Firing of U.S. Attorneys Subject of Yale Symposium

The 2006 firing of eight U.S. Attorneys by the Bush administration and the politicizing of the Justice Department under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will be the subject of a symposium on October 7, 7:30 p.m., at Levinson Auditorium of Yale Law School, 127 Wall Street.

Titled “What Ever Happened to the Justice Department?” the symposium is free and open to the public.

The principal speaker will be David Iglesias, who resigned as U. S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico in 2007 because of alleged political pressure. Iglesias was appointed by President George W. Bush to the U.S. Attorney position in 2001. He was a defense counsel in the Guantanamo Bay court martial trial that inspired the film,  “A Few Good Men,” and he is currently a captain in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He has written a book with David Seay about the controversial U.S. Attorney firing, titled “In Justice.”

Two panelists will comment on the investigation: Drew S. Days III, the Alfred M. Rankin Professor of Law at the Yale Law School, and Michael Isikoff, an investigative correspondent for Newsweek who has reported frequently on the story since it broke.

Days served as Solicitor General under the Clinton administration, and was Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights under the Carter administration for three years before joining the Yale faculty in 1981.

Isikoff’s most recent book, co-authored with David Corn, is “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War.”

“What Ever Happened to the Justice Department?” is the eighth in a series of symposia on public affairs organized by Stanley Flink, a lecturer in the Political Science Department, which sponsors the events.