Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

Just when you thought things may have been getting a little, um, boring at the Department of Justice, just weeks after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales rejected bi-partisan calls for his resignation, a surprise pops out of the DOJ’s hidden files.

Yesterday, the National Journal released an investigative report disclosing that Gonzales signed a secret March 2006 order that gave two of his most senior aides the unprecedented authority to hire and fire non-civil service employees at the U.S. Department of Justice. The federal law enforcement agency has approximately 100,000 employees.

Both of the two senior DOJ aides who were delegated authority to hire and fire employees, the report says, have since resigned their posts in wake of the U.S. Attorney firings scandal.

They are D. Kyle Sampson (inset, above right), Gonzales’ former Chief of Staff, and Monica Goodling (inset, left), the Attorney General’s Senior Legal Counsel and White House Liaison.

Sampson is the Utah lawyer who was Gonzales’ right-hand man inside the Justice Department. It was Sampson who authored the November 21, 2006 e-mail scheduling a meeting in Gonzales’ conference room at the Justice Department to discuss U.S. Attorney hirings and firings.

The November 27, 2006 meeting is notable because it took place less than two weeks before eight career U.S. Attorneys were fired. Incredibly, Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary last month that he had virtually “no recollection” of that meeting, after being asked b Sen. Jeff Sessions (Rep. - Ala.).