“A leader of an influential conservative legal group recommended a replacement candidate for the U.S. attorney in San Diego just days after the sitting prosecutor’s name was secretly placed on a Justice Department firing list, according to a document released Wednesday.”

The recommendation by the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo, came before anyone outside of a tight group in the White House and Justice Department knew about a nascent strategy that ultimately led to the firings of nine U.S. attorneys.

It could not be determined whether a short e-mail, sent on March 7, 2005, making the recommendation meant that Leo knew of the plan to fire Carol Lam or whether his message was unsolicited and coincidental.

The subject line of Leo’s e-mail to Mary Beth Buchanan, then-director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, says, “USA San Diego,” indicating the top prosecutor job for the Southern District of California. Lam was on the job at the time and had no plans to step down.

The text of the note reads, “You guys need a good candidate?” Leo goes on to say he would “strongly recommend” the Air Force’s general counsel, Mary Walker.

Walker led a Pentagon working group in 2003, which critics said helped provide the administration with a rationale to circumvent the international Geneva Conventions banning torture in the interrogations of terrorism suspects.

Buchanan will meet with House investigators next week.

Last night, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes claimed at an awards show that “the candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face Al Qaeda. And that’s what they have coming,” referring to the Democratic candidates who have chosen to not debate on Fox because they would be legitimizing a partisan platform. A Fox spokesman clarified the statement to TVNewser earlier today: “Mr. Ailes was repeating a comment made to him by many friends of his who are Democrats and are disappointed that their party is not currently debating on Fox.”

(HT: Greg Sargent.)

New Justice Department communications released tonight include an email from Monica Goodling, former counsel to Alberto Gonzales, directing another official to draw up a directive giving her unprecedented authority to hire and fire political staffers. Goodling tells the official, assistant attorney general Paul Corts, to “send [it] directly up to me, outside the system.”

Read the exchange:

The authority Goodling was requesting in this January 2006 exchange was first reported by Murray Waas last month in the National Journal. Waas detailed how Alberto Gonzales had “signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides” — Goodling and then-chief of staff Kyle Sampson — “extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department.”

The memo suggested “a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level.” During testimony last month, Goodling admitted that she had “taken inappropriate political considerations into account” while hiring career employees at the Department.

In his article, Waas quoted a senior Justice Department official “who did not know of Gonzales’s delegation of authority until contacted by National Journal” but who “said that it posed a serious threat to the integrity of the criminal-justice system.” Now we know why the senior official didn’t know about it — because Goodling sought to keep it “outside the system.”

“Vice President Dick Cheney blocked the promotion of a Justice Department official involved in a bedside standoff over President Bush’s eavesdropping program, a Senate committee learned Wednesday.”

In a written account, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey said Cheney warned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that he would oppose the promotion of a department official who once threatened to resign over the program.

Gonzales eventually decided against trying to promote Patrick Philbin to principal deputy solicitor general, Comey said.

“I understood that someone at the White House communicated to Attorney General Gonzales that the vice president would oppose the appointment if the attorney general pursued the matter,” Comey wrote. “The attorney general chose not to pursue it.” [...]

Philbin was one of two Justice Department officials who led a review of the classified program and provided some of the research that led Comey to refuse to endorse it, Comey said.

UPDATE: Carpetbagger has more on Comey’s revelations. Comey’s full interview transcript is HERE.

Robert Novak reports tonight that controversial former U.S. attorney in Arkansas Tim Griffin, who resigned last week, will join Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign as rumored:

Even before the official announcement of candidacy by former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), an all-star team of GOP operatives is gathering around him — Lawrence Lindsey, Ken Khachigian, Tim Griffin, Dave Bossie and Victoria Toensing, with more to follow.

Griffin, a former protege of Karl Rove, was formerly research director of the Republican National Committee. He became the poster boy for the politicization of the U.S. attorney process. Former Justice official Kyle Sampson noted that getting Griffin into office “was important to Harriet [Miers], Karl, et cetera.”

In 2004, BBC News published a report showing that Griffin led a “caging” scheme to suppress the votes of African-American servicemembers in Florida.

UPDATE: Atlantic Monthly’s Marc Ambinder adds: “Griffin is advising Thompson on communications and message and will probably be a consultant to Thompson’s presidential campaign.”

we noted earlier apparently never happened.

Proposed “war czar” Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said today in a written response to the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had voiced skepticism of President Bush’s escalation plan when it was initially proposed.

“During the review, I registered concerns that a military ‘surge’ would likely have only temporary and localized effects unless it were accompanied by counterpart ‘surges’ by the Iraqi government and the other, nonmilitary agencies of the U.S. government,” Lute wrote in a document obtained by The Associated Press.

“I also noted that our enemies in Iraq have, in effect, ‘a vote’ and should be expected to take specific steps to counter from our efforts,” he added. “The new policy took such concerns into account. It is too soon to tell the outcome.”

ThinkProgress noted last month that Lute had argued publicly that withdrawing troops was necessary to “undercut the perception of occupation.” His Senate confirmation hearing is tomorrow. We’ll see how he explains how Bush’s escalation plan “took such concerns into account.”

In a recent speech, President Bush reportedly “took on his own conservative political base” in slamming critics of comprehensive immigration reform. But the Washington Times reports, “President Bush did not intend to single out his conservative supporters for criticism” in the speech and “was ‘surprised’ that his remarks angered Republicans.” Tony Snow said, “[Bush] was surprised by the reaction.”