Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales chose Kenneth E. Melson (inset), a career prosecutor with an expertise in foresnic investigation as the new head of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys to replace newly departed Michael Battle.

In closed door sessions, Battle reportedly gave the Senate and House Judiciary Committee members investigating the U.S. Attorney firings detailed confirmation about Gonzales being at a November 27, 2006 meeting with senior DOJ aides to discuss the U.S. Attorney firings. Battle’s information would refute the Attorney General’s foggy “I have no recollection” testimony before the U.S Senate about that meeting in his office discussing the termination of career federal prosecutors. According to Battle, Gonzales was privy to a memo about the firings distributed at that meeting in the Attorney General’s own conference room.

Like Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty (his former boss at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia) and Michael Eslton (McNulty’s Chief of Staff), the Melson was involved in several high-profile terror and espionage cases at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arlington, Vriginia. He assisted in prosecuting the Khobar Towers bombing case that involved a terror attack by Hezbollah on a U.S. Military residence in Saudi Arabia.

Melson was involved in the Robert Philip Hanssen case where an FBI agent spied for, and passed military secrets to, Russia and the former Soviet Union.

He also represented the U.S. Government in opposing efforts by a convicted al Qaeda conspirator and truck driver from Ohio to have his sentencing overturned. That case involved Iyman Faris, a man convicted for plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge for al Qaeda.

In 2005 Nelson received an Outstanding Adjunct Faculty Teaching Award from George Washington University Law School. He is a 1973 graduate of the school.

He wrote a book review for the May 2007 issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences, critiquing Robert Henley Woody’s “Search and Seizure: The Fourth Amendment for Law Enforcement Officers.”