WaPo: The Case for Attorney General Patrick Fitzgerald

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Clearly, the next head of the Department of Justice must be many of the things that Gonzales is not. The new chief must be strong and independent -- and with a long history of being a successful federal prosecutor. He or she must not be beholden to the White House or be an ideologue. He or she must possess the respect of the foot soldiers within the Department of Justice and thus be able to restore some of the lost credibility, confidence and morale that marks the current regime. And, of course, he or she must be a Republican (or at least an existing Republican-appointee, thanks commenters for pointing this out).

The Justice Department "needs a swing" says Phillip B. Heymann, Harvard Law professor and former deputy attorney general during the Clinton presidency. "It needs someone who will concentrate on institution building. On restoring credibility -- very much a rule of law type." Heymann told me Thursday that he believes that the current Attorney General and his political allies in the White House have taken the Department "further into a political institution and undermined its attractiveness to young lawyers as well as America's faith in its neutrality, its nonpartisanship." Gonzales' successor, Heymann says, "needs to be scrupulous about neutrality of prosecutors" and must re-establish old-guard rules that "protected the independence of federal prosecutors."

On the Republican side, another former high-ranking official, Bruce Fein, who was associate deputy attorney general during the Reagan administration, echoed Heymann's views and then took them one step further. We need an attorney general, Fein told me, who has the "moral and emotional and psychological strength to resist predictable efforts to manipulate the Department of Justice for political purposes." Gonzales, Fein says, is "a total creature of the White House" who is "unable to have the ability to resist" his benefactor the President whom, Fein alleges, is trying to "cripple" the notion of checks and balances.

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"I don't know well," Heymann said of Fitzgerald. "But, yes, he would be a good choice. He was careful with the Libby case. He was under a lot of pressure to bring charges on the leak itself--but he didn't do that. He was under pressure to bring charges against Rove--but he didn't do that. Instead, he put together a very strong factual case ." Indeed, as someone who covered the Libby trial, I can attest to the fact that Fitzgerald infuriated Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, alike, a trait which alone ought to make him a candidate for the office. "Only Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney could oppose him," added John Dean, former White House counsel.

Fein disagrees. He is promoting D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Laurence H. Silberman to replace Gonzales. He says that Judge Silberman has the "philosophical understanding of checks and balances" that Fitzgerald may lack. The prosecutor, says Fein, "hasn't sat around like Larry and thought about separation of power, and the philosophies of the Founding Fathers and the place (at the Justice Department) is no place for on the job training."

Now, I don't know how Fein knows what Fitzgerald sits around and thinks about. But Silberman has a reputation for being a sharp legal ideologue--not exactly the type likely to bring together the disparate factions within the Department left in the rubble of Hurricane Gonzales. And, anyway, if I had to go to a Plan B, my choice would be James B. Comey, who almost alone among current high-ranking Justice Department officials had the courage to reject on legal grounds the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program. Comey, in fact, led an ill-fated rebellion within the Justice Department to block approval for the plan, a high-minded revolt that was quashed by, among others, then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales.

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