You have to wonder whether Fitz would have been sacked

[chieftain]

from his spot as US Attorney for the Chicago area if Karl had still believed he was in danger of being indicted in the Plame case. Although there would have been a firestorm, it would have added ammunition to the RW hacks who were already viciously assaulting Fitz. It will be very interesting to see what the document dump reveals about DOJ's and the WH's plans for Fitz. I believe this was Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre through different means.

[eleny]

1. Agreed

[JuniperLea]

2. Oh yeah!

There was far too much light shining on him at the time...

[ThoughtCriminal]

3. I think the only reason he wasn't fired

Is that it political explosion would have been on a Biblical scale.

[napi21]

4. Did it ever occur to you that Deputy AG James Comey, who appointed

Fitz AFTER Ashcroft recused himself, did that appointment (along with all it's power) on his own without WH approval, and RoveCo realizedthey COULDN'T touch Fitz. Instead, they complained to Ashcroft and he said TS and quit, and Comey quit in Aug 2005 to join Lockheed as Gen. Counsel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Comey

I'm thinkin'this manipulation has been going on for a very long time, and the trip wire was Fitz' appointment that blew a big hole in their plans.

[tiptoe]

5. Here's a Newsweek article about all the players involved: "Palace Revolt" Feb. 6, 2006

Palace Revolt
They were loyal conservatives, and Bush appointees. They fought a quiet battle to rein in the president's power in the war on terror. And they paid a price for it. A NEWSWEEK investigation.
By Daniel Klaidman, Stuart Taylor Jr. and Evan Thomas
Newsweek

Feb. 6, 2006 issue - James Comey, a lanky, 6-foot-8 former prosecutor who looks a little like Jimmy Stewart, resigned as deputy attorney general in the summer of 2005. The press and public hardly noticed. Comey's farewell speech, delivered in the Great Hall of the Justice Department, contained all the predictable, if heartfelt, appreciations. But mixed in among the platitudes was an unusual passage. 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."

One of those people—a former assistant attorney general named Jack Goldsmith—was absent from the festivities and did not, for many months, hear Comey's grateful praise. In the summer of 2004, Goldsmith, 43, had left his post in George W. Bush's Washington to become a professor at Harvard Law School. Stocky, rumpled, genial, though possessing an enormous intellect, Goldsmith is known for his lack of pretense; he rarely talks about his time in government. In liberal Cambridge, Mass., he was at first snubbed in the community and mocked as an atrocity-abetting war criminal by his more knee-jerk colleagues. ICY WELCOME FOR NEW LAW PROF, headlined The Harvard Crimson.

They had no idea. Goldsmith was actually the opposite of what his detractors imagined. For nine months, from October 2003 to June 2004, he had been the central figure in a secret but intense rebellion of a small coterie of Bush administration lawyers. Their insurrection, described to NEWSWEEK by current and former administration officials who did not wish to be identified discussing confidential deliberations, is one of the most significant and intriguing untold stories of the war on terror.

These Justice Department lawyers, backed by their intrepid boss Comey, had stood up to the hard-liners, centered in the office of the vice president, who wanted to give the president virtually unlimited powers in the war on terror. Demanding that the White House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and the Constitution, Goldsmith and the others fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the law. They did so at their peril; ostracized, some were denied promotions, while others left for more comfortable climes in private law firms and academia. Some went so far as to line up private lawyers in 2004, anticipating that the president's eavesdropping program would draw scrutiny from Congress, if not prosecutors. These government attorneys did not always succeed, but their efforts went a long way toward vindicating the principle of a nation of laws and not men.
...

[napi21]

6. WOW! I never read that before. My speculation was totally based upon my assessment

of the way this admin operates, and when you see someone leave, it's rarely because things were great and they really DID want to spend more time with their family!

The most frightening part about being right about this is that by the time Jan 2009 gets here, there won't be ANY honest, dedicated people left in our Gov't! GOD, how I sympathize with the person who IS elected Prez in 08! Thatjob seems insurmountable to me!