Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

Before Michael Chertoff became became Secretary of Homeland Security, he was Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Roderick M. Hills, a former law firm colleague of Chertoff’s, called him as an attorney representing Chiquita Brands Int’l to seek the Justice Department’s advice about illegal protection money payments that the company was paying to right-wing Colombian paramilitaries, according to an article in this morning’s Washington Post.

According to WaPo, “Hills said he knew that such payments were illegal..but said that he needed Chertoff’s advice.” The potential impact upon Hills’ client could have been enormous for both the company and American trade (Hills’ wife, Carla Hills, was the U.S. Trade Representative under George H.W. Bush): Chiquita says that it has “26,000 full-time employees and operations on six continents.”

What happened? Apparently nothing. WaPo reports that Chertoff held a meeting at the DOJ that the agency’s lawyers say was “complicated…Chiquita’s executives left the meeting convinced that the government had not clearly demanded that the payments stop.” Moreover:

Sources close to Chiquita say that Chertoff never did get back to the company or its lawyers. Neither did Larry D. Thompson, the deputy attorney general, whom Chiquita officials sought out after Chertoff left his job for a federal judgeship in June 2003. And Chiquita kept making payments for nearly another year.

What transpired at the Justice Department meeting is now a central issue in a criminal probe.

Justice Department officials knowingly ignoring payments to paramilitaries that the State Department identified as a terrorist group?

If true, that kind of official government conduct has serious implications for Chiquita officials who are now reportedly targets of a federal criminal probe by (guess who!) the Justice Department.

The Chiquita officials include Robert Olson, the company’s former general counsel, former CEO Cyrus Friedheim, and other officials allegedly accused of making illegal payments.

But look who are apparently not targets of the DOJ’s criminal probe: Chertoff and Thompson, the very Justice Department officials who had knowledge of the transactions after their advice was sought, and did nothing.

Did Gonzales or other DOJ officials make a decision not to probe the agency’s own former executives? If so, that would surely lead to another investigation by Congress, and a call for Gonzales to step down.