in control," Keller said.

As evidence, Keller pointed to Republican questioning of former Attorney General John Ashcroft and other Bush administration officials about the U.S. Patriot Act and immigration.

But Democrats doubt the Republicans would have pressed the issue.

"None of those guys seemed frankly curious this thing had happened," said Jim Dau, spokesman for the subcommittee chairwoman, Rep. Linda Sanchez of California. Under Republican leadership, "oversight hearings were woefully lacking," Dau said.

Ross Baker, who studies Congress at Rutgers University, said, "If the Republicans had been the majority party, it would have been covered up. The Democrats in the majority party are probably inflating it to much larger than its import.

"It would have been smothered by the Republicans, and the Democrats are inflating it like the Goodyear blimp."