A New Chief of Staff for Gonzales

By Scott Horton

The Department of Justice today announced the appointment of Kevin O’Connor, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, as Alberto Gonzales' new chief of staff. It also stated that O’Connor would continue to run the U.S. attorney’s office in Hartford even as he assumed managerial responsibilities for the Justice Department in Washington. The double appointment raised immediate questions, particularly in view of statements by William Moschella, the Justice Department’s number three, that absenteeism was a principal factor in decisions to cashier the eight U.S. attorneys who were dismissed in December.

Interim chief of staff Chuck Rosenberg will now return to the Eastern District of Virginia, a position he also continued to hold while running Gonzales’ office. Rosenberg has had responsibility for a large number of complaints involving contractors involved in the war on terror, including a number of contractors linked to the worse abuses at Abu Ghraib in the Department of the Army’s Fay-Jones Report. CID reports on these contractors, recommending criminal prosecution, have been sitting with Rosenberg since he assumed office. No action has been taken in any of the cases. In response to inquiries about the status of these cases, Rosenberg has consistently said he has had difficulty arranging to interview witnesses from Iraq. However, I am informed by attorneys involved in the case, that witnesses have repeatedly offered themselves to Rosenberg, and he has said he had no time to meet with them. It seems increasingly clear that Rosenberg has a special role to play with respect to war crimes investigations, and that prosecution does not figure as a part of it.