Quantcast
 


Emails show Washington Post reporter coordinated attorney firing story with White House

By Muriel Kane

Published: August 11, 2009
Updated 6 months ago




Update: Ombudsman to review email exchanges

When a scandal involving the Bush administration’s firing of US Attorneys broke in early 2007, initial coverage by the Washington Post supported the idea that the firings had been politically motivated. That approach, however, quickly changed to one that was far more friendly to the White House.

The House Judiciary Committee has now released over 5400 pages of Bush administration and Republican Party emails (pdf) related to the firings. Several of these emails suggest coordination between Post reporter John Solomon and Bush administration officials on how to manage the Post’s coverage of the widening scandal.

In one email to a Department of Justice spokesperson, Solomon even appears to be suggesting what spin to apply in order to minimize damage from the revelations.

“Thanks for any help you can give on this,” Solomon wrote to Brian Roehrkasse on the morning of March 2, 2007. “I think some tick tock along these lines will bring some perspective to how the process occurred. Of course, the White House counsel’s office had to sign off. Of course an administration in its last two years looks for some fresh blood to inject into jobs. Of course, DOJ’s analysis of prosecutors goes beyond performance evaluations to achievements or failures on policy issues like immigration. I think we can get this just right with your help.”

Solomon, who had gone to work for the Post just a few months earlier, in December 2006, left that paper to become executive editor of the conservative-leaning Washington Times in January 2008.

On March 1, the day before Solomon’s email, the Washington Post had published a story by writer Dan Eggen, reporting allegations by the departing US Attorney in New Mexico, David Iglesias, that “two members of Congress attempted to pressure him to speed up a probe of Democrats just before the November elections.”

“I didn’t give them what they wanted,” Iglesias explained. “That was probably a political problem that caused them to go to the White House or whomever and complain that I wasn’t a team player.”

In response, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees had announced “that they would issue subpoenas for testimony from Iglesias and other fired prosecutors if necessary.”

The next day, as administration officials frantically tried to figure out how to minimize the damage, Solomon wrote to White House spokesperson Dana Perino.

“I’ve been asked to help out Dan Eggen for a day on the prosecutor purge story and I got some interesting details this morning I’d like to run by you,” Solomon told Perino. “It illuminates the White House role, which has been absent from the media coverage but is the true target for the upcoming congressional hearings by Democrats. … I’ll go over everything I’ve been told and see what we can get formally confirmed.”

Solomon’s email to Roehrkasse, indicating the approach he intended to take, followed about an hour later.

Discussion of the proposed article then continued among White House officials throughout the afternoon, with particular objections being raised over Solomon’s description of the firings as part of “a much larger process that began at the start of 2006 when White House political affairs under Sara Taylor identified several GOP supporters who still needed appointments across government before Bush left office.”

“I have no recollection of any such list,” Taylor wrote to Perino, Rove and others. And Rove himself chimed in to say, “He has been told the wrong thing.”

When the story appeared the next day under the joint byline of John Solomon and Dan Eggen, it contained no mention of a list of replacements. Instead, it merely cited unnamed administration officials as stating that “the list of prosecutors was assembled last fall, based largely on complaints from members of Congress, law enforcement officials and career Justice Department lawyers.”

According to those officials, the firings were not purely “performance-related,” as the White House had previously attempted to claim, but came out of “a decision to pick the prosecutors we felt would most effectively carry out the department’s policies and priorities.”

The Bush administration’s satisfaction with Solomon’s story can be seen in an exchange of emails on the day of its publication.

“This is not an entirely accurate picture of what happened, but I think this story is far better than most recent post stories on this subject,” Brian Roehrkasse wrote.

And Kyle Sampson — the counselor to then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who would be forced to resign just nine days later for his role in the scandal — responded, “Great work, Brian. Kudos to you and the DAG.”

By “DAG,” Sampson was apparently referring to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who had been central to the claims that the firings were performance-related and that the White House had played little role in them. Gonzales would admit on March 13 that McNulty’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee had been incorrect.

Update: DougJ at the blog Balloon Juice quoted from the above story on Wednesday morning and then added, “I just contacted the ombudsman, Andy Alexander, and he says that he will review the exchanges and then decide whether to address the matter.”

Raw Story has also written to Alexander at the Post and received confirmation that he will look at the emails, along with a caution not “to read anything into that. … I routinely review things like this.”

The function of a newspaper ombudsman like Alexander is to mediate between the paper and its readers. He does not have the power to investigate or to demand accountability.

(with additional research by Ron Brynaert)





19 comments

  

 
Print This Post Printer Friendly  | 
 

Get breaking news alerts: Email/mobile
Email - No spam: