"Concerns about his judgment" led to McKay firing, Gonzales testifies

John McKay was fired as U.S. attorney for Western Washington because there were "serious concerns" about his judgment," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today.

Foremost among those concerns was the manner in which McKay pushed the department to endorse and expand an "information-sharing project," Gonzales said.

When Gonzales accepted a recommendation to fire McKay on Dec. 7, 2006, he did not know the details of the concerns about McKay, the attorney general testified.

The firing of McKay was a consensus recommendation made by a group of senior Justice Department officials that included Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, Associate Attorney General William Mercer and former Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson, Gonzales said.

Subsequent to the firings, Gonzales testified, he learned more about the disenchantment with McKay.

Gonzales cited a four-page letter that McKay sent to McNulty on Aug. 31 regarding the Law Enforcement Information Exchange system, or LinX.

McKay had been asked by the Justice Department in 2005 to lead a LinX pilot project in Western Washington. It was later expanded to four other regions.

McKay's letter to McNulty was co-signed by 16 other U.S. attorneys. Gonzales suggested that McKay misled some of his colleagues into signing the letter because they believed it would have been welcomed by McNulty.

Instead, the letter annoyed McNulty, and he replied with a personal e-mail on Sept. 5 to all of the co-signers questioning why they were seeking to force him to take specific actions with regard to LinX.

The letter "angered his colleagues, it angered the deputy attorney general," Gonzales said.

McNulty's written response to McKay, included in documents the Justice Department had released earlier, was tersely worded: "I am quite disappointed that you have chosen to communicate with me in this way," McNulty wrote. "It appears that you are trying to force me to take some specific actions. It reads like a letter from Capitol Hill, not one from friends on the same team ... it is best to talk these things through a bit before laying down a challenge in writing which will set the Department up for failure."

Sampson included McKay on a list of "U.S. Attorneys We Now Should Consider Firing" in an e-mail to former White House Counsel Harriet Miers on Sept. 13.

Gonzales today also cited a Sept. 22 article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in which McKay complained that he could not expand partnerships with local law enforcement because of budget shortfalls.

"That was inappropriate... to go out and give an interview and tell state and local partners, 'Don't come to us because we can't help you anymore,'" Gonzales said.

Gonzales made no reference to McKay's handling of allegations of voter fraud during the 2004 governor's race in Washington state.

Democrats, and McKay himself, have suggested that McKay was fired because he did not convene a grand jury and file charges related to the hotly contested election, which was narrowly won by Democrat Christine Gregoire.

"We don't let partisan politics play a role in the decisions we make in cases," Gonzales said later when asked whether McKay or seven other U.S. attorneys fired last year were dismissed because they did or did not pursue public corruption or voter fraud cases.