Sen. Dianne Feinstein on C-span today: As near as she can tell, it was Justice Department official William Moschella on the administration side who was responsible for slipping the provision into the Patriot Act in 2006 that apparently went unnoticed by many Senators, that enabled interim US attorneys to be appointed and serve without confirmation. What was the motive for that provision and how does that explanation fit with what Moschella and his colleagues have been testifying to before Congress? Was it their intention from the beginning to use the Patriot Act provision to make US attorney appointments that did not require confirmation, not for national security emergencies, but for political purposes such as promoting former Rove deputy Tim Griffin, as the Department soon moved to use it? Would be interesting to see the email traffic on that. It's also not hard to imagine how the FBI might have absorbed the wider apparent DOJ culture of permissiveness that it was okay to falsely claim "exigent" national security circumstances in order to avoid excessive bureaucratic hassles. As Gonzales' former chief of staff Kyle Sampson wrote in an email, "I think we should gum this to death. ... If [the Senators] ultimately say ‘no never’ (and the longer we can forestall that the better), then we can tell them we’ll look for other candidates, ask them for recommendations, interview their candidates, and otherwise run out the clock. All this should be done in ‘good faith’ of course.” Is it a stretch to wonder if the FBI misused national security letters and exigent letters on the same "good faith" terms?

Posted by Laura at March 18, 2007 03:55 PM