Purge

James Comey was John Ashcroft's assistant AG. Shortly after Ashcroft was replaced by Torture Gonzales, James Comey resigned. Today, Comey testified before the Senate committee investigating the Gonzales DoJ attorney purges. Unfortunately, I was not able to watch the testimony, and so I have been reading some blog and news articles to get the flavor of what went down. I'll try to be relatively brief relaying it.

It seems that after US Attorney Bud Cummins was fired, he received an email from the former Assistant AG in which Comey wrote:

"I will not sit by and watch good people smeared," Comey wrote in early March. "What's that quotation about all that's necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to remain silent?"

I wonder if he chose his words with intent. Evil.

Let's take a look at this man, as he performed his office. Going back to the news when Comey retired, an article at Law.com said,

The DOJ announced Comey's resignation Wednesday afternoon.

Comey has not yet found a new job, according to a DOJ source, because to even look for something new could be perceived as unethical.

What? No revolving door for Comey? Even avoiding the perception of being unethical? Hello, Paul Wolfowitz. Keep in mind that Comey is a Republican, appointed to his AG position by the Bush administration.

As the Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Comey "directed several high-profile securities and fraud investigations, including WorldCom, Adelphia and ImClone." Bush nominated him to the AG position in 2003. I can't tell you how the apparently honest and dedicated Comey slipped through the Bush Administration vetting routine. But the Law.com article goes on to report...

He was rumored to be a candidate for attorney general after his boss, John Ashcroft, stepped down. But his chances weren't good from the start. Some of the president's top advisers felt he was insensitive to political concerns, according to a story in Legal Times, a Recorder affiliate.

Among other tensions, Comey pushed for the DOJ to release so-called torture memos to the media and for controversial legal analyses regarding the use of torture to be rewritten. He also appointed a special prosecutor to take over the investigation into whether a White House official leaked a Central Intelligence Agency operative's name to the media.

And that's how Patrick Fitzgerald got the Plame case.

Comey was against torture. No wonder he wasn't chosen to replace Ashcroft. Bush needed an AG who would condone and permit him to use torture.

When asked about the CIA leak investigation during his Senate confirmation hearing, Comey said: "I don't care about politics. I don't care about expediency. I care about doing the right thing."

Cleary, he would never do in a position of power in a Bush administration.

Comey knew the score. In February of 2006, Newsweek reported on the occasion of Comeys' resignation, in an article about a small group of attorneys within the administration going up against the Vice President's office and the administration's "riding rough-shod" over the Constitution.

Comey thanked "people who came to my office, or my home, or called my cell phone late at night, to quietly tell me when I was about to make a mistake; they were the people committed to getting it right—and to doing the right thing—whatever the price. These people," said Comey, "know who they are. Some of them did pay a price for their commitment to right, but they wouldn't have it any other way."

When Comey refused reauthorization of Bush's secret eavesdropping program (during a hospital stay by Ashcroft), Bush started referring to him snidely as Cuomey (apparently in reference to Mario Cuomo, a liberal Democratic New York Governor).

On the 31st of December, 2005, Firedoglake reported:

Comey announced his resignation from the Justice Department in March 2005. And when BushCo. tried to appoint a Skull & Bones crony to oversee Fitzgerald, Comey did an end run around them and appointed the extremely ethical David Margolis to the task as his parting shot out the door.

It seems that before his resignation, Comey had generated his own list of US attorneys to be fired. Unsurprisingly, the list was not the same as the one that the Gonzales DoJ finally used. According to TPM Muckraker,

A former Justice official explained the discrepancy: "Comey's definition of incompetence turned out to be quite different from Sampson's and had nothing to do with politics."

In fact, Comey commented in today's testimony about those who were purged:

"My experience with the U.S. attorneys just listed was very positive," said Comey, now general counsel of Lockheed Martin Corp. Firing them for poor performance would not be "consistent with my experience," he said. "I had very positive encounters with these folks."

The Gavel has a short clip of Comey's testimony today, including this quote:

“If that was going on [hiring and firing for political purposes], that strikes at the core of what the Department of Justice is. You just cannot do that, you can’t hire assistant US Attorneys based on political affilation, because it deprives the Department of its lifeblood, which is the ability to stand up and have juries of all stripes believe what you say, and have sheriffs and judges and jailers and the people we deal with trust the Department of Justice."

And Firedoglake also has an excellent timeline of what's been brewing at the DoJ (and for how long), including Comey's influence and acts (and including Comey's farewell speech at DoJ).

I think we sometimes forget that there are honest Republicans with integrity.

We don't see many of them in this administration.