Cheney Blocked promotion of Patrick Philbin

According to AP:

Vice President Dick Cheney blocked the promotion of a Justice Department official involved in a bedside standoff over President Bush's eavesdropping program, a Senate committee learned Wednesday.

In a written account, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey said Cheney warned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that he would oppose the promotion of a department official who once threatened to resign over the program.

Gonzales eventually decided against trying to promote Patrick Philbin to principal deputy solicitor general, Comey said.

"I understood that someone at the White House communicated to Attorney General Gonzales that the vice president would oppose the appointment if the attorney general pursued the matter," Comey wrote. "The attorney general chose not to pursue it."

Comey responded to written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt.

Comey's account provides new detail in a sprawling, Democratic-elicited story of how much the White House influences the department's operations.

Also Wednesday, the department released 39 new pages of internal e-mails and documents that partly detail efforts by the department's former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, in January 2006 to obtain authority to hire and fire political staffers.

"Ok to send up directly to me, outside of system," Goodling wrote in a Jan. 19, 2006, e-mail to Paul Corts, the assistant attorney general for administration.

The Democrats' investigation into whether the firings of eight U.S. attorneys were improperly political led to testimony last month in which Comey disclosed details of a hospital visit on March 10, 2004, to the attorney general at that time, John Ashcroft.

Democrats contend the story shows the White House's heavy-handed influence over the department, including the agency's role to periodically endorse the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program.

Schlozman testified yesterday. I'll post some of what he didn't say. But it seems there is more and more evidence of a White House involvement in all of this.