Adam Cohen on Why Debra Yang Resigned as U.S. Attorney:
'Tis the season for speculation about why various U.S. Attorneys left their jobs in the last year. Some of the speculation seems plausible, and some of it seems off. My vote for the most implausible theory is one floated by Adam Cohen in The New York Times today about Debra Yang, the Republican U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, who left the U.S. Attorney's Office to take a partnership at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. If I understand Cohen's suggestion correctly (it's the second in his list, starting with "a second possibility"), Cohen wonders whether there might have been a secret conspiracy between Gibson Dunn and the Bush White House to get rid of their mutual enemy, Yang, by giving her a partnership at Gibson plus a $1.5 million signing bonus. With enemies like that, who needs friends?
UPDATE: Gibson Dunn Partner Randy Mastro responds over at the WSJ Law Blog. As you would expect, Mastro is parroting the Bush Administration line: he has the gall to just deny the conspiracy outright. Of course, the denial is being published in a blog run by the ultra-conservative Wall Street Journal, which is probably in cahoots with the White House and Gibson anyway.
UPDATE: Gibson Dunn Partner Randy Mastro responds over at the WSJ Law Blog. As you would expect, Mastro is parroting the Bush Administration line: he has the gall to just deny the conspiracy outright. Of course, the denial is being published in a blog run by the ultra-conservative Wall Street Journal, which is probably in cahoots with the White House and Gibson anyway.
"Instead of firing Debra Yang like we are doing to all those other U.S. Attorneys, we will throw everyone off track and get her to leave by having one of the largest law firms in the country make her a partner and give her a million-five signing bonus to boot."
Bartlet: Let me just tell you, I need a favor. I need you to hire a guy.
Mitchell: Who sir?
Bartlet: A former ambassador to Bulgaria.
Mitchell: Who is that, sir?
Bartlet: Ken Cochran.
Mitchell: Well, isn't Ken Cochran the current ambassador to Bulgaria?
Bartlet: Not for long. Look, he's a good man, a smart man, I think he'd make a very good corporate officer.
Mitchell: Why is he being fired, sir?
Bartlet: Gross incompetence. I'll be right back.
Not sure if $1.5 million is normal - I haven't heard it, but I'm not sought out as a partner too often. But is it inconceivable that Yang's $1.5 million was paid as part of a win-win "deal," where we already know that the White House wanted Yang out?
Maybe Orin's right, and maybe this is nothing, but I think given this white house and what we know already, its far wiser to wait till we learn more before casting one's side on any particular issue. Orin already said that nothing illegal happened - now its clear that such an assertion was premature. We've already seen Senator Thompson come out strong with a "nothing to see here" statements on all the right wing media outlets. I haven't heard a peep from him on this issue since.
And all Cohen said is that questions were being raised. The facts he mentions are all true. And the implications of those facts are all troubling. I just don't see how Cohen looks silly here, and therefore I don't think this sarcasm is all that warranted.
Also, I should note while I'd be somewhat of a hypocrite if I said that you shouldn't be snarky and obnoxious while making an argument, I hope for your clients' sake that you generally don't think snarky and obnoxious an acceptable ALTERNATIVE for an argument.
Surely you jest. You think Cohen's hypothesis is more implausible than the official cover story floated by Gonzales et.al. ? At least Cohen is internally consistent.
Bre'er Rabbit would be soooooooooo scared and upset.
Again, this is a campaign of insinuation meant to play on sentiments, argued with eye-of-the-beholder evidence. The brilliant part of it, is that it doesn't even require a conspiracy. So many people hate bush, and it has become so acceptable in social circles to bash bush that people latch an d perpetuate the process if only to have something to talk about.
It certainly is time to "MoveOn", but step one should be skip the cathartic demonization.
It's nice to see that television signals make out to the gamma quadrant.
Why would Yang, uniquely out of the group of USAs that the administration allegedly wanted gone for being disloyal, be rewarded with a $1.5 million bonus for leaving?
On the WSJ blog, the Gibson Dunn partner says he does not discuss partner compensation. He will-when he gets the congressional subpoena. I wonder how much time and money Gibson Dunn will spend producing documents and testimony about the hiring of this partner.
Gibson Dunn may become the Halliburton of the legal world.
That's my favorite West Wing episode. I will say I'd accept a job that pays a mere $100 an hour, and I'm only marginally incompetent.
Instapundit today links to a Rassmussen poll which shows this:
Call me a stick-in-the-mud, but craziness like that makes this story a walk in the park.
I suspect the respondents interpreted the phrase "know about" to mean "had warning of". The results make perfectly good sense in that case.
and:
So... Yang didn't know that Gibson Dunn - who were representing Lewis in Yang's own investigation - had strong ties to Lewis? Yang didn't know that Gibson Dunn - who represented Bush in an obscure, little-known case called Bush v Gore - had strong ties to the White House? Does this guy even read his conspiracy theories before they go to print, or is this just stream-of-consciousness?
Seriously though if Yang were considered highly competent but turfed for being an insufficiently loyal "Bushie" it's not absurd that some well connected people might make a pitch to their friends at Gibson Dunn about what a good catch she would be. I don't think it's very likely since it doesn't make a lot of sense that they would make an exception in her case rather than just firing her like the others but it's not completely absurd. Her situation may have been different in ways we do not yet know, e.g. she might have already been in talks with GDC to join them and someone in the White House might have just given her a particularly enthusiastic reference.
The poll response makes no sense under any circumstances. I agree with Henri Le Compte. BDS is more widespread than I thought.
Is there any way to get on this White House enemies list? Is it by nomination, by invitation only, or can you write your way on? I'm making my CV current right now, but have no idea where to send it. Maybe there's somebody in White House Personnel Office, or might it be handled at OMB.
It's probably not civil service, so there's probably only minimal due process rights if I'm rejected. But at 1.5 million to start, it's worth the gamble.
Next you will be telling us that it is a "suprise" that fire can melt steel.
Please don't tell me you've fallen for the lie that Bush had no involement in the Lindburgh baby's kidnapping. That's exactly what they want you to believe.
Apparently DDS is more widespread than I thought.
Not that it really matters. Hurricane Katrina gave about 10 days advanced warning-hell, you could follow it on radar, and Bush was still playing air guitar at landfall!
I hear that all you have to do to get on the enemies list is to say something that could be construed as criticism of Bush, whether in a speech, an obscure article, or even a private telephone call that is being monitored by Karl Rove. However, as you may recall, if you get on the enemies list, you will also get put on the no-fly list and hassled at airports, so you may have a hard time showing up for the interview.
That depends on what you mean by surprise. It was unsurprising that Al Qaeda attacked the US, because Bin Laden basically said that he would in a 1997 CNN interview (and the memo was basically relying on that interview). However, the mode of attack and the exact timing of the attack was a surprise.
The Smoking Gun is an excellent resource. It appears that the redactions would contain nothing useful.
The true scandal here is that the best information that we had on Bin Laden on 9/11 were four year old press interviews. That implies far-reaching incompetence throughout the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. I don't know if Bush did anything to root that out.
Yes I have. Here is a link to it. Most of what it says was not new and some of it was specifically contradicted by what actually happened on 9/11. It says that Bib Laden may have been insterested in hijaking planes to get the blind skeik Umar Abd al-Rahman and other terrorists released and the buildings that they thought were threatened were some federal buildings in New York. I agree that Bush knew Al-quaida was a danger before 9/11, but any suggestion that he knew what was going to happen or that he knew they were planning an attack on that scale or knew any specific details of the attack beforehand is not supported by any rational evidence.
Landing the local USA is a prize catch - one that will get plenty of free media for the firm, and considering that her government salary is not much different from what they're paying first year associates, I'm surprised that more USAs don't make the jump.
BTW, for the people suggesting that "knew about" meant "had warning of", show up at a grassroots Democratic organization meeting sometime. At many of them, half the people think that Bush was behind planting explosives in the towers to bring them down - and will go out of their way to tell you to read their favorite sources. Jane's law is very real.
Nick
Nick
That is no lie. Bush had nothing to do with the Lindburgh baby kindapping. That was done by the free masons, Nicola Tesla, and the Vatican to prevent Lindberg from stopping their experiements with HAARP and the true origin of the Holy Grail. Everyone knows that.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good anti President Bush rant.
2. Hijackings are mentioned in vague generalities:
3. It doesn't quite say surveillance of NYC buildings, it says "recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." Since that doesn't have anything to do with 9/11, I'm not sure why it's worth mentioning.
Why would Yang, uniquely out of the group of USAs that the administration allegedly wanted gone for being disloyal, be rewarded with a $1.5 million bonus for leaving?"
There you go, an actual argument. Congrads!
Except that while those are things to consider, they hardly prevent the possibility that Cohen raises from being accurate. Yang may have been treated differently for several reasons. We know, for instance, that there were discussions about firing Fitzgerald, but that he was ultimately saved because of the determination that firing him was politically unteneable. Likewise, Yang was investigating very prominant Republicans at the time, and a straight dismissal would have been difficult to defend, where (unlike Lam and McKay, for instance) there was no superficial reason for her termination.
And as I said, maybe it turned out to be win-win. They could still have LIKED her without wanting her to investigate Lewis. They put in a call and found out that Gibson Dunn was interested, and worked out a deal.
What we KNOW is that they were going to fire Yang, and then she resigned for this job. What we don't have is evidence of an actual push by the white house to get rid of her, but NOR do we have the type of evidence we'd expect to have if they didn't push her out - i.e., an email removing Yang from the "to be terminated" list, or even a colloquial one that says "well, it looks like Yang left anyway, so we don't have to fire her."
If I had to place my money on this one way or another, I'd say that Cohen is closer to the truth than Kerr is. Not necessary on the truth, but I do think the White House probably helped broker the deal to get her into Gibson Dunn one way or another - even if it was just telling Yang to find another job.
I mean, it's the saddest, most pathetic conspiracy thinking that we just squandered all of our international goodwill, sacrificed more American lives than were lost on 9/11, tens of thousands of American wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, over a million Iraqi displaced from their homes, paid hundreds and hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars and hundreds of millions more on extra costs of gasoline, ALL ON NOTHING MORE THAN AN "OOPSIE"!
Any of you conspiracy nuts that believes THAT must be living in a liberal fantasy world.
Oh, wait...
That second possibility does seem unlikely (but more likely than the third possibility, which is Adam Cohen's broader point - how unlikely that third possibility truly is). But it doesn't seem impossible. Remember, Yang is already a seasoned prosecutor, who under your own (probably correct, but hardly guaranteed) theory was worth a $1.5 million signing bonus.
To say that the fact that Yang would be replaced with someone who was rather unlikely to pursue charges against Lewis (I don't buy the "slight increase" argument in the least) had no effect - not even raising the offer from $1.2 million to $1.5 million, or choosing Yang for a slot over several other possible, highly qualified candidates, doesn't seem like a guarantee.
I don't think Yang is someone who has no vaue to Gibson Dunn - indeed, she's a gifted prosecutor and probably a great asset to the partnership. But despite Cohen being held to a word limit and using strong rhetoric, I don't think his point neccesary requires that Lewis's situation INFLUENCED the offer, not was a straight through-and-through bribe.
Given what we now know about how the DOJ is run (and what people at Gibson Dunn probably had some awareness of at the time), a purely self-interested Gibson Dunn would be acting ILLOGICALLY not to at least consider the benefit to Lewis in their offer of $1.5 million to Yang, in comparison to their other options (offering less to Yang and risking her not taking it, or offering the job to another qualified candidate).
And while you could have made a reasoned, well thought argument as to why Adam Cohen was *probably* wrong, you ignored your own advice, and attacked his entire argument with sarcasm.
And if you "can certainly believe that Yang was told to get another job," given not a single plausible criticism of Yang's performance, isn't that the far more important angle to this whole thing?
I think you're right to be suspicious of the theory that Yang was hired by Gibson Dunn to undermine the Jerry Lewis case. That would probably be too risky and unethical. But my understanding is that Gibson Dunn has longstanding ties to the Republican Party (many law firms keep strong political ties to political parties) and figures that a favor (even a $1.5 million dollar favor) will be paid back in time with access and influence.
As for the question of why Yang got a golden parachute while the other USAs got defenestrated, there could be many reasons. Maybe she had enough friends in high places where that wasn't an option. Maybe the DOJ leadership had noticed the rumblings caused by the earlier resignations and decided to switch up their methods a bit. I don't think it's "conspiracy theory" territory to notice that Yang's resignation, with one significant exception, fits the pattern of USAs engaging in activities unfavorable to the WH political operation suddenly resigning.
You haven't discussed Yang's dismissal at all. A google search of (kerr yang) on google (restricing to volokh.com) gets only three hits about Debra Yang - one, an Adler post discussing the Milberg indictments, another, a mention of Debra Yang by a commenter (kwo), and this post.
Yes, I know youthe "DOJ seven" quite a bit. But Adam Cohen's *point* is that its not seven but more - and you seem to buy that - but rather than discussing the substantial issues that Yang's (posible) firing brings to the table (particularly combined with the Lam firing), you choose to attack Cohen. Maybe that's because you're of the mindset that "of course" Yang is included in the scandal - but the mainstream media has chosen to exclude Yang as part of the scandal.
So someone like me looks at what you are saying as taking a small part of Cohen's broader point, interpreting it to give it the most absurd meaning, and using it to dismiss the whole article.
Yes, I've been assuming that there's a possibility that the U.S. Attorneys who left soon before the firings were pressured to leave -- so clearly Yang is part of the broader story. Maybe I'm just too much a regular reader of talkingpointsmemo and tmpmuckraker, but I thought everyone was assuming this. In light of that, Cohen's editorial was completely banal except for his conspiratorial imaginings, which is why I posted on the conspiratorial imaginings rather than the completely banal side of it.
In any event, I have to close commenmts here: "ReVonna LaSchatz" has registered a bunch of new screennames and is spending his time playing the "how fast can Orin delete my comments" game.