Four days before Nora Dannehy was appointed to investigate the Bush administration’s U.S. attorney firing scandal, a team of lawyers she led was found to have illegally suppressed evidence in a major political corruption case. This previously unreported fact calls her entire investigation into question as well as that of a similar investigation by her colleague, John Durham, of DOJ and CIA decision-making involving torture. Read this exclusive report by the Justice Integrity Project via Nieman Watchdog.

By Andrew Kreig

In September 2008, the Bush Justice Department appointed career federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy to investigate allegations that Bush officials in 2006 illegally fired nine U.S. attorneys who wouldn’t politicize official corruption investigations.

But just four days before her appointment, a federal appeals court had ruled that a team of prosecutors led by Dannehy illegally suppressed evidence in a major political corruption case in Connecticut. The prosecutors’ misconduct was so serious that the court vacated seven of the eight convictions in the case.

The ruling didn’t cite Dannehy by name, and although it was publicly reported it apparently never came up in the news coverage of her appointment.

But it now calls into question the integrity of her probe by raising serious concerns about her credibility -- and about whether she was particularly vulnerable to political pressure from within the Justice Department.

Now, almost two years later, Dannehy has provided arguably the most important blanket exoneration for high-level U.S. criminal targets since President George H.W. Bush pardoned six Iran-Contra criminals after the 1992 Presidential vote.

The DOJ announced on July 21 that it has “closed the case” on the nine unprecedented mid-term firings because Dannehy found no criminal wrongdoing by DOJ or White House officials.

But the official account indicates that she either placed or acceded to constraints on the scope of her probe that restricted it to the firing of just one of the ousted U.S. attorneys, not the others -- and not to the conduct of the U.S. attorneys who weren't ousted because they met whatever tests DOJ and the White House created.

And although reaction to the closing of the inquiry has been muted, some observers are accusing her of a whitewash.

“This is an outrageous act of cowardice and cover-up!” former Alabama governor and political prosecution victim Don Siegelman emailed me regarding DOJ’s decision, and its failure to interview him.  "The Justice Department has all the resources in the world to go after Lance Armstrong [for a multi-year, multi-million dollar investigation of unproven claims of cheating during bike races] but doesn't have the balls to go after Karl Rove."

Read more: New questions raised about prosecutor who cleared Bush officials in U.S. Attorney firings

A noted Hollywood filmmaker faces prison after a conditional guilty plea July 12 in a wiretapping case so interesting that it deserves two alternative news accounts.

Here’s how I described it: Yet again, federal authorities abused their vast powers to promote their own greater glory by manufacturing a crime and ruining a career ─ at needless expense to federal taxpayers. But here's the version provided to the vast majority of Americans by such once-over-lightly coverage as that by Reuters, in this case via ABC Entertainment:

“Die Hard” film director John McTiernan pleaded guilty to lying to law enforcement officials in connection with the racketeering case of a private detective who represented many Hollywood stars.

A trial for McTiernan had been expected to begin on Tuesday in Los Angeles on two counts of making false statements to federal agents and one count of perjury.  McTiernan, 59, originally pleaded guilty in 2006 to a charge of knowingly lying to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the criminal case against private detective Anthony Pellicano, who has since been jailed.

Read more: Feds Bully ‘Die Hard’ McTiernan Into Plea for False Statements

Project's Director Reveals

Findings at National Press Club

The Justice Integrity Project (JIP), a bipartisan advocate for legal reform, documented appalling abuses of defendant legal rights in a July 21 speech at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Executive Director Andrew Kreig spoke about the project's ongoing work documenting abusive tactics against white-collar defendants of varied political backgrounds. Also, he described why the project opposes Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan on civil rights and constitutional grounds  Click here to visit the project's website provided research materials on the issue. The Senate Judiciary Committee, which approved the nomination July 20, has assembled hundreds of thousands of pages of materials. Our investigative reporting and aggregation of the best independent commentaries provides a unique dimension, as illustrated by varied publications sharing it with their readers:

OpEd News, Justice Project Urges 'No' Vote On Kagan; Daily Kos, Inaction On Siegelman Case Earns Thumbs Down for Kagan; Huffington Post, Court Vacates Siegelman Charges, As Kagan and DOJ Team Lose; Newsmax, Justice Project: ‘No’ To Kagan, and Progressive Democrats of America, Justice Project: ‘No’ To Kagan.

The JIP focus on monitoring allegations of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct goes to the heart of the justice system at every level.  True, only a small number of Court cases directly focus on those issues. Yet improper incentives on decision-makers -- falsely charging a major politician, for example -- can clearly cause vast harm to effective government, potentially affecting any issue.

The weekly Washington Update public affairs show co-hosted by the Project's executive director on July 1 hosted two newsmaker author-experts. Bruce Fein, right, a high-ranking DOJ official in the Reagan administration and author of this summer's American Empire Before the Fall, criticized Kagan for what he called her “ridiculous” arguments extending presidential power and endangering historic U.S. civil rights. Dick Russell, author of the best-seller this spring American Conspiracies plus six previous books, described BP's Gulf oil "volcano" as the worst natural disaster in recorded history. Visit here to listen to Washington Update and previous shows in the series featuring expert guests.