Month: May 2007

by hilzoy

From the Washington Post:

“World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz resigned yesterday, effective June 30, yielding to demands from governments around the world that he leave to end the ethics controversy that has consumed the institution.

Wolfowitz’s resignation, negotiated in recent days with the bank’s executive board, closed the leadership crisis that has essentially paralyzed the institution for almost two months. It preempted what had been a growing likelihood that the board would reprimand or fire him after a committee report found that he broke ethics rules in awarding a substantial raise to his girlfriend. (…)

Staff members described a celebratory mood inside the World Bank’s headquarters near the White House, with people embracing, singing songs and hoisting flutes of Champagne.”

A few suggestions for his successor:

(1) If you don’t want to resign under a cloud, don’t create one.

(2) If you think people are out to get you, don’t hand them ammunition.

(3) If you are worried about your reputation, remember that it is not enhanced by clinging so tightly to your job that when you are finally dragged away, you leave claw marks.

(4) Insisting that the Bank “clear your name” is pointless. Everyone knows that the nice things people say in order to get rid of someone they despise mean nothing. If you insist that they say such things, all that will happen is that people will be reminded that adults should not throw temper tantrums in public. Moreover, your willingness to put something this petty and stupid above the needs of an institution whose aim is to eliminate poverty will destroy any tattered remnants of your reputation.

Seriously …

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by hilzoy

From the Financial Times:

“Paul Wolfowitz’s handling of a secondment deal for his girlfriend Shaha Riza broke the World Bank’s code of conduct, three staff rules and the terms of his contract as bank president, the final report by a panel investigating his role has concluded.

The report asks the bank’s board to consider, in the light of its findings, “whether Mr Wolfowitz will be able to provide the leadership needed to ensure that the bank continues to operate to the fullest extent possible in achieving its mandate”.

It suggested the board should take into account in making this judgment the “damage done to the reputation of the World Bank group and its president, the lack of confidence expressed by internal and external stakeholders in the present leadership, the erosion of operational effectiveness…and the important strategy and governance challenges the World Bank group is facing”.

Following the release of the panel’s report, 37 of the bank’s 39 country directors sent a letter to the board demanding it “practice what it preaches on governance and accountability.”

The letter, obtained by the Financial Times, stopped short of directly recommending that Mr Wolfowitz go. (…)

The report concluded that Mr Wolfowitz broke staff rule 3.01 on professional conduct, rule 5.02 on external service and 6.01 on pay.

It stated that the initial pay rise, 8 per cent a year, later rises and presumed additional promotion on Ms Riza’s return to the bank were excessive and never envisaged by the bank’s ethics committee.

It said Mr Wolfowitz’s attitude evidenced “questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self interest”.

The report also concluded that Mr Wolfowitz violated the terms of his contract, which require him to abide by the bank’s code of conduct.”

Actually, the report (pdf) also found that Wolfowitz’ contract “requires Mr. Wolfowitz to avoid any conflict of interest, real or apparent”, and that he violated that provision as well.

More below.

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by hilzoy

This tells you almost* all you need to know about this administration: when they learn that one of their programs is illegal, they don’t stop immediately and try to figure out how to learn what they need to know within the law. No: they go screeching off to the the hospital to try to pester John Ashcroft, who doesn’t actually have the power they need, into signing off on it, because they know that the person he has left in charge in his absence won’t sign off on a violation of law, and if pestering a seriously ill and possibly disoriented person who’s in intensive care is what they have to do to get their way, then the law and compassion be damned.

From ThinkProgress, James Comey’s testimony. [UPDATE: Via Marty Lederman, the full transcript (pdf).] He seems to be talking about the warrantless surveillance program:

“COMEY: We had concerns as to our ability to certify its legality, which was our obligation for the program to be renewed.

The attorney general was taken that very afternoon to George Washington Hospital, where he went into intensive care and remained there for over a week. And I became the acting attorney general.

And over the next week — particularly the following week, on Tuesday — we communicated to the relevant parties at the White House and elsewhere our decision that as acting attorney general I would not certify the program as to its legality and explained our reasoning in detail, which I will not go into here. Nor am I confirming it’s any particular program. That was Tuesday that we communicated that.

The next day was Wednesday, March the 10th, the night of the hospital incident. And I was headed home at about 8 o’clock that evening, my security detail was driving me. And I remember exactly where I was — on Constitution Avenue — and got a call from Attorney General Ashcroft’s chief of staff telling me that he had gotten a call… (…)
That he had gotten a call from Mrs. Ashcroft from the hospital. She had banned all visitors and all phone calls. So I hadn’t seen him or talked to him because he was very ill.

And Mrs. Ashcroft reported that a call had come through, and that as a result of that call Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales were on their way to the hospital to see Mr. Ashcroft. (…)

Told my security detail that I needed to get to George Washington Hospital immediately. They turned on the emergency equipment and drove very quickly to the hospital.

I got out of the car and ran up — literally ran up the stairs with my security detail.

SCHUMER: What was your concern? You were in obviously a huge hurry.

COMEY: I was concerned that, given how ill I knew the attorney general was, that there might be an effort to ask him to overrule me when he was in no condition to that.

SCHUMER: Right, OK.

COMEY: I was worried about him, frankly.

And so I raced to the hospital room, entered. And Mrs. Ashcroft was standing by the hospital bed, Mr. Ashcroft was lying down in the bed, the room was darkened. And I immediately began speaking to him, trying to orient him as to time and place, and try to see if he could focus on what was happening, and it wasn’t clear to me that he could. He seemed pretty bad off. (…)

I tried to see if I could help him get oriented. As I said, it wasn’t clear that I had succeeded.

I went out in the hallway. Spoke to Director Mueller by phone. He was on his way. I handed the phone to the head of the security detail and Director Mueller instructed the FBI agents present not to allow me to be removed from the room under any circumstances. And I went back in the room. (…)

And it was only a matter of minutes that the door opened and in walked Mr. Gonzales, carrying an envelope, and Mr. Card. They came over and stood by the bed. They greeted the attorney general very briefly. And then Mr. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there — to seek his approval for a matter, and explained what the matter was — which I will not do.

And Attorney General Ashcroft then stunned me. He lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me — drawn from the hour-long meeting we’d had a week earlier — and in very strong terms expressed himself, and then laid his head back down on the pillow, seemed spent, and said to them, But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not the attorney general.

SCHUMER: But he expressed his reluctance or he would not sign the statement that they — give the authorization that they had asked, is that right?

COMEY: Yes.

And as he laid back down, he said, But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not the attorney general. There is the attorney general, and he pointed to me, and I was just to his left.

The two men did not acknowledge me. They turned and walked from the room.”

Comey was prepared to resign over this:

“SCHUMER: OK.

Can you tell us what happened the next day?

COMEY: The program was reauthorized without us and without a signature from the Department of Justice attesting as to its legality. And I prepared a letter of resignation, intending to resign the next day, Friday, March the 12th.

SCHUMER: OK.

And that was the day, as I understand it, of the Madrid train bombings. (…) Yet, even in light of that, you still felt so strongly that you drafted a letter of resignation.

COMEY: Yes.

SCHUMER: OK.

And why did you decide to resign? COMEY: I just believed…

SCHUMER: Or to offer your resignation, is a better way to put it?

COMEY: I believed that I couldn’t — I couldn’t stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis. I just simply couldn’t stay.”

Apparently, Ashcroft, Ashcroft’s chief of staff, Comey’s chief of staff, FBI Director Mueller, and perhaps others were prepared to join him. Good for them.

“SCHUMER: OK.

So let me just (inaudible) — this is an amazing story, has an amazing pattern of fact that you recall. […] So in sum, it was your belief that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card were trying to take advantage of an ill and maybe disoriented man to try and get him to do something that many, at least in the Justice Department, thought was against the law? Was that a correct summation?

COMEY: I was concerned that this was an effort to do an end-run around the acting attorney general and to get a very sick man to approve something that the Department of Justice had already concluded — the department as a whole — was unable to be certified as to its legality. And that was my concern.”

One of the two men who appeared in Ashcroft’s room in the ICU to try to get him to approve the program was Alberto Gonzales. And that tells you everything you need to know about Alberto Gonzales’ character and his commitment to the rule of law.

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by hilzoy

From the Washington Post:

“President Bush would veto the new Iraq spending bill being developed by House Democrats because it includes unacceptable language restricting funding, White House press secretary Tony Snow said Wednesday morning.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Snow said of the bill: “There are restrictions on funding and there are also some of the spending items that were mentioned in the first veto message that are still in the bill.””

The quick version of the bill (i.e., the one you’d get from the media) is: this bill funds the war for two months, after which the President has to submit a report on the Iraqis’ progress towards meeting various benchmarks. (He doesn’t have to actually certify that the Iraqis are making any actual progress; he just has to submit a report.) The President might not like either provision, but I honestly can’t see how either can be viewed as a good reason to veto the bill. If the President does veto it, I think he runs a very serious risk of being seen as the unreasonable one (as, in fact, he will be.)

The longer version of the bill is below the fold. But I can’t see how it helps his case either.

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by hilzoy

Via TPM: Murray Waas has a really important story in the National Journal. It’s worth reading in its entorety, since Waas reports that Alberto Gonzales first took complete control of all hiring and firing authority of DoJ political appointees who don’t need Senate confirmation — which is to say, large swaths of the upper levels of the DoJ — and then delegated that authority to Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling. Recall that both Sampson and Goodling are in their thirties, neither has much legal experience at all, and Goodling was the White House liaison.

What I think this means is that the political operation at the White House was taking over the upper levels of the Department of Justice in a way that goes far, far beyond the sorts of politicization that are usually regarded as scandalous. It’s scandalous if the DoJ decides to prosecute someone Just because that person is a political enemy, or not to prosecute someone because he or she is a political ally. It’s way, way past scandalous if the White House political operation tries to make the DoJ into its enforcement arm.

Excerpts:

“Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides — who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys — extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. A copy of the order and other Justice Department records related to the conception and implementation of the order were provided to National Journal.

In the order, Gonzales delegated to his then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, and his White House liaison “the authority, with the approval of the Attorney General, to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration” of virtually all non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department, including all of the department’s political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation. Monica Goodling became White House liaison in April 2006, the month after Gonzales signed the order.

The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level. Department records show that the personnel authority was delegated to the two aides at about the same time they were working with the White House in planning the firings of a dozen U.S. attorneys, eight of whom were, in fact, later dismissed.

A senior executive branch official familiar with the delegation of authority said in an interview that — as was the case with the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the selection of their replacements — the two aides intended to work closely with White House political aides and the White House counsel’s office in deciding which senior Justice Department officials to dismiss and whom to appoint to their posts. “It was an attempt to make the department more responsive to the political side of the White House and to do it in such a way that people would not know it was going on,” the official said.”

More excerpts and comments below the fold.

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