THE NATION - U.S. attorney firings open new doors for the 9 - A Justice Department scandal forced them into new careers. Despite some bitterness, most land on their feet.
WASHINGTON — Daniel Bogden had just settled back into his office in Las Vegas early last December after a trip to Washington where he and dozens of other U.S. attorneys attended a conference at the Justice Department on protecting children from crime.
It had been an upbeat occasion. The department's No. 2 official gave a rousing speech during a closed-door session in which he praised members of the group as among the finest and most able U.S. attorneys in the department's storied history.
Three days later, on Dec. 7, Bogden and six other of those attorneys received phone calls from a top Justice official in Washington. They were told they were being fired.
"I thought it was some kind of bad joke," said Bogden, who had been the top federal law enforcement official in Nevada for five years. "I was waiting for the punch line that never came."
The politically charged firings of one year ago spawned a scandal that helped lead to the resignation of an attorney general and cast a pall over the Justice Department. The prosecutors -- nine altogether, including two fired earlier in the year -- were thrust into new lives and careers under circumstances they could never have imagined.
Called to account for the firings, the department brass branded them insubordinates or underachievers, even though they had scored well in department performance reviews.
The attorneys' own testimony -- and ties to voting-rights and corruption cases that some influential Republicans found objectionable -- suggested the possibility of other, more political motives. But speaking out was perceived as disloyal in some quarters.
A year later, most have landed on their feet, in law partnerships or private-sector jobs where their compensation dwarfs government pay. Some carry scars from the experience. Six of the attorneys marked the anniversary of their firings at a private dinner in San Diego 10 days ago, where they toasted one another for persevering.
"The great irony of this is, it has hardly tarnished any of our reputations," said Paul Charlton, the former U.S. attorney in Phoenix, who hosted the reunion.
Charlton, now a partner in a Phoenix law firm, says that as a group, the attorneys have fared much better than the department officials who orchestrated their demise.
Several of those officials, including former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, have hired lawyers to defend themselves in connection with a wide-ranging departmental investigation.
