Think Progress

Under the Radar

ETHICS -- BUSH ADMINISTRATION TARGETED FORMER MINNESOTA U.S. ATTORNEY IN PURGE: McClatchy newspapers reported Thursday that "the Bush administration considered firing the former U.S. attorney in Minnesota, but he left his job voluntarily before the list of attorney to be ousted was completed." Congressional investigators told reporters that they noticed U.S. Attorney Thomas Heffelfinger's name "on a version of the list that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, began assembling in early 2005." Heffelfinger, who served as the U.S. attorney for Minnesota from September 2001 to February 2006, resigned more than nine months before the Justice Department finalized their list of prosecutors to purge. The list with Heffelfinger's name has been examined by congressional investigators, but was not made public in the thousands of  pages of documents released by the Justice Department since the investigation into the scandal began. Heffelfinger has previously said that politics were not a factor in his decision to step down, but when asked by McClatchy about the early list, he said he "had no indication whatsoever at any point during my service as U.S. attorney that anybody at Justice was less than fully satisfied with my work." He met with Sampson "no less than three times," but says if Sampson had concerns about his performance, "they were never raised." "Heffelfinger's case interests congressional investigators because he worked in one of the states that White House political adviser Karl Rove identified as an escalation battleground, and because he was replaced by a 34-year old Bush administration loyalist who'd been a member of Gonzales' inner circle." Rachel Paulose, Heffelfinger's replacement, has caused turmoil in the Minnesota U.S. attorney's office, where four top staffers voluntarily stepped down in protest of her "highly dictatorial style of managing."

CONGRESS -- RICE 'NOT INCLINED TO COMPLY' WITH CONGRESSIONAL SUBPOENA: Earlier this week, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) issued a subpoena to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for her failure to adequately respond to his multiple requests for information on "the Bush administration's prewar claims about Saddam Hussein's seeking weapons of mass destruction." A defiant Rice said yesterday she is "not inclined to comply" with the subpoena, claiming a precedent of executive privilege and that she has already sufficiently answered Waxman's inquiries. "I addressed these questions, almost the same questions, during my confirmation hearing. This is an issue that has been answered and answered and answered. ... There is a separation of powers and advisers to the president under that constitutional principle are not generally required to go and testify in Congress," she said. But there is no such precedent. Under President Clinton, 31 of his top advisers appeared in 47 different testimonies in front of Congress. Rice's predecessors, including Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, and Warren Christopher, have each testified during their tenures as Secretaries of State. Furthermore, Rice has hardly responded sufficiently to Waxman's inquiries. In his letter, Waxman clearly outlines the questions Rice has failed to answer concerning her knowledge of the fabricated intelligence leading up to the Iraq war. "The gist of [Rice's responses] is that the Secretary either didn't know about the forged evidence or forgot what she knew. Her staff has also suggested that the Secretary is too busy to answer these questions. ... There has been no inquiry about what went wrong inside the White House. There was one person in the White House who had the primary responsibility to get the intelligence about Iraq right: and that was Secretary Rice," Waxman said.

IRAQ -- WHITE HOUSE ATTEMPTS TO DISAVOW 'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED' SPEECH: Yesterday, the Senate passed legislation ordering the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by Oct. 1. President Bush has promised to swiftly veto the bill, which will reach him on Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of his infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech. In yesterday's press briefing, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called it a "ridiculous P.R. stunt" that "is the height of cynicism, and absolutely so unfortunate for the men and women in uniform and their families who are watching the debate." She added, "And I would just remind you that I know that our opponents for years have tried -- have misconstrued that speech. ... The President never said 'mission accomplished' in his speech." In January, spokesman Tony Snow also tried to claim, "[T]he president, on that very speech, said just the opposite, didn't he?" Despite these statements, the President's U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln speech on May 1, 2003, was a public relations stunt announcing the end to "major combat operations in Iraq." He called the "battle of Iraq" a "victory." In his radio address shortly after the speech, Bush boasted, "I delivered good news to the men and women who fought in the cause of freedom: their mission is complete and major combat operations in Iraq have ended." Additionally, as Bob Woodward reported in Oct. 2006, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to pressure the White House to take out of the speech the actual phrase "Mission Accomplished," but he couldn't "get the sign down." Four years ago, the Boston Globe also reported that the Bush administration extended by one day the deployment of the sailors aboard the Lincoln -- which had already been at sea for 10 months, the longest by carrier in 10 years -- as part of its public relations stunt: "[T]he carrier was just 30 miles from shore by the time he arrived, and officials said it had slowed down so that Bush could spend the night on board before the USS Abraham Lincoln docks today."

Think Fast

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) "asked 27 federal departments and agencies yesterday to turn over information related to White House briefings about elections or political candidates," substantially widening the scope of his investigation into potentially illegal partisan activities being conducted by federal officials.

Embattled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz "will be allowed to argue for his job in front of a bank committee investigating him." But one senior bank official "suggested that members of the committee had already decided to recommend Wolfowitz's ouster, casting Monday's appearance as a last-ditch appeal."

World Bank "members of a team drafting a strategy to root out corruption in bank lending, an initiative pressed aggressively by Wolfowitz, sent a letter to the bank board on Thursday complaining that the scandal was jeopardizing their work." The letter was signed by 46 officials.

"NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin held an unusual meeting with the staff of the inspector general who oversees his agency and then ordered that video recordings of the meeting be destroyed, a House panel said yesterday." In a letter, Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) accused Griffin of "improperly trying to influence the watchdog office's decisions on what it should investigate."

84 percent: Number of Americans who believe that human activity is contributing to global warming, according to a new New York Times/CBS News poll. "The poll also found that Americans want the United States to support conservation and to be a global leader in addressing environmental problems." 

In a "startling departure from his previously stated position on civil unions," Mayor Rudy Giuliani came out yesterday "in opposition to the civil union law just passed by the New Hampshire state Senate."

Media Matters documents how during the first presidential primary debate yesterday, several questions about Iraq, immigration, and national security were "based on false premises."

Federal prosecutors have decided not to file insider-trading charges against former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) for his sales of stock in a family-owned chain of hospitals, a charge for which the "legal standards are high."

And finally: Looks like House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) will have to find a new smoking spot. With smoking bans in the House Speaker's Lobby and the Republicans' Capitol Hill Club, Boehner has been lighting up at the National Democratic Club. But that venue will also now be going smoke-free. A spokeswoman for Rep. Allen Boyd (D-FL) said the congressman "won't miss the smoke, but I'm sure he'll miss the bipartisan company."