WASHINGTON — As U.S. attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales and his top deputy, Paul J. McNulty, "abdicated their responsibility" in the 2006 dismissals of nine U.S. attorneys, were strikingly aloof and uninformed about the process and offered the public reasons for the firings that were "inconsistent, misleading and or inaccurate," Justice Department investigators concluded Monday.
The authors of the long-awaited report, prepared by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility, were unable to conclusively determine whether crimes were committed as part of the politically charged firings and called for further investigation, particularly into the role of the White House.
Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey, responding to that request, named Nora R. Dannehy, a career prosecutor with a record of investigating corruption cases, to continue the inquiry.
"The report describes a disappointing chapter in the history of the department," Mukasey said, adding that Dannehy, the acting U.S. attorney in Connecticut, would "pursue this wherever the facts and the law require."
The 392-page report, while detailing the circumstances surrounding the unprecedented midterm firing of the prosecutors, still leaves unresolved basic questions -- such as who ordered the dismissals and why. At the same time, it found "substantial evidence that partisan political considerations played a role in the removal of several of the U.S. attorneys."
Expressing frustration that they were operating with incomplete information, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and H. Marshall Jarrett, the head of the Office of Professional Responsibility, put much of the blame on the White House, which refused to provide documents about the firings.
Several former officials -- including Karl Rove, President Bush's longtime political advisor, and Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel when the firings occurred -- declined to be interviewed.
"We believe our investigation was able to uncover most of the facts relating to the reasons for the removal of most of the U.S. attorneys," Fine and Jarrett said. "However . . . there are gaps in our investigation because of the refusal of certain key witnesses to be interviewed by us."
The report describes Gonzales, who in a newspaper commentary dismissed the controversy as an "overblown personnel matter," as "remarkably unengaged."
