The ousted Arizona U.S. Attorney who came under fire for the controversial Fast and Furious operation sought to commiserate with colleagues about the tight leash of the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs, email exchanges show.
Dennis Burke
In e-mails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee as part of its probe of the botched gun-walking investigation (and first noticed by the Washington Post’s Sari Horwitz), former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke calls unnamed people in the Justice Department Office of Public Affairs “chuckleheads.”
In the January 2011 email to Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, Burke writes: “So the chuckleheads at DoJ OPA called my office to complain that I used the word ‘war’ about the current circumstances in Mexico.”
Burke goes on to poke fun at First Lady Michelle Obama’s childhood fitness program, “Let’s Move!”
He writes: “Sure, we can have a ‘War on Obesity’ but please don’t refer to 30,000 people dying in Mexico at the hands of Drug Cartels as a ‘war.’”
Bharara responded a few minutes later, saying “don’t listen to them,” referring to the DOJ’s public affairs staff.
“Thanks for the heads up, because now I will use ‘war’ constantly,” Bharara wrote to Burke.
Burke, who resigned in August amid the scandal, approved a press release earlier that month that said Mexican drug cartels were shopping  for “war weapons” in the Grand Canyon State, according to a report in the Washington Post.
Burke sent a similar email to New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman.
“OPA didn’t like me using ‘war.’ 30,000 people are dead in Mexico. Sounds like war to me,” Burke wrote to Fishman, according to the Post report.
Former USA Burke is a good example of why the U.S. Attorney needs reforming top to bottom. The historical accident of a system with presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed U.S. Attorneys should have been revamped decades ago (along with the anachronistic U.S. Marshals). Back before there was a DOJ (1870), there was a need for presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed district attorneys in all the different federal districts–connected to the AG only by snail mail and later telegraph. Today, U.S. Attorneys should be simple presidential–or even AG–appointments. They should be subject to direct and effective supervision by the AG and the several AAGs. USAs like Burke (and Buchanan (W.D. Pa.), Christie (N.J.), and Meehan (E.D. Pa.)) are highly political loose cannons who are far more interested in their next political office than the administration of justice. Burke demonstrates a tin ear to the fact that there is a world of difference between labeling a foreign nation’s internal domestic diffuculties a “war” and using the same term for an internal U.S. dietary program. It’s not hard to see how he failed to identify the potential dangers of gun walking.