When 17 U.S. attorneys questioned the Justice Department last year about why it wasn’t using a shared law enforcement database, they didn’t know that three of them would soon be among eight fired.
Amid the many revelations that will no doubt come from the investigation of the Bush administration pogrom of U.S. attorneys was this one.
And, as Sen. Bill Nelson (D – Fla.) pointed out this week, the department still isn’t following the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation to share information with other law enforcement agencies in the fight against terrorism.
“We learned the hard way from 9-11 that coordinated information-sharing is imperative,” Nelson wrote Wednesday to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.
The Florida Democrat’s request concerns a crime database called the Law Enforcement Information Exchange, or Linx…
Nelson’s letter follows the discovery of a pointed, written exchange last year between McNulty and a group of U.S. attorneys.
In a letter dated Aug. 30, 2006, the federal prosecutors questioned why the department had not taken a greater “leadership role” in promoting Linx. It was signed by 17 U.S. attorneys.
…Nelson and others in Congress have expressed concern over the exchange in 2006 — noting three of the U.S. attorneys who signed the letter to McNulty later were fired.
But — predictably — firing the critics didn’t solve the problem. And just as clearly, the Bush Justice Department is adrift in quibbles, incompetence, and heads up butts.
The 17 U.S. attorneys advocated an expansion of the system beyond its seven targeted regions, but doing so would require an agency other than the Department of Defense — which runs the program — to take the lead, said Mike Dorsey, head of the Linx program.
Dorsey said Thursday that the Justice Department has been supportive of the Linx program but attributed rifts about its future to debates on funding, control and turf wars.
