Tobacco.org

• EDITORIAL: Gonzales and Tobacco  

The Washington Post quoted the leader of the Justice Department team, Sharon Y. Eubanks, as charging that " Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government's claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers."

Let us just say that this is one allegation of politicization of the Justice Department on which these columns can speak with some authority, because we were urging it. . . .

If there was any error in the handling of the tobacco case, it was that Mr. Bush failed to exercise sufficient political control over the Justice Department. He allowed a politicized Clinton administration racketeering prosecution of tobacco executives to go forward at great expense to the government and the economy even though it had little if any legal basis and even though it contradicted the president's compact with the voters at the polls.

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