THE SUN INTERVIEW

By Joe Schoenmann, Sam Skolnik

Sunday, March 25, 2007 | 7:29 a.m.

Nevada's former U.S. attorney opens up about his values, his work and the political double-dealing that cost him his job

Here is the altar boy, football and baseball star, God-fearing, every-Sunday- Mass Catholic sitting in his modest house of eclectic antiques with its majestic mountain view and surrounded by dozens of framed photos of nieces, nephews, siblings, mom and dad - and the meat cutter, the postal inspector, the lawyer and the high school guidance counselor.

It's a beautiful, peaceful setting for Daniel Bogden to sit grinding his teeth.

Bogden served for five years in comfortable obscurity as the U.S. attorney for Nevada. Then two months ago, he was thrust onto the national stage for losing his job.

Now, the career civil servant associates describe as publicity shy may be remembered as one of eight U.S. attorneys who brought down a U.S. attorney general. On Dec. 7 Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired them.

At first, Bogden refused to talk publicly about his firing. But after being summoned to Washington to testify before Congress about his treatment, Bogden has become more available to the media. Friday, he sat for a lengthy interview in his Reno home and even gave a tour that ended in his home office upstairs.

There, a visitor spied a framed photo of Bogden with former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and another picture with the first President Bush.

Amid papers on his desk was a third photo, unframed, bearing a stamp marking it as an official Justice Department picture from 2005. In it, a smiling Gonzales is shaking the hand of a smiling Bogden.

"To Dale," Gonzales signed it. "All the best. A. Gonzales."

To think, Daniel Bogden is now biting the hand that signed "To Dale."

For someone in a high-profile job, Bogden never sought publicity, nor did he get much of it until he was fired. Google his name and before January 2007, only a smattering of "hits" turn up. One shows that he gave money to Ashland University, where the 6-foot-2 baseball and football player earned scholarships in both sports.

Yet outside the public eye, Bogden earned a reputation.

"He's the finest U.S. attorney I've ever worked with," said Ellen Knowlton, who spent 24 years in the FBI and for four years, through February 2006, was the special agent in charge of the agency's Las Vegas office.

U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben recalled Bogden as an assistant U.S. attorney in Reno in the 1990s. McKibben said he was the kind of prosecutor who maintained a professional even keel with judges, witnesses and defense attorneys.

"There was a great balance to him," McKibben said. "He was always extremely well-prepared. A lawyer's lawyer. Low-key, never flamboyant but very thorough."

"He's all about the work," said Ruth Cohen, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Las Vegas who left the office in January after 29 years. "You know the expression 'F.I.L.O. First in, last out?' That was Dan."

Cohen got to know him in the 1980s, when the two were assistant federal prosecutors. When he became Nevada's U.S. attorney on Sept. 10, 2001, he brought order to a workplace that she said needed it.

"He just wanted you to do your job," she said. "He made it a comfortable place to work."

The one thing Bogden was not, Knowlton said, was a player. "He didn't have a political bone in his body," she said.

Even today, gazing at the snow-tipped mountains overlooking Reno, Bogden marvels that he was hired for the job with a newly elected, very conservative President Bush in charge.

He remembered getting a call almost six years ago from U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and being asked about his party affiliation.

"I said, 'Sir, you know, I vote with my conscience, and I will vote with the best candidate, whether that's a Democrat or Republican. So I guess you have to say I'm independent.

"And he still went ahead and nominated me."

On Dec. 7, having just returned from Washington, D.C., Bogden took a call of a different kind from Mike Battle, director of the executive office for U.S. attorneys at the Justice Department.

Bogden recalled the conversation Friday: "He says, 'Dan, it's time to step down. They want to go in another direction.'

"I say, 'Well, what direction is that?'

"He says, 'Dan, I don't know.' "

Bogden was blown away.

"I was always lauded by Washington, D.C., and the higher-ups. I thought we were doing a great job."

He started asking questions, and finally reached acting - Associate Attorney General William Mercer, the No. 3 man at Justice.

Bogden expected to hear that the president wanted someone with more expertise in a particular area, or had a strong replacement in mind.

This is what Bogden said Mercer told him:

"He says, 'The administration has a short two-year window of opportunity where they can get candidates out to your positions, where they can get the r sum together, they can have the experience of the U.S. attorney in their background that would make them a more viable candidate for future judgeships, for political office.' "

Bogden felt anger, mixed with a sense of ironic relief. At least he wasn't being fired for performance.

On the other hand, "After 16 1/2 years in the department, it seemed like a kind of cruel way to go."

At least, that's what he was told behind the scenes.

You get the feeling when sitting with Bogden that this man is full of pride, yet he rarely lets it show. Not that he's a milquetoast. But he seems controlled, diplomatic, factual.

When he tells the story of that first week in December, when he and other U.S. attorneys were lauded by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, he tells it flat.

"McNulty has us all in a room and he tells us we're one of the greatest collections of U.S. attorneys," Bogden recalls. That was Dec. 4. He and all the other U.S. attorneys were in Washington.

He said he was so stoked that he took the red-eye flight back to Reno on Dec. 6, got up and got into the office at his usual 5 a.m. on Dec. 7.

He would have been less eager had he known that even as McNulty had spoken, Bogden was history.

On Friday, while Bogden talked to the Sun, e-mails released in Washington showed that McNulty and Gonzales had signed off on the firings on Nov. 27.

After the Dec. 7 call, Bogden kept his secret until he got home, back to Huron, Ohio, for Christmas. He wasn't sure how to break it to his dad, a retired Ford Motor Co. engineer, or his mom, a homemaker.

His confided in a brother, who told him just not to break down, that they'd take it the way he told it.

"That's what I did, and it went pretty well."

A few weeks later the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that a source in the Nevada U.S. attorneys office described Bogden as "indecisive, secretive and insular," and that office morale was low.

Similar wording, especially "insular," had been used to discredit some of the other seven targeted U.S. attorneys, Bogden later learned.

Bogden's dad found the Review-Journal story on the Internet. Bogden's chief criminal prosecutor called his boss demanding to know "what the hell is going on?"

Still, Bogden kept his counsel. He talked to no one in the media. He told his office he was leaving and he worked with honchos in Washington to try to ensure a smooth departure.

Then Gonzales testified before Congress. "He raises his right hand and he says this isn't political, this isn't political, this isn't political, and I knew damn well it was political."

Next, McNulty testified that the firings were related to "unspecified performance issues."

The last straw was the release of e-mails from Brent Ward to higher-ups at Justice criticizing Bogden for failing to prosecute an obscenity case. Ward, a former Utah U.S. attorney who became an anti-porn crusader in the Reagan administration, was given the job as head of Justice's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force.

Last year Ward and some of his team came to an adult video awards conference in Las Vegas.

"They go in there, and in their super-sleuthing work, they come up with the name of an individual who may be selling obscene videos over the Internet," Bogden said.

It wasn't child porn. It wasn't be stiality. In the world of porn today, it was fairly routine. But Ward's team wanted to send a message and wanted Bogden to take it on.

He declined, citing the weakness of the case, and staff levels at his office, which had declined under the Bush administration despite Nevada's growth.

Then the e-mails emerged recently revealing Ward's harsh words about him.

"It just enraged me," Bogden said. "You see those e-mails and the things they say about me and the other attorneys, people who are very respected. And they are just demeaning and belittling and unprofessional."

Bogden's .571 high school batting record still stands at Ohio's Sandusky High School, where he graduated in 1974. After college, where he double-majored in management and marketing, and earned a bachelor of science degree, he went on to the Toledo College of Law, where he earned his law degree. After passing the bar exam, he lived with his parents while trying to figure out what to do with his life.

He laughs when asked whether the sort of "Walter Mitty-ish" descriptions in newspapers - quiet, bashful about the media - are accurate. "No, I'm no Walter Mitty," he says.

He still digs the Dave Clark Five, and he absolutely can't get enough of Las Vegas.

"I have - had - the best of both worlds," he says. "I had an office down there and up here. So I could go down there and enjoy the hot weather, sit by the pool. Then come back up here for snow-capped mountains."

Now, he doesn't know what he will do, other than try to restore his reputation.

"I'm also trying to do some yard work," he said, a garden area by his front sidewalk full of mostly wood bark. "You should have seen it before."