Question: did he quit — or was he shoved?
The Justice Department official who told seven United States attorneys in December that they were being dismissed said Monday that he was resigning.
There seems to be a lot of that going around in the Bush administration and the military these days. MORE:
Michael A. Battle, director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, said in a statement that his departure was unrelated to the dismissals, but Democrats said he appeared to be a casualty of the uproar over the firings.
Mr. Battle, formerly a United States attorney in Buffalo, is not believed to have played a significant role in the decision to remove the United States attorneys, although Justice Department officials said he had accepted it.
Mr. Battle said in his statement that he had been planning to leave the agency since last June.
To spend more time with his family? AND:
But Democrats in Congress said the timing of his departure, on March 16, appeared unusual.
With hearings planned on Tuesday in the Senate and the House, a House Judiciary panel said on Monday that it would issue subpoenas to two more of the ousted prosecutors, Daniel G. Bogden of Nevada and Paul Charlton of Arizona. The panel had previously subpoenaed four prosecutors.
This is not proving to be a good week for the Bush adminstration.
The aptly-named Battle is leaving, concidentally, just as this controversy is blowing sky high and Congress will start looking into it.
Add to that the resignations due to the Walter Reed medical center controversy. Is there a pattern here: inadequate managerial skills, poor administration, revelations in the press, political firestorms…and then resignations. Who’s next??
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.