What's missing from the document dump

[maddezmom]

What's missing from the document dump
As we noted earlier today, the documents the Justice Department has produced to the House Judiciary Committee show extensive efforts by Justice Department officials to limit the damage caused by firing eight U.S. attorneys and providing what is euphemistically known as "incomplete" information to Congress.

The documents contain relatively little evidence of White House efforts in the damage-control process. Does that mean the White House wasn't involved? Not exactly. In a letter accompanying its latest document dump, Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling says the Justice Department is simply not handing over to the House Judiciary Committee documents that might tell more about what the White House did.

"We are providing deliberative documents concerning the preparation of the congressional testimony by Department officials in order to clarify the integrity of our process for preparing the testimony," Herling writes. "Except as previously indicated and consistent with long-standing Executive Branch practice, however, we are not providing other documents generated within the Executive Branch for the purpose of responding to congressional (and media) inquiries about the resignations. The appropriate functioning of the separation of powers requires that Executive Branch officials preserve the ability to communicate confidentially as they discuss how to respond to inquiries from a coordinate branch of government. Such robust internal communications would be chilled, if not halted, if they were disclosed, which would substantially impede any agency's ability to respond to congressional oversight requests. That would be detrimental to the operation of both branches and serve no useful purpose."

more:http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2007/03/20/documents/index.html


and from TPM:

(March 21, 2007 -- 03:05 AM EST // link)
Shades of Rose Mary Woods? An 18 day gap?

I think a commenter in our document dump research thread may have been the first to notice that the emails released by the Justice Department seem to have a gap between November 15th and December 4th of last year.

(Our commenter saw it late on the evening of the dump itself -- see the comment date-stamped March 20, 2007 02:19 AM in the research thread)

The firing calls went out on December 7th. But the original plan was to start placing the calls on November 15th. So those eighteen days are pretty key ones.

Mike Allen spotted it this evening in the Politico.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/013171.php

Politico
~snip~
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) suggested on Tuesday that even more U.S. attorneys may have been fired than the eight that have been publicly acknowledged by the White House or Justice Department, although the Vermont Democrat was not able to offer any more information publicly than redacted e-mails between senior administration officials where the names of some prosecutors have been blanked out.

Leahy will seek authority on Thursday from his panel to issue subpoenas to Rove and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel. "Frankly, I would hope the administration would cooperate with us, but if they don't, we will subpoena," Leahy told reporters, repeating a threat that he has made frequently in the past two weeks.

In DOJ documents that were publicly posted by the House Judiciary Committee, there is a gap from mid-November to early December in e-mails and other memos, which was a critical period as the White House and Justice Department reviewed, then approved, which U.S. attorneys would be fired while also developing a political and communications strategy for countering any fallout from the firings.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the Judiciary panel, noted that six of the eight fired prosecutors were involved in corruption investigations focusing on GOP lawmakers or officials, and she questioned whether the firings were an effort by Republicans to protect their own.


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0307/3227.html