[Dialogue] Cheney Blocked Official's Promotion

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Thursday, June 7, 2007 by Associated Press <http://www.ap.org>


Cheney Blocked Official's Promotion

By Laurie Kellman

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney blocked the promotion of a Justice
Department official involved in a bedside standoff over President Bush's
eavesdropping program, a Senate committee learned Wednesday.

In a written account, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey said Cheney
warned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that he would oppose the promotion
of a department official who once threatened to resign over the program.

 <http://www.commondreams.org/archive/wp-content/photos/0607_04_1.jpg>
Gonzales eventually decided against trying to promote Patrick Philbin to
principal deputy solicitor general, Comey said.

"I understood that someone at the White House communicated to Attorney
General Gonzales that the vice president would oppose the appointment if the
attorney general pursued the matter," Comey wrote. "The attorney general
chose not to pursue it."

Comey responded to written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee
chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt.

Comey's account provides new detail in a sprawling, Democratic-elicited
story of how much the White House influences the department's operations.

Also Wednesday, the department released 39 new pages of internal e-mails and
documents that partly detail efforts by the department's former White House
liaison, Monica Goodling, in January 2006 to obtain authority to hire and
fire political staffers.

"Ok to send up directly to me, outside of system," Goodling wrote in a Jan.
19, 2006, e-mail to Paul Corts, the assistant attorney general for
administration.

The Democrats' investigation into whether the firings of eight U.S.
attorneys were improperly political led to testimony last month in which
Comey disclosed details of a hospital visit on March 10, 2004, to the
attorney general at that time, John Ashcroft.

Democrats contend the story shows the White House's heavy-handed influence
over the department, including the agency's role to periodically endorse the
National Security Agency's eavesdropping program.

Philbin was one of two Justice Department officials who led a review of the
classified program and provided some of the research that led Comey to
refuse to endorse it, Comey said.

"Mr. Comey has confirmed what we suspected for a while that White House
hands guided Justice Department business," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.,
who is leading the Senate's investigation. "The vice president's
fingerprints are all over the effort to strong-arm Justice on the NSA
program."

Cheney spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, declined to respond, citing the
administration's policy of not commenting on personnel matters.

According to Comey, he and Ashcroft had refused to recertify the legality of
Bush's warrantless wiretapping program for reasons that are classified. When
Ashcroft fell ill with pancreatitis, the powers of his office transferred to
Comey, Ashcroft's deputy.

During a meeting at the White House on March 9, 2004, Comey told Cheney he
would not certify the program, he said in his written remarks Wednesday.

The next night, then-White House Counsel Gonzales and Bush's chief of staff,
Andy Card, went to Ashcroft's bedside in intensive care unit at George
Washington University Hospital. Tipped to the impending visit, Comey and his
aides were present when Gonzales urged Ashcroft to recertify the program.
Ashcroft, who just had gall bladder surgery, refused, Comey testified last
month.

The White House recertified the program without the department's
endorsement. That led Comey, Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, Philbin
and other department officials to prepare their resignations. Faced with a
mass walkout at the top of his Justice Department, Bush relented and changes
in the eavesdropping program that Comey and Mueller said were necessary to
win their approval.

According to Comey, Philbin later was considered for a promotion to be
principal deputy solicitor general - lieutenant to the lawyer who represents
the government before the Supreme Court.

"It was my understanding that the vice president's office blocked that
appointment," Comey said in his written remarks.

Copyright C 2007 The Associated Press.

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org 

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/07/1723/

 

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