A few more nuggets from the Post piece on the Iglesias charges.
In his interview with the Post Iglesias speculates on the probable chain of events that got him fired …
“I didn’t give them what they wanted. 
That was probably a political problem that caused them to go to the White House or whomever and complain that I wasn’t a team player.”
If you’re a nervous member of Congress in a tight election and you’re pissed you can’t get any action out of Iglesias, you probably don’t call the DOJ. You call the White House, specifically the political office. So who at the White House got called? And what did they do?
There’s another interesting tidbit down at the bottom of the article — a few brief comments from former Deputy AG James Comey. Remember, when the Plame case started to heat up in late 2003 and Attorney General Ashcroft had to recuse himself from participation in the case, it was Comey, the Deputy AG, who appointed a prosecutor he knew would get to the bottom of the mess, Patrick Fitzgerald. Here’s Comey …
Former deputy attorney general James B. Comey this week praised Iglesias as “a fired-up guy.”
“David Iglesias was one of our finest and someone I had a lot of confidence in as deputy attorney general,” said Comey, now general counsel for Lockheed Martin.
But Roehrkasse said Justice “had a lengthy record from which to evaluate his performance as a manager, and we made our decision not to further extend his service based on performance-related concerns.”
Who do you believe?
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has died at the age of 89.
According to the Times obituary, he had a heart attack at a restaurant in Manhattan and died at New York Downtown Hospital.
Because of my background I think of him primarily as an historian, though his influence is at least as much as an intellectual on the stage of politics stretching over more than half a century. My favorite of his books — I think his first — is The Age of Jackson. In some ways it’s a very dated book, but also a timeless one. In its own broad and expansive narrative fashion it is as good a book as any you’ll read about the period. I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about America.
Then there’s The Vital Center, the touchstone of Cold War Liberalism and liberal anti-Communism, published only three or maybe four years Age of Jackson, though now saddled with a title that, as a catchphrase, has been cheapened out of all recognition.
Three years ago, at an awards ceremony, I saw my chance, buckled up my courage, and introduced myself in one of those awkward ‘I’m introducing myself because I want to be able to remember that I met you’ moments and had the unexpected gratification of learning that he’d heard of me. Here’s a post I wrote later that day recounting my not-so-successful attempt to explain to this octogenarian what a ‘blog’ was with very few common points of reference.
If you’re not familiar with Schlesinger or know him only as a name, take the time to read the Times obit. This is one of those passings that, in a small but deep way, marks the passing of an era.
White House: Okay, maybe the North Koreans don’t have a uranium enrichment program after all.
You have to be relatively deep into the minutiae of North Korea policy for this story. But it’s a big one. The Bush administration is now saying they’re really not even sure the North Koreans have a uranium enrichment program for the production of nuclear weapons.
A ‘senior administration official’ tells the Times, “The question now is whether we would be in the position of having to get the North Koreans to give up a sizable arsenal if this had been handled differently.”
That, as they say, is something of an understatement.
This gets a tad tedious. But bear with me because it’s important.
Speaking very broadly, there are two big ways to make nuclear weapons — with uranium and plutonium. Each involves different technical challenges and processes. And each has a different bang you get versus the complexity of the task of putting the thing together.
The big issue with North Korea has always been their plutonium production. Back in 1994, they were on the brink of being able to produce bombs with the plutonium they were making. The US came close to war with the North Koreans over it. But the two countries settled on something called the ‘Agreed Framework‘ in which the North Koreans’ plutonium production operation was shuttered and placed under international inspection in exchange for fuel oil shipments and assistance building ‘light water’ nuclear reactors.
We don’t need to get into the details of the agreement at the moment. The relevant point is that from 1994 to 2002 the North Korean nuclear weapons program was frozen in place. The strong consensus judgment was that they had not yet made any nuclear weapons. And during that period they could not access the plutonium they had already produced.
It was on the basis of this alleged uranium enrichment program — which may well not even have existed — that the US pulled out of that agreement. This allowed the North Koreans to get back into the plutonium business with a gusto. And they have since produced — by most estimates — at least a hand full of nuclear weapons, one of which, albeit a rather feeble one, they detonated last October.
So now let’s review that quote from the senior administration official: “The question now is whether we would be in the position of having to get the North Koreans to give up a sizable arsenal if this had been handled differently.”
Frankly, it’s not much of a question.
Because of a weapons program that may not even have existed (and no one ever thought was far advanced) the White House the White House got the North Koreans to restart their plutonium program and then sat by while they produced a half dozen or a dozen real nuclear weapons — not the Doug Feith/John Bolton kind, but the real thing.
It’s a screw-up that staggers the mind. And you don’t even need to know this new information to know that. Even if the claims were and are true, it was always clear that the uranium program was far less advanced than the plutonium one, which would be ready to produce weapons soon after it was reopened. Now we learn the whole thing may have been a phantom. Like I said, it staggers the mind how badly this was bungled. In this decade there’s been no stronger force for nuclear weapons proliferation than the dynamic duo of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush.
McCain makes it official: He’s in the race for President.
McCain wants to deliver some “straight talk” to conservatives — but only behind closed doors.
So there it is. Former US Attorney David 
Iglesias has now all but named Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) as the two members of Congress who pressured him to indict a New Mexico Democrat before the November election. He didn’t use their names. But he said they were “two members of the New Mexico delegation.” The other three have each categorically denied it was them. And Domenici and Wilson still refuse to give any answer to the press.
I hear through the grapevine that reporters are staking out Sen. Domenici this morning on Capitol Hill. So I suspect strongly that we’ll have some answer very soon. Needless to say, we continue to place follow up calls to each office. And they’re still not answering any questions.
Howard Kurtz gives some gentle publicity to Michelle Malkin’s latest attack.
We hear there are more than a few reporters on the Heather Wilson/Pete Domenici stake out watch today. Drop us a line. All confidential.