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Straight ArrowJames Comey takes aim at Alberto Gonzales.

By Emily BazelonPosted Thursday, May 3, 2007, at 5:17 PM ET

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Want to read more about the politicization of the Bush era Justice Department? Click here and here. Dahlia Lithwick puts her finger on the nutty legal syllogism that powers the DoJ and imagines Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers as Supreme Court justices.

And what Comey said about the one brief conversation he remembers having with Sampson about identifying weak prosecutors only further undercut the official DoJ and Gonzales account: "I recall him asking me who did I think was the weakest," Comey said. "I'm quite sure he didn't mention the White House, because I would have remembered that." And did Comey name the prosecutors whom Sampson and Gonzales later decided to axe? Nope, with just one exception: The only former U.S. attorney Comey had a bad word to say about was Kevin Ryan of San Francisco, who's been roundly criticized for poor management (and who was actually tough to oust because of his Bush connections).

When Comey went into more detail about the various U.S. attorneys, he specifically contradicted and undercut the slightly more detailed rationales Gonzales and the DoJ have given for their firings. Charlton is supposed to have transgressed by recommending against going after the death penalty in one case. Comey not only approvingly cited Charlton for changing Comey's own mind—and ultimately John Ashcroft's about a different capital case—he said he would "always encourage" U.S. attorneys to speak out about their views on a death penalty prosecution, because they're the ones who really know the case background and the facts on the ground.

Lam is supposed to have bucked at following the administration's directives and screwed up gun and immigration prosecutions. Yet Comey said she never chafed at directives and that when he called her about her record on gun prosecutions as one of 10 U.S. attorneys with low numbers, he told her, "Maybe that's where you should be," based on coordination with state and local district attorneys, and advised her to "figure that out." McKay is now alleged to have annoyed the DoJ by forging ahead with a program to share law-enforcement information nationally. But Comey said he and McKay both wanted to make that their legacy, so that "law enforcement would be able to Google the bad guys." Need I go on?

Comey also succeeded in upping the ante for the latest revelation to come out of the scandal: the DoJ's internal investigation into whether Monica Goodling, Gonzales' former senior counsel (she is 32, but hey, that's senior enough) hired career-line attorneys based in part on whether they were Republicans. Federal law bars the consideration of party affiliation for these sorts of career jobs. Comey said he'd heard rumors about this issue over the last six months from concerned DoJ-ers. He called the allegations "the most serious thing I've heard come up" related to the whole U.S. attorneys scandal. "If that was going on, it strikes at the core of what the department is. You can't have assistant U.S. attorneys in there based on their party affiliation. … You just cannot have that." Such partisanship, Comey said, would make it impossible for sheriffs and judges and everyone else involved in criminal cases to trust that the DoJ is a fair arbiter. "I don't know any way you can get the department's reputation back about that," Comey added.

He sounded bitter. He sounded bitter again when Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., asked him what Sampson and Miers and others meant when they discussed the "loyalty" of the U.S. attorneys. "That's a very good question. I don't know what they meant by that," Comey said. "In my view, once you take that job"—working for the DoJ—"you have to be seen as one of the good guys" rather than as partisan. Comey is doing his best to put himself out to be one of those good guys. In an e-mail to Bud Cummins, the fired U.S. attorney from Arkansas, released by the House today, Comey wrote, "I will not sit by and watch good people smeared. What's that quotation about all that's necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to remain silent?"

The quotation is attributed to Edmund Burke.* Comey's got the gist (if he wants the exact wording, he can buy this poster). Now the lingering question is what happens to all the less good men who are stomping all over his beloved former department.

Correction, May 4, 2007: The original sentence said the quotation was by Burke. In fact, it does not appear in his writings or speeches and likely paraphrases his views. (Return to the corrected sentence.)