Before there was Purgegate

By Scott Horton

It seems strange to me that the current focus on the eight dismissed U.S. attorneys has revived so little interest in a striking precursor: the dismissal of the U.S. attorney for Guam which played a central role in the Abramoff scandal.

“Back in the spring of 2002, when Guam's then-Governor, Carl Gutierrez, found himself in the cross-hairs of a federal corruption probe, he hired disgraced über-lobbyist Jack Abramoff to force out the US territory's longtime acting US Attorney, Frederick Black. ”I don't care if they appoint bozo the clown, we need to get rid of Fred Black,“ Abramoff wrote to colleagues in March 2002.”

Avi Berman reports on this in the April 16 issue of The Nation. Berman places Gonzales' deputy, Paul J. McNulty, squarely in the center of this scandal, characterizing him as a sort of political “Mr. Fix It” in the Justice Department. “McNulty,” he writes, “was kind of the fireman at Justice. He was the guy trying to run around and put a lid on things that could become political, especially with Abramoff.”

McNulty may have also intervened in the IG's investigation of Black's removal. According to sources close to the investigation, when Black contradicted Administration testimony, he was told by IG investigators, “That's not the scope we were given by DAG”--at the time, McNulty. McNulty's office declined to comment, and the IG's counsel, Cynthia Schnedar, says, “The conclusion we reached was a fair and appropriate one.” The story also puts Kyle P. Sampson at the center of the affair, and quotes him as stating that Gonzales had conferred with President Bush about replacing Black—a contention which the White House has aggressively denied.