Paul Kiel February 25, 2007, 3:29 PM

The New York Times gets ahold of the internal Justice Department performance reports for the eight fired prosecutors and finds that six were rated “well regarded,” “capable” or “very competent.”

The Justice Department has insisted, of course, that the firings were “performance related.” But wouldn’t you know it? Those aspects of the prosecutors’ performance that led to their dismissals apparently didn’t make it into their comprehensive performance reviews… or so a Justice Department official gamely argues:

In response, a senior Justice Department official said the reviews, which focused on management practices within each United States attorney’s office, did not provide a broad or complete picture of the prosecutors’ performance.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of personnel information, said, “The reviews don’t take into account whether the U.S. attorneys carried out departmental priorities.”

Referring to the 94 United States attorney’s districts, the official said, “You can’t have 94 different sets of priorities,” suggesting that the dismissed prosecutors had failed to follow priorities set by the Justice Department in Washington.

However, each case report included a statement that each of the ousted prosecutors had established strategic goals set by the Justice Department in high priority areas like counterterrorism, narcotics and gun violence.

Oh, well.

The prosecutors themselves seem to have a different idea of what happened:

In recent days, several of the prosecutors have described conflicts with the Justice Department over death penalty cases and pending political corruption investigations as a possible factor in their firings. Justice Department officials have denied such issues were a factor.

U.S. Attorneys