Paul Kiel March 20, 2007, 12:17 PM

Among the documents last night are some showing that the “performance related” reasons for firing eight prosecutors were the result of an ongoing collobaration at Justice. In other words, the officials appear to have brainstormed on the reasons they had fired the eight.

This document (the date’s unclear, but it was clearly done after the firings), for instance, shows a list of the fired prosecutors with a “Leadership Assessment” column laying out the supposed problems with the prosecutors’ performance. A Justice Department official made handwritten notes on the document, for instance adding to U.S. Attorney David Iglesias’ deficiencies (a scant two bullet points) two items: “under-performing generally” and “lackluster manager.” The official also added “use of time management” to San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam’s performance woes.

Here’s just one demonstration of the shifting rationale for the firings.

On the list of deficiencies for Nevada’s Daniel Bogden, you can see a lot of writing in and crossing out going on. One of the bullet points (written in and then crossed out) is “Resistance to obscenity prosecutions.” Now, as Salon detailed yesterday, that’s a bogus charge. But that didn’t stop them from using it. When Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), who had nominated Bogden, inquired as to the reason for Bogden’s firing, he was told it had to do with Bogden being insufficiently aggressive on “adult obscenity cases.” But when Justice Department official William Moschella testifed before Congress in March, he said that there wasn’t a “particular” reason for Bogden’s firing, but “given the importance of [Bogden’s] district,” the department felt they needed “renewed energy, renewed vigor” in that office in order to “take it to the next level.”

Another document appears to show a set of talking points for the reasons behind the firing of each prosecutor.

I could spend some time going blow by blow showing why most of the reasons cited for the firings are bogus (as I’ve done before), but for now, I’ll just make an overall point. Remember that all six of the prosecutors who testified under oath (all of them received positive job performance reviews) were surprised by the reasons cited for their firings. They were never told that they were underperforming, or bucking administration policies — more than that, most of them didn’t even have a clue. They were just fired and warned not to make much noise about it.

Note: Thanks to TPM Reader tes for pointing this out in the comments.

U.S. Attorneys