Tuesday, May 22, 2007

He Won’t Go Quietly

David Iglesias, the ousted U.S. attorney from Albuquerque, isn’t taking his firing lying down. He’s turning it into a cross-country tour.

As one of nine U.S. attorneys forced from their posts by the Bush administration, Iglesias is at the center of a scandal that’s led to congressional hearings and the resignations of four top Justice Department officials. And though he’s been temporarily relegated to chauffeur for his four daughters, he’s also managed to transform himself from fired public servant into a fairly noisy poster boy for good government. During congressional hearings in March, Iglesias testified he resisted when two of the state’s highest elected officials “leaned on” him to speed up an indictment of Democrats. More recently, when sitting down with Bill Maher on his HBO show, Iglesias quipped, “I took an oath to support and defend the constitution, not the Republican Party of New Mexico.”

Maher was just one stop on the Iglesias media tour. In embracing the collective lens, Iglesias racked up televised appearances with, among others, Chris Matthews, Larry King, Katie Couric, Tim Russert and Chris Wallace. Strong-jawed and clean-shaven, said to have inspired the dreamy prosecutor played by Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men,” a White House Fellow during the Clinton administration, he’s become both the handsome, charismatic public face for the sacked attorneys and a genuine media star. And damn if he hasn’t enjoyed it.

This scandal is growing an odd crop of spokesmen; first Mr. Iglesias, and now James Comey, the former deputy attorney general who played a part in the hospital number with John Ashcroft. Both Mr. Iglesias and Mr. Comey are staunch Republicans — how else would they have been put in the positions they held? Yet they are the whistleblowers in this scandal. They are the ones who are bringing the tenure of Alberto Gonzales to its inexorable end, and whether or not he leaves his post before January 20, 2009, his effective term as the Attorney General is over.

The White House and the Orcosphere have already cast the two men as traitors to the Cause; Mr. Igleslias because he first refused to rig the system and bring phony voter fraud cases in New Mexico before the 2006 election, and Mr. Comey because he dared to uphold FISA. That these two men are being excoriated for standing by their principles and refusing to adapt their ethics to the situation at hand — something the Republicans get a lot of mileage out of when they’re blathering on about the sins of the Democrats — would be tragic if it wasn’t so damned ironic.

I voted against Mr. Iglesias when he ran for state attorney general in New Mexico in 1998, but seeing as how it’s turned out for him and how fate has taken a hand, it was a good thing he lost.