Renner: DOJ Documents Show Sampson Deleted Email

Good job, Matt!

t r u t h o u t Report

By Matt Renner
Tuesday 03 July 2007

An internal Department of Justice email dealing with a series of the most controversial aspects of the US attorney firing scandal was deleted by a DOJ official the day after Congress began to address the firings. Three months later, the official told Congressional investigators he had not destroyed any documents or deleted any records relating to the US attorney firings.

This is the first publicly released evidence that individuals directly involved in the plan to fire eight US attorneys have destroyed documents that are of interest to Congressional investigators. This revelation has raised some eyebrows with members of Congress, but officials were unwilling to speak publicly about it. The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee did not respond in time for publication.

Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and a central coordinator of the US attorney purge, deleted an official email on January 12, 2007. The email was a correspondence between Sampson and the DOJ White House Liaison Monica Goodling that dealt with the controversial appointment of GOP loyalist Tim Griffin to the post of US attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

Three months after this email was deleted from Sampson's computer, he was interviewed behind closed doors by Congressional investigators. According to a Senior Congressional Aide with access to the non-public transcript of the interview, Sampson was asked directly if he destroyed documents or emails relating to the US attorney purge. He answered "No." The Congressional aide asked to remain anonymous because the interview transcript has not been made public.

The DOJ did not respond to repeated inquires into this matter. Kyle Sampson's lawyer did not return requests for comment.

Evidence that the email was deleted by Sampson came from the Justice Department's own documents released to Congress. They released a series of documents on June 21 that had previously been withheld. Many of the new documents are copies of emails from Monica Goodling's computer. On page 32 of the email sent, an email from

Monica Goodling to Kyle Sampson shows that Sampson deleted an email from Goodling about five-and- a-half hours after it was written. The email system Goodling was using allowed users to track the progress of an email, recording when it was received, opened and deleted. For this particular email, the tracking system report read as follows: "Recipient: Sampson, Kyle. Deleted: 1/12/2007 7:12 PM."

The tracking program for email systems are bullet-proof, according to computer expert Frank Walton, an email systems developer and programmer and former information technology expert for the military contractor Northrop Grumman. "Tracking is what is happening to an email. It is the history of an email. It is not something someone can fake. It is a secure part of the email, meaning that a user cannot alter it," Walton said.

Walton claims that because the email was deleted so quickly, it is possible it would not show up on backup systems meant to automatically archive DOJ's email. This could explain why this email was not found when the DOJ released emails from Sampson at the beginning of the Congressional investigation.

"Deleting an email on one server would delete all the matching copies on other servers," Walton said. He added that a forensic examination of Kyle Sampson's hard drive might turn up copies of any emails that Sampson deleted.

The deleted email between Sampson and Goodling addressed the appointment of Tim Griffin, a military lawyer and GOP operative with close ties to presidential aide Karl Rove. Griffin was initially appointed as an interim US Attorney with the expectation that he would face Senate confirmation for a permanent appointment. The Griffin Senate confirmation never came.

Griffin was a controversial figure and his confirmation by the Senate was not guaranteed. Senators Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) were both on record in opposition to Griffin's appointment. The British Broadcasting Corporation reported that Griffin, while serving as the research director for the Republican National Committee, masterminded a "voter caging" scheme in Arkansas prior to the 2004 presidential election. The scheme targeted 70,000 predominantly African-American and Hispanic citizens in Democratic majority districts. A confirmation letter was sent to the address listed by these individuals on their voter registration documents. If the voter failed to reply to the confirmation letter, the voter was "tagged as 'suspect' and their registration wiped out, or their ballot challenged and not counted," according to the BBC.

During markup on the USA Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act in 2006, a broad expansion of the power of the attorney general to appoint interim US attorneys was secretly added at the urging of the DOJ Official William Moschella. The law change gave the attorney general the power to appoint US attorneys on an interim basis but without a deadline for appointing a permanent replacement who would be subject to Senate confirmation.

Documents released by the DOJ during the ongoing Congressional investigation into the firings show this change in the law was an essential part of the overall US attorney firing strategy pursued by White House and the DOJ officials. Attention to the law, change was drawn by the Congressional investigation into the firing of Bud Cummins, the US attorney that Griffin replaced.

Once this change in appointment power was revealed, Congress introduced legislation that would restore the 120-day interim appointment time limit. This legislation came as a blow to the US attorney firing plan.

A January 12 news report from The Morning News, a local Arkansas paper, about Griffin's appointment and the suspicion on behalf of the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Patriot Act changes was emailed to the key DOJ officials involved in the plan. This news seems to have raised Griffin's concern and prompted him to call Goodling and then the White House counsel's office to see if this report was connected to a meeting that the DOJ officials had asked him to be available for the following week.

In the email that Sampson deleted, Goodling explains that Griffin was contacted about a possible meeting with the attorney general or the deputy attorney general that was unconnected to the media attention and says: "I should have realized, though, that he'd freak out. I'll call him and just tell him this is the standard call ... and that he needs to relax."

The deleted email chain shows that when Griffin could not reach Goodling the morning the critical news report came out, he called White House Associate Counsel Christopher Oprison to inquire about the scheduled meeting with the DOJ officials. According to Oprison's email account of the phone call, Griffin "sounded concerned about the reason for the meeting."

In another email, Sampson wrote to Goodling and Oprison: "Tim [Griffin] needs to me carefully managed. Monica [Goodling] is the one here who Tim calls regularly. As Tim is frequently calling [Oprison] also, perhaps the two of you should compare notes ..."

Because the White House has refused to comply with subpoenas for White House documents and interviews with Bush administration staff, it is unknown how involved the White House was with the Griffin appointment. Griffin resigned on May 30.