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From the Washington Post:
In part, it weirds me out that a US Attorney could 'get in trouble' for demanding that the Department of Justice pull out all the stops to solve the murder of a federal prosecutor. It seems crazy that he would need to demand it in the first place. Prosecutors make enemies of very bad men, by putting them in jail. What kind of a message does it send when the Department of Justice lets bad men get away with killing one of them? Don't we, as a society, want the local US Attorney raising whatever hell he has to with the folks back in Washington to get that crime solved?
The Bush regime apparently thinks otherwise. Local US Attorneys are supposed to serve Washington, not the other way around.
This story is also particularly disturbing to me for more personal reasons. Tom Wales, the federal prosecutor who was killed, lived two blocks from me. It's a quiet neighborhood of 100-year-old houses, where kids walk to school on sidewalks past well-maintained gardens. I walk past the house when I'm out getting exercise or going to the market.
Tom Wales was shot dead in his basement home office, through the window, by someone police call "an experienced shooter." Information was later released suggesting that the gun had a special silver gun barrel. The shooter must have walked from the street through the side yard of the house, shot Wales through a rear window, then calmly walked back out to the street, got in his car and driven away.
It was a month to the day after 9/11, which may help account for the peculiar imprint the murder, or perhaps assassination is the better word, has left on me. That, and the fact that, now more than five years later, it remains unsolved. As I walk by the house, which I do often, I'm reminded that a well-liked Assistant US Attorney was assassinated, right there, in his own home, in my own peaceful and lovely neighborhood. And the killer is still out there, and still no one has been charged.
It's bad enough that those scoundrels in DC decided to make the Justice Department a tool of their Party apparat, but the suggestion that John McKay's passion about finding the killer of Tom Wales was part of what prompted his replacement?
Immoral? Unconscionable? That doesn't even begin to describe it.
A U.S. attorney in Seattle was singled out for dismissal in part because he clashed with senior Justice Department officials over the investigation of a federal prosecutor's murder, and he was recommended for removal 18 months earlier than was previously known, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews.Hints of this have been floating around for a while, and I find it particularly disturbing.
D. Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, told congressional investigators that he believes he may have recommended former U.S. attorney John McKay's removal in March 2005 because of conflicts with senior Justice officials over the investigation of the 2001 murder of federal prosecutor Tom Wales, according to congressional aides and Sampson's attorney.
Several officials familiar with the investigation said McKay and other officials in Seattle believed that senior Justice officials were not paying enough attention to the case. Sampson did not cite specifics, saying only that McKay had demanded actions that led to conflicts, congressional aides familiar with his account said.
The suggestion of a connection between the firing and the unsolved Wales murder case generated angry reactions from McKay and others in western Washington yesterday.
"The idea that I was pushing too hard to investigate the assassination of a federal prosecutor -- it's mind-numbing" that they would suggest that, McKay said. " . . . If it's true, it's just immoral, and if it's false, then the idea that they would use the death of Tom Wales to cover up what they did is just unconscionable."
In part, it weirds me out that a US Attorney could 'get in trouble' for demanding that the Department of Justice pull out all the stops to solve the murder of a federal prosecutor. It seems crazy that he would need to demand it in the first place. Prosecutors make enemies of very bad men, by putting them in jail. What kind of a message does it send when the Department of Justice lets bad men get away with killing one of them? Don't we, as a society, want the local US Attorney raising whatever hell he has to with the folks back in Washington to get that crime solved?
The Bush regime apparently thinks otherwise. Local US Attorneys are supposed to serve Washington, not the other way around.
This story is also particularly disturbing to me for more personal reasons. Tom Wales, the federal prosecutor who was killed, lived two blocks from me. It's a quiet neighborhood of 100-year-old houses, where kids walk to school on sidewalks past well-maintained gardens. I walk past the house when I'm out getting exercise or going to the market.
Tom Wales was shot dead in his basement home office, through the window, by someone police call "an experienced shooter." Information was later released suggesting that the gun had a special silver gun barrel. The shooter must have walked from the street through the side yard of the house, shot Wales through a rear window, then calmly walked back out to the street, got in his car and driven away.
It was a month to the day after 9/11, which may help account for the peculiar imprint the murder, or perhaps assassination is the better word, has left on me. That, and the fact that, now more than five years later, it remains unsolved. As I walk by the house, which I do often, I'm reminded that a well-liked Assistant US Attorney was assassinated, right there, in his own home, in my own peaceful and lovely neighborhood. And the killer is still out there, and still no one has been charged.
It's bad enough that those scoundrels in DC decided to make the Justice Department a tool of their Party apparat, but the suggestion that John McKay's passion about finding the killer of Tom Wales was part of what prompted his replacement?
Immoral? Unconscionable? That doesn't even begin to describe it.
posted by Paul at 6:31 PM |
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