Interesting article on inside-DOJ struggles

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Paul Levy <plevy () citizen org>
Date: January 30, 2006 7:38:20 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Interesting article on inside-DOJ struggles

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.
.....
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11079547/site/newsweek/print/1/ 
displaymode/1098/


Paul Alan Levy
Public Citizen Litigation Group
1600 - 20th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 588-1000
http://www.citizen.org/litigation



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