Editorial: ‘Mistakes’ were made?

Thursday, March 15, 2007 | 7:17 a.m.

When the Bush administration fired seven U.S. attorneys in December, officials said "performance issues," which they could never explain, were the reason. White House and Justice Department officials tried to shrug off the mass firing as nothing more than a simple personnel matter.

The reality, as we have come to learn, is anything but innocent. These firings were crass political decisions driven by a White House that tried to circumvent Congress, enforce loyalty and put political pressure on prosecutors.

E-mails between the White House and Justice Department that were released Tuesday show the clear involvement of former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, chief political adviser Karl Rove and his deputies, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. Sampson, who had served in the White House counsel's office before working for Gonzales, resigned Monday.

In a March 2005 e-mail sent to Miers, Sampson attached a rating of the attorneys, which commended those who performed and "exhibited loyalty to the president and attorney general" and urged firing the "weak" attorneys and those who "chafed against administration initiatives, etc."

The administration planned to use a controversial provision in the Patriot Act that allows the attorney general to appoint U.S. attorneys for the length of the president's term - without Senate confirmation. In a Dec. 19 e-mail to a White House aide , Sampson argued, "... if we don't ever exercise it then what's the point of having it?"

As part of the planning, administration officials put together a memo that called for carefully choreographing the whole process, including how to "withstand (the) political upheaval."

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., was certainly among those who complained, particularly about the firing of Daniel Bogden, the former U.S. attorney for Nevada. On Tuesday Ensign said he was still not satisfied by the administration's responses, and he shouldn't be. The Justice Department has switched its story a few times already, with one official even admitting Bogden had no "particular deficiency."

The answers given to Ensign are indicative of the Bush administration, which has found it far easier to mislead the public, particularly when Republicans controlled Congress during Bush's first six years in office and congressional oversight was virtually nonexistent.

While Ensign was upset by Bogden's dismissal, he still was doing the administration's bidding, echoing Gonzales' line that "mistakes were made." Ensign, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee that is overseeing efforts to put the GOP back in control of the Senate in 2008, stopped short of placing the blame on Gonzales, instead shifting focus to the deputy attorney general.

The fact is, however, that the spotlight should continue on Gonzales in determining the extent of his involvement and that of White House aides in getting rid of the U.S. attorneys.

For now, the White House should be forthcoming and drop its objection to Democrats' desire to have Rove and Miers testify at congressional hearings. If this really was just nothing more than a mistake, what's the harm?