by Evie Stone

Hey, remember all those US Attorneys who were fired for political reasons, ultimately (combined with controversies over warrantless wiretapping and habeas corpus for terror suspects) leading to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last year? Well, this morning the DOJ released a very detailed report of its internal investigation into the matter. The whole thing is close to 400 pages — so if you've got awhile, here 'tis.

For those of you who don't have the time or attention span to sift through the the full blow-by-blow of each US Attorney's case, here's the heart of the investigators' findings:

We believe the primary responsibility for these serious failures rest with senior Department leaders — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty — who abdicated their responsibility to adequately oversee the process and to ensure that the reasons for removal of each U.S. Attorney were supportable and not improper. These removals were not a minor personnel matter — they were an unprecedented removal of a group of high-level Department officials that was certain to raise concerns if not handled properly. Yet, neither the Attorney General nor the Deputy Attorney General provided adequate oversight or supervision of this process. We also concluded that Sampson bears significant responsibility for the flawed and arbitrary removal process. Moreover, they and other Department officials are
responsible for failing to provide accurate and truthful statements about the removals and their role in the process.

(snip)

The Department's removal of the U.S. Attorneys and the controversy it created severely damaged the credibility of the Department and raised doubts about the integrity of Department prosecutive decisions. We believe that this investigation, and final resolution of the issues raised in this report, can help restore confidence in the Department by fully describing the serious failures in the process used to remove the U.S. Attorneys and by providing lessons for the Department in how to avoid such failures in the future.

Following the report's recommendation, current Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed a prosecutor this morning to investigate whether criminal charges should be filed against some of the officials involved in the firings.

You can hear more about this on today's All Things Considered from NPR's man on the Justice scene, Ari Shapiro.