Sources

Yesterday’s Albuquerque Journal article by Mike Gallagher has been the topic du jour on many of the political blogs. The article claims that Senator Pete Domenici had U.S. Attorney David Iglesias fired and did so through Karl Rove and the President himself.

Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was fired after Sen. Pete Domenici, who had been unhappy with Iglesias for some time, made a personal appeal to the White House, the Journal has learned.
. . .

At some point after the election last Nov. 6, Domenici called Bush’s senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and told him he wanted Iglesias out and asked Rove to take his request directly to the president.

Domenici and Bush subsequently had a telephone conversation about the issue.

Here’s the rub. As far as I can determine the sole indication of how Gallagher and The Journal determined what happened is this line:

“The Journal confirmed the sequence of events through a variety of sources familiar with the firing of Iglesias, including sources close to Domenici. ”

“A variety of sources . . . including sources close to Domenici.” Not one is identified, even in the most general terms.

Update 9:00AM: Here, for example, Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine) takes the article as gospel.

Update 2 9:07: NewMexiKen is just getting around to reading Talking Points Memo. Josh Marshall posted this early this morning:

But the Journal’s story is a bit vague on the sourcing. The article says the paper “confirmed the sequence of events through a variety of sources familiar with the firing of Iglesias, including sources close to Domenici.” Close to Domenici looks like the key. These are facts no one else has been able to dig up so far. But proxies for Domenici wouldn’t seem to have much interest in putting this story out. So what’s up exactly? And what does it suggest about the facts alleged in the article?