In Justice: Inside the Scandal That Rocked the Bush Administration - Hardcover

Iglesias, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0470261978 ISBN 13: 9780470261972

Verlag: WILEY, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

The Bush administration's drive to politicize the Justice Department reached a new low with the wrongful firing of seven U.S. Attorneys in late 2006. Their action has ignited public outrage on a scale that far surpassed the reaction to any of the Bush administration's other political debacles. David Iglesias was one of those federal prosecutors, and now he tells his story.

Iglesias has long served in the Navy as part of the JAG corps. One of his earliest cases, about an assaulted Marine in Guantanamo Bay, became the basis for the movie A Few Good Men. When Bush chose him to become the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, it was a dream come true. He was a core member of Karl Rove's idealized Republican Party of the future -- handsome, Hispanic, evangelical, and a military veteran. The dream came to an abrupt end when Senator Pete Domenici improperly called Iglesias, wanting him to indict high-level Democrats before the 2006 elections. When Iglesias refused, the line went dead. Iglesias was fired just weeks later. First, he was devastated. Then, he was angry. Now, he is speaking out.

Iglesias recounts his interactions with Bush, Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and other key players as he takes readers into his time at the Justice Department to reveal what top Republican officials said and did, and how they subverted justice.

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DAVID IGLESIAS served as United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico from 2001 to 2007. He headed a panel that advised former Attorney General John Ashcroft on border security issues. A former White House Fellow, he is also a captain in the U.S. Navy Reserve.

DAVIN SEAY is the coauthor of numerous books, including With God on Our Side: One Man's War against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military.

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David Iglesias's first encounter with Alberto Gonzales was when he was White House counsel in 2001. Something Gonzales said really stuck in his mind. "This is a tough town," Gonzales told him. "They are out to destroy the president, and it is my job to protect him." Who knew he would even break the law to do it?

The Bush administration's drive to politicize the Justice Department reached a new low with the wrongful firing of seven U.S. Attorneys in late 2006. Their action has ignited public outrage on a scale that far surpassed the reaction to any of the Bush administration's other political debacles. David Iglesias was one of those federal prosecutors, and now he tells his story.

Iglesias has long served in the navy as part of the JAG Corps. One of his earliest cases, concerning an assaulted marine in Guantanamo Bay, became the basis for the movie A Few Good Men. When Bush chose Iglesias to become the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, it was a dream come true. He was a core member of Karl Rove's idealized Republican Party of the future?handsome, Hispanic, evangelical, and a military veteran. The dream came to an abrupt end when Senator Pete Domenici improperly called Iglesias, asking him to indict high-level Democrats before the 2006 elections. When Iglesias refused, the line went dead. Iglesias was fired just weeks later. First he was devastated. Then he was angry. Now he is speaking out.

Packed with previously unrevealed facts, In Justice follows Iglesias and his colleagues, who would soon be known as the Justice League, as they pieced together the sources and purpose of the conspiracy against them. In fascinating detail, it reveals how various members of the group viewed their own dismissals, reacted to threats from Justice Department officials designed to ensure their silence, and struggled to find a way to respond to the growing furor over the case.

Complete with insights into the power and responsibilities of U.S. Attorneys and an impassioned plea for their historic independence, the rule of law, and insulation from politics, In Justice is a compelling, real-life political thriller that takes you deep inside the Bush administration's darkest moment.

Aus dem Klappentext

David Iglesias's first encounter with Alberto Gonzales was when he was White House counsel in 2001. Something Gonzales said really stuck in his mind. "This is a tough town," Gonzales told him. "They are out to destroy the president, and it is my job to protect him." Who knew he would even break the law to do it?

The Bush administration's drive to politicize the Justice Department reached a new low with the wrongful firing of seven U.S. Attorneys in late 2006. Their action has ignited public outrage on a scale that far surpassed the reaction to any of the Bush administration's other political debacles. David Iglesias was one of those federal prosecutors, and now he tells his story.

Iglesias has long served in the navy as part of the JAG Corps. One of his earliest cases, concerning an assaulted marine in Guantanamo Bay, became the basis for the movie A Few Good Men. When Bush chose Iglesias to become the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, it was a dream come true. He was a core member of Karl Rove's idealized Republican Party of the future?handsome, Hispanic, evangelical, and a military veteran. The dream came to an abrupt end when Senator Pete Domenici improperly called Iglesias, asking him to indict high-level Democrats before the 2006 elections. When Iglesias refused, the line went dead. Iglesias was fired just weeks later. First he was devastated. Then he was angry. Now he is speaking out.

Packed with previously unrevealed facts, In Justice follows Iglesias and his colleagues, who would soon be known as the Justice League, as they pieced together the sources and purpose of the conspiracy against them. In fascinating detail, it reveals how various members of the group viewed their own dismissals, reacted to threats from Justice Department officials designed to ensure their silence, and struggled to find a way to respond to the growing furor over the case.

Complete with insights into the power and responsibilities of U.S. Attorneys and an impassioned plea for their historic independence, the rule of law, and insulation from politics, In Justice is a compelling, real-life political thriller that takes you deep inside the Bush administration's darkest moment.

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In Justice

Inside the Scandal That Rocked the Bush AdministrationBy David Iglesias

John Wiley & Sons

Copyright © 2008 David Iglesias
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-470-26197-2

Chapter One

For Such a Time as This

We have all experienced those moments when a shattering event overtakes and overwhelms us, changing our lives forever. As a nation, we lived through such a time on September 11, 2001, when nineteen men altered the course of history. Before that, you can point to November 22, 1963, when one individual rocked the foundations of our society, assassinating President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, or June 6, 1944, when thousands of Americans gave their lives in the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

I consider it one of the ironies of history that my particular "day that will live in infamy" occurred on December 7, 2006, exactly sixty-five years after the Japanese launched the sneak attack that took us into World War II. Of course, I'm not comparing what happened to me that afternoon to any such epic date with destiny. At the same time, however, I realize that my personal Pearl Harbor Day is not without its own historic resonance. From that moment on, things were not the same, for me or for the country I'd so proudly served. I'd arrived at a point when my history intersected with America's history in a way that would change-and is still changing-both America's justice system and me.

I hadn't the slightest clue of what was about to happen as I walked down a long departure corridor at Baltimore-Washington International Airport to catch a flight home to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was cold outside. The high windows overlooked the busy tarmac, and a winter sun slanted across the crowds of holiday travelers hurrying to their gates. Bright plastic and tinsel decorations hung overhead. I was feeling a bit of yuletide cheer myself, anticipating my return home, where the sunny Southwestern winter stood in sharp contrast to the dreary drizzle of the East Coast urban hub I was gratefully escaping.

New Mexico is a particularly beautiful place to come home to at that time of year. The snow occasionally blankets the steep ascents of the Sandia Mountains, which rise more than ten thousand feet in magnificent relief right outside my front door. I had spent much of my life in the state, in Gallup, Santa Fe, and, finally, Albuquerque, where I had put down roots, started a family, and launched my career. But even after all those years, New Mexico never fails to live up to its billing as the Land of Enchantment.

Home, of course, was where my wife and four daughters-sixteen-year-old Claudia, fifteen-year-old Amanda, thirteen-year-old Marisa, and the youngest, ten-year-old Sophia-would be gearing up for the family's own seasonal celebration. As Christians, Cyndy and I had always tried to impress on our girls that there was more to the birthday of Jesus Christ than just another opportunity to indulge in conspicuous consumption. But it's hard to deflect any youngster's anticipation of presents under the tree, and I looked forward to sharing their excitement. Although Christmas honors the Advent season, happy kids are what Christmas is all about.

Except, as it turned out, on that particular Christmas. Our holiday that year would be filled with confusion, doubt, and rage, and it would begin right at the moment when I took out my BlackBerry for one last check before I boarded my flight. What immediately caught my eye was a message from my secretary, Lois Golden, the extremely competent assistant whom I'd taken with me through two previous jobs. "Call Mike Battle," was the text, and I stopped as the noisy crowd surged around me. I looked at the words on the glowing screen, wondering exactly what they might mean.

While it was certainly not unprecedented to get a call from Mike Battle, it was nevertheless unusual and just a bit unnerving. Mike had been director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA) since the summer of 2005, after serving for three years as the U.S. Attorney in the Western District of New York. As the arm of the Justice Department that oversaw the activities and the performance of U.S. Attorneys across the country, the EOUSA served as an intermediary between the field offices and Washington and as a conduit for various policy directives from on high. But neither I nor any other U.S. Attorney reported to Battle. We answered only to the attorney general and the deputy attorney general. As a result, our contacts were minimal with "Main Justice," as we called the DOJ's magisterial headquarters on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 9th Street in the heart of the capital.

I'll never forget the first time I visited that building, which was named after slain attorney general Robert Kennedy. I had come to apply for a position in the Civil Rights Section in 1988-as luck would have it, precisely the same time that the Justice Department announced a hiring freeze. Nevertheless, I was duly impressed with the inspirational aphorisms carved into the building's marble-adorned walls and the stern visages of the men who had spoken those words. They stared down stoically from their commemorative portraits in the offices where more than ten thousand lawyers-an "untouchable" phalanx of world-class prosecutors-work in what the recruitment brochures refer to as the largest law firm in the world. There is a serene and beautiful fountain in the courtyard, which brought to my mind the words of Martin Luther King Jr., when he quoted the biblical book of Amos and called on justice to "flow on like a river."

Thirteen years later, I was helping to channel a small tributary of that river and would visit the magnificent edifice at least once every few months. But the reality was that virtually all U.S. Attorney cases involved activity within our individual districts. Main Justice became interested only when a particular prosecution took on national implications, especially the kinds of organized crime and drug cartel cases on which it had earned a wholly justified reputation for breaking the backs of syndicates and conspiracies. At our level, EOUSA, at the behest of the attorney general, would actively monitor our caseloads and conviction rates, primarily through a database system dubbed LIONS-Legal Information Office Network System-which tracked specifics on defendants, criminal charges, court appearances, and so forth. Otherwise, U.S. Attorneys were pretty much left alone to oversee their districts within priorities established by the administration.

Yet for all the distance maintained between Main Justice and the U.S. Attorneys' far-flung offices, Battle was widely considered to be "one of us." He'd risen through the ranks, beginning in Buffalo, New York, where he'd worked variously as assistant to the state attorney general and as Assistant U.S. Attorney, as well as helping to found the Federal Public Defender's Office in the city. I had previously worked with him preparing testimony for an immigration subcommittee, and I knew that he understood the realities of prosecutorial work in the trenches. Ever since we'd met, I'd considered Mike a straight shooter. After all, he had been on the regional council of the Boy Scouts of America.

I'd seen Mike a few months earlier, back in October in his Washington office on the second floor of Main Justice, where I'd stopped by to say hello and chat about the seemingly endless requests I'd made for more staff and an increased budget. He seemed a bit worried when I walked into his office, and with good reason. By that time, about half of George W. Bush's...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: WILEY
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0470261978
• ISBN 13: 9780470261972
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 246
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland