Fired USA believes she was fired because of rumors of a gay relationship.

Chiara (left) and Hagen (right)

Margaret Chiara, one of the nine U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration in 2006, says that she now believes “she was fired because of the erroneous belief that she was having” a gay relationship with a fellow prosecutor. Responding to a DoJ report that found “alleged homosexuality was used as a litmus test in hiring and firing,” Chiara says “there is nothing else” that could explain her firing.

The anti-gay discrimination described in yesterday's Monica Goodling report was targeted at Margaret Chiara and Leslie Hagen. Both have interviews with Hagen's attorney; the LAT did an interview with Chiara herself. And together, the LAT interviews describe the gossip-mongering of a few people within the USA office in Grand Rapids providing both the rumors that the women were in a gay relationship--and that Chiara's management had created morale problems in Grand Rapids.

The report describes an alleged "sexual relationship" between a career prosecutor and a U.S. attorney, who were not named. Margaret M. Chiara, the former U.S. attorney in Grand Rapids, Mich., said in an interview with The Times that she now believed she was fired because of the erroneous belief that she was having a relationship with career prosecutor Leslie Hagen.

"I could not begin to understand how I found myself sharing the misfortune of my former colleagues," Chiara said of the eight other U.S. attorneys who were fired. "Now I understand."

Justice officials said after her firing that Chiara was let go because of mismanagement and because she had caused morale in her office to sink. Chiara said Monday she believed those concerns were raised by the same people who spread rumors about her and Hagen.

Leslie Hagen, in her final evaluation at the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, received the highest possible performance rating. Click to see Hagen's "outstanding" work appraisal.