Ward, the former U.S. attorney in Utah, went so far as to ask Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to weigh in and order the prosecutors to pursue the cases. Ward's complaints later were cited as a reason for the firing of two of the prosecutors - Daniel Bogden in Nevada and Paul Charlton in Arizona, according to a trove of documents the Justice Department has turned over to Congress.
The firings of those two U.S. attorneys and six others have touched off a political fracas and set the stage for a potential constitutional showdown as Democrats in Congress seek to compel White House aides to testify and President Bush promises to aggressively fight any subpoenas.
Ward's e-mails reveal tension as he has sought to pursue obscenity, but has been met with resistance from FBI officials and prosecutors who see higher priorities than cracking down on smut.
"It has now been more than 10 months since I arrived here. In that time two cases have been indicted. Only one of them was initiated by the FBI. In light of this the Task Force would have to be considered a failure so far," Ward wrote in an e-mail last August.
In that e-mail, Ward complained to officials of resistance from Bogden. Ward had wanted Bogden to take a case and scheduled a meeting in Las Vegas to discuss it. Bogden said the office's resources were already stretched too thin.
Ward suggested to DOJ officials in his e-mail that it might take a call from the attorney general to "turn this around."
"For the FBI people to go out to LV and sit and listen to the lame excuses of a defiant U.S. Attorney is only going to move this whole enterprise closer to catastrophe," Ward continued. "The Bureau is positioning itself so that it can point the finger at DOJ and say, 'See, we investigated this case and DOJ couldn't find anyone to prosecute it.'"
Ward makes reference to another case in California where he said his office was "straight-armed," and the case left unresolved for four or five months.
He wrote that, after the California case, and after sitting in a meeting with Charlton and watching him "thumb his nose at us, the Bureau knew this obscenity initiative could be heading for disaster."
In May, the grand jury in Arizona handed up an 18-count indictment against Five Star Media and several officials and affiliates, alleging it distributed four different obscene videos.
Sheila Phillips, a prosecutor on the task force, handled the case as Ward pressed officials to force Charlton to assign a prosecutor from his office to help.
In September, Ward wrote to Kyle Sampson, a fellow Utahn and chief of staff to Gonzales, complaining of push-back from Charlton and Bogden.
"We have two U.S. Attorneys who are unwilling to take good cases we have presented to them," Ward wrote. ''In light of the A.G.'s comments . . . to 'kick butt and take names,' what do you suggest I do?''
Sampson, who a week earlier had included Bogden and Charlton on a list of prosecutors the department should consider replacing, directed Ward to the head of the criminal division.
A month later the dispute was still unresolved. In a November e-mail to a senior official in the department's criminal division, Ward expressed frustration and said he assumed "that the AG has not yet personally weighed in. If that is the case, now is the time for him to do so."
Ward forwarded the e-mail to Sampson, who responded: "Charlton has been directed to provide" a prosecutor.
The case is scheduled for trial in April.
Bogden and Charlton were among seven U.S. attorneys who were asked to resign last December. Among the reasons they were asked to go, according to a DOJ chart, was that "Despite the national focus the Attorney General requested for offices to focus on the federal crime of obscenity, which coarsens society," the prosecutors had failed to support such cases in their districts.
