The dismissal of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias in December 2006 followed extensive communication among lawyers and political aides in the White House who hashed over complaints about his work on public corruption cases against Democrats, according to newly released e-mails and transcripts of closed-door House testimony by former Bush counsel Harriet Miers and political chief Karl Rove.

A campaign to oust Iglesias intensified after state party officials and GOP members of the congressional delegation apparently concluded he was not pursuing the cases against Democrats in a way that would help then- Rep. Heather Wilson in a tight releection race, according to interviews and Bush White House e-mails released Tuesday by congressional investigators. The documents place the genesis of Iglesias’s dismissal earlier than previously known. [...]

The House focused most of its attention on Iglesias, a rising star in New Mexico who came to displease his political patrons. Miers told investigators that Rove called her in September 2006, “agitated” about the slow pace of public corruption cases against Democrats and weak efforts to pursue voter fraud cases in the state. In the call, Miers said that Rove had described Iglesias as a “serious problem” and said he wanted “something done” about it. Miers testified that she called then Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty to pass along the concerns.

Also, The Post reports that the debilitating amnesia that afflicted former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales when he testified before Congress appears to be contagious.

In their testimony in June and July 2009, both Miers and Rove failed to recall key incidents , according to the transcripts. Miers said she could not recall events nearly 150 times in the course of her 10-hour deposition. Rove portrayed himself as receiving hundreds of e-mails a day, so that “asking me to remember replies is like asking me to remember a raindrop in a thunderstorm.”

The Washington Post has obtained those emails and reports that they reveal contacts between Rove, Bush aides and White House lawyers about the firing of three of the nine federal prosecutors dismissed in 2006.  According to The Post, those prosecutors are “New Mexico’s David C. Iglesias, the focus of ire from GOP lawmakers; Missouri’s Todd Graves, who had clashed with one of Rove’s former clients; and Arkansas’s Bud Cummins, who was pushed out to make way for a Rove protégé.”

Rove had previously described himself as “merely passing along complaints by senators and state party officials to White House lawyers.”

Rove yesterday finished his second day of closed-door testimony to the committee — testimony that was negotiated after he and former White House counsel Harriet Miers had refused to testify, and the House sued to compel their testimony. As part of the negotiation, transcripts of their testimony could be released in August.

Meanwhile, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nora R. Dannehy is still investigating whether the apparently politically motivated firings could warrant any criminal charges.

From a committee statement:

In an agreement reached today between the former Bush Administration and Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Karl Rove and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers will testify before the House Judiciary Committee in transcribed depositions under penalty of perjury. The Committee has also reserved the right to have public testimony from Rove and Miers. It was agreed that invocations of official privileges would be significantly limited.

Miers and Rove fought an epic battle over the extent of executive privilege with the committee. They repeatedly refused to testify about the firing of nine U.S. attorneys citing the legal theory that even former presidential advisers cannot be compelled to testify before Congress about their conversations with the president. Last fall, U.S. District Court Judge John Bates who was hearing the case, rejected the Bush administration’s claims of executive privilege. Rove still failed to appear to appear before the committee last month in response to a reissued subpoena.

“This is a victory for the separation of powers and congressional oversight,” said Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) “It is also a vindication of the search for truth. I am determined to have it known whether U.S. Attorneys in the Department of Justice were fired for political reasons, and if so, by whom.”

Per the agreement, testimony will be held behind closed doors. The committee says it will release a transcript of the proceedings. Neither Rove nor Miers received an immunity deal in exchange for their testimony.

The agreement comes just six days short of the second anniversary of the committee’s first letter to the White House seeking testimony from Miers. Today is also the court-mandated deadline for the Obama administration to file a brief in the Miers case.

As I’ve written before, Pelosi has been a bit cagey in the past about just what sort of criminal accountability she’s looking for.  She has previously mentioned holding former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and Bush aide and adviser Karl Rove — both of whom ignored congressional subpoenas while citing executive privilege — in contempt of Congress, as well as investigating the politicization of the Justice Department, but Pelosi has been relatively quiet on the authorization of torture by former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Last night, Pelosi clarified her views a bit — sort of. Asked by Maddow if she’d support a ‘truth commission’ along the lines of the one proposed on the Senate floor yesterday by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Pelosi said she supports an investigation, but she isn’t happy about providing immunity for Bush officials who broke the law. “I want to go forward but as we try to have reconciliation … I don’t think we should have immunity for some of those issues,” she said.

On one hand, this suggests that she’s even more gung-ho about prosecuting alleged criminal activity during the Bush administration than most members of Congress. But as Maddow pointed out later, that view also gives Pelosi a convenient excuse to oppose the Leahy truth commission, just as it’s gaining momentum — not only in Congress, but with the American public. That could be a way to prevent an in-depth investigation into exactly how it is that the U.S. government came to authorize the torture of terror suspects — including the role of Democrats who were briefed on the CIA’s tactics.

Not one to let such things go, Maddow specifically asked Pelosi about that as well. Pelosi’s response?

Sure, Pelosi said, some Democrats were briefed, but “they did not brief us that these enhanced interrogations were taking place … they were talking about an array of interrogations that they might have at their disposal.” In other words, the Bush administration briefed Democrats that they might use waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” involving abuse and humiliation, they just didn’t tell the Democrats that they were already using those tactics.

Frankly, I’m not sure what difference that makes. So what if she knew that they might use waterboarding the next day, but hadn’t used it yet?  Pelosi’s subsequent point, that there was no way for the Democrats to object publicly about those techniques if they were unhappy about them, seems to me more valid. That is, after all, what a classified briefing means: you can’t talk about it later.

Pelosi said she’d like to change that:

These are issues you can’t even talk to your staff about. And that just isn’t right. Because it gives all the cards to the administration. And if you say anything about it you have violated national security … and that’s what we’re going to change. You don’t want any president, Democrat or Republican, to have that kind of authority.

No, we don’t. Because we’ve already seen the consequences. If we take Pelosi at her word,  she’s now supporting prosecution of former Bush officials for all sorts of lawbreaking, as well reforming restrictions on how members of Congress can use classified information to object to the executive’s tactics.

In the end, though, who knew what, when and why it all happened still remains muddled. It sounds more and more like both a truth commission that gets at the whole story AND targeted prosecutions based on the evidence that comes out, is going to be the best way to move forward. However, as human rights lawyers have pointed out to me (and as I discussed with Rachel Maddow on her TV show last week) the two really have to happen simultaneously. Otherwise, given the strict statutes of limitations on torture and other federal crimes, we could end up with a thorough report on senior Bush officials who broke the law, and no way left for the government to prosecute them for it.

Of course, it will take some convincing to get a majority in Congress — not to mention President Obama — to agree to that; but the American public, according to the latest polls, is already well on its way.

It seems Americans have taken to heart the much-cited mantra that we’ve now heard from both Pelosi and the new president: “No one is above the law.”

It appears the committee may have just stumbled upon a bipartisan solution: pardon Rove.

Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) asked Fine whether a pardon of Rove by George W. Bush would preclude Rove from testifying before the committee.

Fine gave her a quizzical look and said he hadn’t considered that hypothetical, but that, no, that shouldn’t prevent him from testifying.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) then pounced on the idea, saying that if all the committee wants is the truth, it should encourage the president to pardon Rove, and then he can talk. He compared a pardon with immunity for a witness who testifies in a criminal trial.

This is probably just a blip on the screen in the ongoing U.S. attorney scandal. But it’s interesting that Issa, a critic of the committee’s investigation, would seek out a pardon of Rove, when the “boy genius” has yet to be charged with a crime (besides contempt of Congress).

It’s also interesting that a presidential pardon of Miers and Rove is in the realm of possibility. Even Ronald Reagan didn’t pardon the key players of Iran-Contra when he left office.