It takes a lot to get mild-mannered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hot under the collar. That's why it was telling when word went out to his top aides in February that something had set him off. "The Attorney General is extremely upset with the stories on the U.S. Attorneys this morning," his spokesman Brian Roehrkasse wrote in an e-mail. The papers that day were full of news about the testimony that his deputy Paul McNulty had given to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the firing last year of eight U.S. Attorneys. Gonzales had previously suggested that all of them had been dismissed for poor performance, but McNulty allowed that at least one of them, Bud Cummins of the Eastern District of Arkansas, had been removed to make room for Tim Griffin, a Karl Rove protege who had headed the opposition-research operation at the Republican National Committee.
展开▼
