Iglesias feels vindicated by probe
Former resident says action was political

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — How does New Mexico’s former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias feel about the appointment Monday of a prosecutor to look at possible criminal charges against Republicans involved in his controversial firing?

“I feel fully vindicated,” said Iglesias, who for the past two years has been in the center of a controversy that included eight other prosecutors who were fired by the Bush administration for what appears to many to be political reasons.

Iglesias, who with his family lived in Gallup in the early
1970s, was in New Hampshire on a book tour to promote “In Justice,” his account of the controversy and the effect it has had on his family. He said that while the book has never made national best-seller lists, sales have been good.

He talked briefly about Gallup in the book, mentioning how, as a young boy in his early teens, he would go out with his buddies for Sunday walks in the red rocks north of town.

In a phone interview, he said he also had his first job when he was in Gallup, as a newspaper carrier for the Gallup Independent.

More than 30 years later, he still remembers his route — the downtown section of Gallup — and the hills he had to go up on his bike, until he could afford to buy a motor bike with his earnings.

These were pleasant times, he said, which he could call upon to help block out some of the bad days he would have after he was fired as U.S. Attorney for New Mexico in 2007.

A Justice Department investigation into his firing, as well as the eight others, led to a decision by Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Monday to appoint Nora Dannehy, a career prosecutor, to direct the probe and look into some of the allegations put in that report.

That investigation singled out the removal of Iglesias as the most troubling and it blamed the action on several prominent Republicans in the state, including Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, for pushing for his ouster for not following through on their desires to investigate Democrats in the state for voter fraud and public corruption.

The report on the investigation said that the nine U.S. prosecutors could be fired but not for “improper reasons.”

Iglesias has been saying from day one that his firing was because of “highly ideological Republicans “ in the state.

His wife, Cynthia, said Monday that except for a few Republicans here and there who are upset that her husband refused to go along with the party line, others in the state and throughout the nation have been very supportive.

His mother and father, Margaret and Claudio, who now live in retirement in Texas, said they also feel very proud of their son.

The Iglesias family came to Gallup in 1970 from Newkirk, Okla., when their son, David, was starting junior high, so Claudio could take over as pastor of the Indian Baptist Church. Margaret would go on to accept a job helping students who were patients at the Gallup Indian Medical Center keep up with their school assignments while they were being kept over at the hospital.

From Gallup, the family traveled to Panama and then to Albuquerque where they stayed for 30 years until Claudio’s retirement.

Margaret Iglesias said that while they lived in Albuquerque, they would be visited on occasion by friends they made in Gallup, but now, with them living in Texas, it’s mostly by phone but the friendships with people like Martha Zollinger, mother of the Independent’s publisher, are still continuing

As for David, he’s spending most of his time on the book tour — which he has been on since May — and giving lectures. He’s scheduled to speak at Yale next week.

“He’s enjoying it very much,” his wife said. “He’s having a blast.”