G.O.P. Anger in Swing State Eased Attorney's Exit
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G.O.P. Anger in Swing State Eased Attorney's Exit
ALBUQUERQUE, March 17 - The first whiff of something suspicious came
when a 15-year-old boy received a voter registration card in the mail.
Soon a second one arrived. Then his 13-year-old neighbor got one, too.
Neither boy had applied for the cards, and it looked as if their
signatures and birthdates had been forged. It was August 2004, and the
local authorities quickly traced the problems to a canvasser for a
liberal group that had signed up tens of thousands of voters for the
presidential election in this swing state.
State Republican leaders demanded a criminal investigation. And with
the television cameras rolling, the United States attorney, David C.
Iglesias, a boyish-looking Republican, promised a thorough one. "It
appears that mischief is afoot," Mr. Iglesias said, "and questions are
lurking in the shadows."
The inquiry he began, however, never resulted in charges, so
frustrating Republican officials here that they began an extraordinary
campaign to get rid of him that reached all the way to President Bush.
Mr. Iglesias was the target of fierce criticism by lawmakers and
political operatives, more so than any of the other seven prosecutors
whose dismissals have set off a furor in Washington, interviews and a
review of Justice Department documents show.
Rated a top performer by department officials early in 2005, Mr.
Iglesias was the last added to the department's hit list. That
occurred last fall soon after a group of lawmakers, including Senator
Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, complained about lax voter
fraud prosecutions to Mr. Bush, who relayed those concerns to Attorney
General Alberto R. Gonzales.
Several Republican leaders here insist that while their main
grievances involved partisan issues, from possible voter fraud to
corruption cases involving prominent Democrats, they also considered
Mr. Iglesias too cautious and ineffective.
"If you watched felony events take place and you reported it to
police, would you be happy if they didn't do anything?" asked Allen
Weh, the state Republican Party chairman, who said he complained to an
aide to Karl Rove, the White House political adviser. "That is the
kind of stuff that makes the average person's blood boil."
Mr. Iglesias defended his handling of the vote-fraud and other
investigations, saying his critics did not have access to the findings
that guided his decisions. He says the attacks occurred because state
Republican leaders felt betrayed, figuring "We helped the guy get the
position, he owes us some kind of fealty."
Mr. Iglesias said he had believed that his bosses shared his view that
United States attorneys should stay above the fray. "I thought I was
insulated from politics," he said in an interview. "But now I find out
that main Justice was up to its eyeballs in partisan political
maneuvering."
Since his ouster, Mr. Iglesias has received support from other federal
prosecutors, who say the department failed to honor its obligation to
ensure that decisions about prosecutions are free of political taint.
"People who understand the history and the mission of the United
States attorney and Justice Department - they are uniformly appalled,
horrified," said Atlee W. Wampler III, chairman of a national
organization of former United States attorneys and a prosecutor who
served in the Carter and Reagan administrations. "That the tradition
of the Justice Department could have been so warped by that kind of
action - any American should be disturbed."
Senator Domenici recommended Mr. Iglesias, now 49, for his federal
post in 2001. An aide to the senator spotted him as a up-and-comer a
few years earlier - Mr. Iglesias was Hispanic, a conservative former
state prosecutor and he had pizazz. As a Navy lawyer, he had been
involved in a marine hazing case that became the basis for the
blockbuster movie "A Few Good Men."
At first, Mr. Iglesias focused on immigration and gun offenses and
crime on Indian reservations.
But in 2004, the suspicious voter-registration cards put him into one
of the country's most heated political issues. (At least one other
recently ousted United States attorney, John McKay of Seattle, said he
believed that Bush administration officials were similarly angry that
he had not prosecuted voter fraud cases involving Democrats.)
Mr. Bush lost New Mexico to Al Gore by 366 votes in 2000. So in 2004,
several Democratic-leaning groups had begun voter registration drives
here. Republicans were concerned that this could lead to illegal
immigrants and others being registered improperly.
Local election officials said the cards sent to the two teenage boys
were among about 3,000 faulty registrations, with some most likely
resulting from mistakes and others raising more questions.
To appear even-handed, Mr. Iglesias set up a bipartisan task force
with state officials to look into the matter. But soon after
announcing his plan, he received an e-mail message from Mickey D.
Barnett, a Republican lawyer who represented the Bush campaign in New
Mexico, urging him just to bring federal charges against any
violators.
Culling through about 100 tips about fraud, investigators found only a
handful that had some merit, and "only one where we had a real shot,"
Mr. Iglesias said.
That inquiry focused on the woman who had submitted the registration
applications in the names of the teenagers and at least two dozen
others. Mr. Iglesias said she had worked for the Association of
Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, which had paid her
and others in part based on how many applications they turned in.
Mr. Iglesias, in an interview, acknowledged that progress on the
investigation was slowed because he had only one prosecutor handling
public corruption cases. Soon after the meeting, Mr. Iglesias received
two phone calls he found disturbing. Representative Heather A. Wilson,
a New Mexico Republican who was in the midst of a tight re-election
race that largely focused on which party was tougher on corruption,
called Mr. Iglesias on Oct. 16 to inquire about the courthouse case.
"What can you tell me about sealed indictments?" Mr. Iglesias recalled
Ms. Wilson asking, in recent Senate testimony.
He offered only a general answer, he said, to avoid violating the law
by discussing confidential case matters.
Ten days later, Mr. Domenici called the United States attorney at his
home.
"Are these going to be filed before November?" the senator asked,
referring to charges in the courthouse case, Mr. Iglesias said. "And I
said I didn't think so. And to which he replied, 'I'm very sorry to
hear that.' And then the line went dead."
Mr. Iglesias said the message was clear. "I felt leaned on," he
testified to the Senate this month. "I felt pressured to get these
matters moving."
Mr. Domenici has apologized for making the call. "However, at no time
in that conversation or any other conversation with Mr. Iglesias did I
ever tell him what course of action I thought he should take on any
legal matter," he said in a statement. "I have never pressured him nor
threatened him in any way."
Mr. Bush, while meeting with members of Congress on Capitol Hill last
October, heard complaints about inaction on voter fraud cases, an
administration official said. New Mexico was one of the states on the
list. Mr. Bush then asked Mr. Gonzales to look into the complaints.
"The reaction from the attorney general when the president raised it
is, 'I know about those issues,' " Dan Bartlett, an aide to Mr. Bush,
said last week. "The Justice Department, themselves, were receiving
very similar phone conversations."
Mr. Bartlett acknowledged that the calls and visits from officials in
New Mexico played a role in deciding Mr. Iglesias's fate.
"The complaint was that these high-profile cases were not being
pursued or not being won," he said. "They took into consideration the
complaints that they were fielding from local officials about the lack
of prosecution of cases."
It is not clear when the decision was made to oust Mr. Iglesias. An
Oct. 17, 2006, list of prosecutors Justice intended to dismiss did not
include his name. A month later, after the midterm election had passed
and there still had been no action on voter fraud or the courthouse
corruption case, his name was on the list.
His firing was a cause for celebration among his critics. Mr. Weh, the
state Republican chairman, recalls saying something like "Hallelujah"
to himself when he heard the news from Karl Rove at a holiday party in
Washington. Mr. Domenici's chief of staff "is happy as a clam," one
White House official said in an e-mail message on Dec. 7, the day of
the firing.
"Domenici is going to send over names tomorrow," said a second e-mail
message from a Justice official. "(not even waiting for Iglesias's
body to cool)."