(One of these days I'll just set Smit's diaries on Heffelfinger/Paulose/Purge-gate to go automatically to the frontpage... - promoted by MNCampaignReport)
Nick Coleman, the Star Tribune star columnist, seems to be the first in the local mainstream media to pick up the Heffelfinger / Paulose story, first reported in my diaries here and here. His piece in the Strib today contains several interesting quotes from Mr. Heffelfinger himself, and also brings up the key fact, mentioned in the KSTP broadcast, that Mr. Heffelfinger was not invited to Ms. Paulose's investiture ceremony:
"Rachel Paulose put together the guest list, and why I was not on the guest list, only she can answer," says Heffelfinger.
Paulose's spokesperson, Jeanne Cooney, claimed that Paulose and Heffelfinger get along "very well," but said:
"I'm not going to discuss Rachel's personal investiture invitation list to anybody. It was a public event. Anybody who wanted to go could have gone."
This just adds fuel to the flames of speculation that Heffelfinger was targeted, though Mr. Heffelfinger claims once again in Coleman's piece that he "left for [his] own reasons."
But Coleman's piece ultimately does a disservice to the story by getting key facts in the saga wrong. Read below the jump to see where Coleman's piece went off-track. |
Here's how Nick Coleman explains the facts surrounding Heffelfinger's departure and the mysterious memos swirling around that time:
Among the documents released by the Department of Justice during the furor over "Purge-gate" was a Jan. 9, 2006, e-mail from Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, to White House Counsel Harriet Miers. The e-mail includes a "target list" of seven attorneys who should be considered "for removal and replacement."
Four of the targeted attorneys were among the eight eventually fired: Margaret Chiara of Michigan, Harry Cummins III of Arkansas, and Kevin Ryan and Carol Lam, both of California. But three of the seven names on the list have been "redacted" -- whited out -- because they had resigned before the list was finalized.
Sampson's memo proposed working with "targeted U.S. Attorneys to encourage them to leave government service voluntarily; this would allow (them) to make arrangements for work in the private sector and 'save face' regarding the reason for leaving office, both in the Department of Justice and in their local legal communities."
Heffelfinger announced his resignation on Feb. 14 last year, after Sampson's list of targeted attorneys was prepared, and before it was redacted.
Repeated requests for the names of U.S. attorneys who resigned in Sampson's time frame went unanswered by the Department of Justice. But the Salt Lake Tribune reported March 24 that only three left office during that time: Utah's Paul Warner, Missouri's Todd Graves and Minnesota's Heffelfinger.
Three names. Three blanks. Does filling in the blanks connect Heffelfinger to "Purge-gate"?
If there had been indication that three U.S. Attorneys had resigned, and that corresponded exactly to the three redacted spots on the list, it would have been a bombshell, sure-fire evidence that Mr. Heffelfinger had in fact been targeted for "purging." But this is not what the facts show.
In his summary above, Mr. Coleman does not mention Kyle Sampson's April 14th memo, which clearly states that "two others on [the] original list have already left office." Basically, as I have stated in the past, this means that two of the three (Graves, Heffelfinger, Warner) who resigned between January 9th and April 14th, 2006, must have been on the list-not all three, as Mr. Coleman states. Coleman appears not to have done his own research for the piece, or even read the detailed summaries available in my previous diaries here. He appears to have worked off the March 24 article in the Salt Lake Tribune (which clearly mentions this site as a source, so he could have tracked down all the original evidence here), but he misinterprets the facts that are available there, too. That piece clearly states,
A January list Sampson sent to White House Counsel Harriet Miers of prosecutors that the administration should consider replacing had three names whited out when it was released by the Justice Department.
In a subsequent e-mail in April, Sampson said that two of those on that list had already resigned. A search of a news database shows that three U.S. attorneys resigned in that time period: Todd Graves in Missouri, Thomas Heffelfinger in Minnesota, and Warner.
Despite mentioning this SLT piece in his column, showing that he must have read it, Coleman apparently did not get the facts straight before he went to press.
Now, it seems like a simple enough mistake-after all, the facts are confusing, and this little slip-up does not undermine the substance of the story: the question still remains, was Heffelfinger targeted? But as a high-profile (and presumably highly-paid) columnist in the local media, Coleman has exposed this story to the masses, beyond its discussion on political blogs (which, despite their growing importance, are not the main source of news for the vast majority of people.) Though all journalists, online and off, have a responsibility to get their facts straight before publishing, and to correct them once mistakes are pointed out, the bar should be raised much higher for a high-profile veteran journalist like Mr. Coleman. More troubling, Mr. Coleman and the Star Tribune are frequent targets of the right-wing noise machine, who will take every opportunity to accuse them, fairly or not, of left-leaning bias. By publishing this column without getting his facts straight, Mr. Coleman has opened the door for Republican partisans to question his piece not on its overall merit, but on its one tiny mistake. We have seen this happen in "scandal" after "scandal": see "Rathergate" and "Jamil-Hussein-gate" for examples in which small inconsistencies were magnified by the right-wing noise machine into meta narratives about media bias that ended up overshadowing whatever merit the original stories themselves may have had. Local right-wing blogs such as Anti-Strib and PowerLine revel in any opportunity to launch a broadside against the "Red" Star Tribune (their oh-so-clever nickname for the paper), and especially to dismantle a Coleman column.
Now, perhaps such an incident will not occur in this case, but my point is that Mr. Coleman needs to be more careful in publishing his columns without fully getting his facts straight. He has done a great service to the pursuit of truth and justice by questioning the circumstances surrounding Heffelfinger's departure and Paulose's appointment, but small mistakes cannot be allowed to overshadow the questions that still remain to be answered. If you see any blog or media outlet attempt to attack the Heffelfinger / Paulose story story based on Coleman's mistakes, don't let the narrative begin to spread--fight back!
In other Heffelfinger / Paulose news, I found this quote in the Concord Monitor quite interesting:
In Minnesota, Rachel Paulose was named interim U.S. attorney 13 months ago and nominated for the permanent job in December. As senior counsel to McNulty, she helped draft an initiative to crack down on child pornography through long prison sentences. Since arriving in Minneapolis, she has expanded investigations of such crimes, which have been a high priority for Gonzales, and pushed for sentences she has called "righteous."
Paulose replaced Thomas Heffelfinger, who spent nearly 20 years as a state and federal prosecutor and recently left for private practice to increase his income. Heffelfinger supervised Paulose when she was a young assistant prosecutor in the office. He would not comment on her qualifications.
"I was 58 when I left. She was 32 when she started," he said. "I brought significantly different things to the job than she brings to the job - without valuing them one way or the other."
Combine this pointed non-endorsement with the testy exchange quoted in Coleman's column above about Heffelfinger's lack of an invitation to the investiture, and it looks like there's some serious bad blood between Heffelfinger and Paulose. |
