This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In those heady days after the 2000 election, Karl Rove became Utah's adopted son.

We enthusiastically made Bush's Brain our own as he swept into the White House. Rove, the Republican mastermind and Olympus High School graduate, was something to be proud of. Besides, his proximity to the Oval Office might be useful to loyal red-state voters.

But Rove isn't anything to boast about these days. And neither are the rest of our native sons who went to Washington seeking glory, only to belly flop in scandal soup.

Kyle Sampson is just the latest to trip and conk his noggin on the pedestal.

Before Sampson resigned under the weight of the U.S. attorneys firing scheme, others with Utah ties found dubious distinction in the Bush administration.

Once featured as a national-intelligence whiz in a fawning Deseret News profile, Robert Walpole has become infamous as the Bountiful-raised BYU grad who crafted the national-intelligence estimate alleging Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That document, which stated Iraq is "reconstituting its nuclear weapons programs," became the justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq and now is dismissed as credulous drivel.

Jay Bybee, a star of BYU's law school/training camp for right-leaning attorneys and good GOP soldiers, penned the Bush administration's "torture memo." In 2002, then-assistant U.S. Attorney General Bybee provided the legal reasoning for soldiers at Abu Ghraib to torment Iraqi prisoners. A year later, Bybee was whisked onto the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals - a lifetime appointment - with bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate and a letter of recommendation from then-George Washington University Law School Dean Michael Young, now University of Utah president.

And finally, we have Sampson, who plunged under the bus for the White House and then watched Attorney General Alberto Gonzales back it up over him. Sampson, also a BYU graduate, seems to be the architect - along with Rove and then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers - of a White House-Justice Department plan to replace U.S. attorneys who did not qualify as "loyal Bushies."

Current Utah U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman and former U.S. Attorney Brent Ward had bit parts in the scandal. While working for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Tolman added language to the Patriot Act that allowed the attorney general to replace U.S. attorneys without Senate approval - a change senators yanked last week. And Ward, the nation's porn czar, whined to Justice Department officials that now-fired U.S. attorneys in Arizona and Nevada would not prosecute smut cases.

This list of Utahns snagged in Washington controversy is not exhaustive.

Former Congresswoman Enid Greene's 5-hour crying jag/press conference was something to behold. One-term Democratic Congressman Allan Howe's bid for re-election ended 30 years ago after he was arrested for soliciting sex from undercover cops. We even can claim an accused Watergate conspirator - Park City attorney and lobbyist Gordon Strachan.

But none of them thought torture was a good idea.

The Bush Administration has compromised and disgraced a new batch of conservative Utah's best and brightest.

Kirk Jowers, Director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics, says guilt by association is inevitable. But the benefits outweigh the risks.

"As a small state, you need to make friends where you can in high places," Jowers says. "You'd rather have your people in the administration than not."

Still, this is getting embarrassing.