FBI Chief Contradicts
Gonzales Testimony

LAURIE KELLMAN & LARA JAKES JORDAN
Chicago Tribune / AP 27jul2007

"The attorney general has provided,   at a minimum, half-truths and   misleading statements." — Senate Judiciary Committee It's Way Past Bedtime for Gonzo Washington Post (below)

WASHINGTON — The head of the FBI contradicted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' sworn testimony and Senate Democrats requested a perjury investigation Thursday in a fresh barrage against President Bush's embattled longtime friend and aide.

In a third blow to the Bush administration, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas to compel the testimony of Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, in connection with its investigation of the firings of federal prosecutors.

"It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements," four Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote in a letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement calling for a special counsel to investigate.

The head of the FBI contradicted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' sworn testimony and Senate Democrats requested a perjury investigation Thursday in a fresh barrage against President Bush's embattled longtime friend and aide.

In a third blow to the Bush administration, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas to compel the testimony of Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, in connection with its investigation of the firings of federal prosecutors.

"It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements," four Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote in a letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement calling for a special counsel to investigate.

"I'm convinced that he's not telling the truth," added Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

The developments marked a troubling turn for Gonzales as well as the administration, which has been on the political defensive since congressional Democrats opened an investigation seven months ago into the firings of U.S. attorneys.

That probe revealed information that Democrats have sought to weave into a pattern of improper political influence over prosecutions, of stonewalling and of deceit in sworn testimony before Congress.

The White House defiantly stuck by Gonzales on the perjury matter and flatly denied that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller on Thursday contradicted the attorney general's sworn testimony on internal Bush administration dissent over the president's secretive wiretapping program.

Gonzales repeatedly and emphatically told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that the program was not at issue during his dramatic hospital bedside visit with ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004. Mueller, before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday, said it was.

Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said Gonzales and Mueller can make only limited comments in public about the classified program.

"The FBI director didn't contradict the testimony," Snow said. "It is inappropriate and unfair to ask people to testify in public settings about highly classified programs."

"The president, meanwhile, maintains full confidence in the attorney general," he added.

Democrats also insisted that the White House had encouraged top aides to flout congressional subpoenas in the prosecutor firings inquiry.

But Gonzales took the toughest hits Thursday, when four Senate Democrats issued a list of examples of what they said was the attorney general lying to Congress under oath — the basis for their request to Clement to appoint a special counsel to investigate.

Among examples of what Democrats called Gonzales' untruthfulness was his insistence in his statement to the Judiciary Committee Tuesday that his hospital visit with Ashcroft was not related to an internal administration dispute about the president's secret warrantless eavesdropping program.

Last year, Gonzales told the panel that there had been no internal administration dispute about the program, but former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told the panel that he, Ashcroft and Mueller were among the top Justice Department officials who believed the program was illegal and were prepared to resign over it.

In his own sworn testimony Thursday, Mueller contradicted Gonzales, saying under questioning that the terrorist surveillance program, or TSP, was the topic of the hospital room dispute between top Bush administration officials.

Mueller was not in the hospital room at the time of the March 10, 2004, confrontation between Ashcroft and presidential advisers Andy Card and Gonzales, who was then serving as White House counsel. Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee he arrived shortly after they left, and then spoke with the ailing Ashcroft.

"Did you have an understanding that the discussion was on TSP?" asked Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, in a round of questioning that may have sounded to listeners like bureaucratic alphabet soup.

"I had an understanding the discussion was on a NSA program, yes," Mueller answered.

Jackson Lee sought to clarify: "We use 'TSP,' we use 'warrantless wiretapping,' so would I be comfortable in saying that those were the items that were part of the discussion?"

"The discussion was on a national NSA program that has been much discussed, yes," Mueller responded.

The NSA, or National Security Agency, runs the program that eavesdropped on terror suspects in the United States, without court approval, until last January, when the program was put under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

In a statement late Thursday, Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse maintained Gonzales was referring during his testimony to a separate intelligence operation that has not yet been revealed.

"The disagreement that occurred in March 2004 concerned the legal basis for intelligence activities that have not been publicly disclosed and that remain highly classified," Roehrkasse said.

Roehrkasse also suggested the newly revealed intelligence operation was discussed with lawmakers at a March 10, 2004, briefing in the White House Situation Room, along with a discussion of the terrorist surveillance program.

Democrats said there were other examples of Gonzales "lying" that merited a probe by a special prosecutor.

They included the attorney general's sworn testimony that he had not spoken about the firings with other witnesses because the matter was under investigation.

His former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, testified under a grant of immunity that Gonzales had privately recounted his recollections of the firings and asked for her opinion on his version.

"There's no wiggle room," Schumer said. "Those are not misleading. Those are deceiving. Those are lying."

Not signing the letter to Clement was Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who instead sent a letter to Gonzales Thursday giving him a week to resolve any inconsistencies in his testimony.

"The burden is on him to clear up the contradictions," Leahy said.

Ranking Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania agreed, calling the call for a special counsel premature, and he took particular aim at Schumer, who has led the probe into the firing.

"Senator Schumer's not interested in looking at the record, he's interested in throwing down the gauntlet and making a story in tomorrow's newspapers," Specter said.

Meanwhile, Leahy subpoenaed Rove, the architect of Bush's rise to the White House and his top political adviser, to provide testimony and documents related to the firings by Aug. 2. Also subpoenaed is a White House political aide, J. Scott Jennings. The Justice Department included both men on e-mails about the firings and the administration's response to the congressional investigation.

White House Counsel Fred Fielding has consistently said that top presidential aides — present and past — are immune from subpoenas and has declared the documents sought off-limits under executive privilege.

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee approved a contempt citation against two other Bush confidants, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers. The full House is expected to vote on the citation in the fall, but the Justice Department has said it won't prosecute the two.

Associated Press writers Ben Feller in Washington and Brendan Riley in Carson City, Nev., contributed to this report.

source: 27jul2007

F.B.I. Chief Gives Account at Odds With Gonzales’s

DAVID JOHNSTON and SCOTT SHANE
New York Times 27jul2007

WASHINGTON, July 26 — The director of the F.B.I. offered testimony Thursday that sharply conflicted with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s sworn statements about a 2004 confrontation in which top Justice Department officials threatened to resign over a secret intelligence operation.

The director, Robert S. Mueller III, told the House Judiciary Committee that the confrontation was about the National Security Agency’s counterterrorist eavesdropping program, describing it as “an N.S.A. program that has been much discussed.” His testimony was a serious blow to Mr. Gonzales, who insisted at a Senate hearing on Tuesday that there were no disagreements inside the Bush administration about the program at the time of those discussions or at any other time.

The director’s remarks were especially significant because Mr. Mueller is the Justice Department’s chief law enforcement official. He also played a crucial role in the 2004 dispute over the program, intervening with President Bush to help deal with the threat of mass resignations that grew out of a day of emergency meetings at the White House and at the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general.

In a separate development, Senate Democrats, who were unaware of Mr. Mueller’s comments, demanded the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Gonzales committed perjury in his testimony on Tuesday about the intelligence dispute. The Senate Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, issued a subpoena to Karl Rove, the White House senior political adviser, and another presidential aide, J. Scott Jennings, for testimony about the dismissal of federal prosecutors, another issue that has dogged Mr. Gonzales.

White House officials said the Democrats had engaged in political gamesmanship.

“What we are witnessing is an out-of-control Congress which spends time calling for special prosecutors, starting investigations, issuing subpoenas and generally just trying to settle scores,” said Scott M. Stanzel, a White House spokesman. “All the while they fail to pass appropriations bills and important issues like immigration reform, energy and other problems go unanswered.”

The conflict underscored how Mr. Gonzales’s troubles have expanded beyond accusations of improper political influence in the dismissal of United States attorneys to the handling of the eavesdropping program, in which Mr. Gonzales was significantly involved in his previous post as White House counsel.

“I had an understanding that the discussion was on a N.S.A. program,” Mr. Mueller said in answer to a question from Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, in a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.

Asked whether he was referring to the Terrorist Surveillance Program, or T.S.P., he replied, “The discussion was on a national N.S.A. program that has been much discussed, yes.”

Mr. Mueller said he had taken notes of some of his conversations about the issue, and after the hearing the committee asked him to produce them.

An F.B.I. spokesman declined Thursday night to elaborate on Mr. Mueller’s testimony.

In a four-hour appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales denied that the dispute arose over the Terrorist Surveillance Program, whose existence was confirmed by President Bush in December 2005 after it had been disclosed by The New York Times. Mr. Gonzales said it centered on “other intelligence activities.”

Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said Thursday night that Mr. Gonzales had testified truthfully, saying “confusion is inevitable when complicated classified activities are discussed in a public forum where the greatest care must be used not to compromise sensitive intelligence operations.”

The spokesman said that when Mr. Gonzales had said there had been no controversy about the eavesdropping operation, he was referring only to the program to intercept international communications that Mr. Bush publicly confirmed.

“The disagreement that occurred in March 2004 concerned the legal basis for intelligence activities that have not been publicly disclosed and that remain highly classified,” Mr. Roehrkasse said.

The four senators seeking an inquiry into Mr. Gonzales’s testimony sent a letter to the Justice Department saying “it is apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements.”

The senators asked for the appointment of a special counsel. While the Justice Department is not obliged to act on their request, the letter reflected the chasm of distrust that has opened between lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee and Mr. Gonzales.

The senators who signed the letter were Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Dianne Feinstein of California, Charles E. Schumer of New York and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. Ms. Feinstein, Mr. Feingold and Mr. Whitehouse are members of the Intelligence Committee and have been briefed on the intelligence programs at issue.

The senators’ letter was sent to Paul D. Clement, the solicitor general, because Mr. Gonzales is recused from investigations of his own conduct. In addition to his statements to Congress about the intelligence controversy, the letter raised the possibility that Mr. Gonzales had lied about the prosecutor firings.

In what amounted to a warning to the attorney general, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, sent Mr. Gonzales the transcript of Tuesday’s hearing, asking him to “mark any changes you wish to make to correct, clarify or supplement your answers so that, consistent with your oath, they are the whole truth.”

Similar requests are routinely sent to witnesses after hearings, but Mr. Leahy’s pointed language underscored his view of the seriousness of the dispute over Mr. Gonzales’s veracity.

Still, neither Mr. Leahy nor Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the committee’s top Republican and a tough critic of Mr. Gonzales, joined in the call for a perjury investigation.

“I don’t think you rush off precipitously and ask for appointment of special counsel to run that kind of an investigation,” Mr. Specter said.

Doubts about Mr. Gonzales’s version of events in March 2004 grew after James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general, testified in May that he and other Justice Department officials were prepared to resign over legal objections to an intelligence program that appeared to be the N.S.A. program.

Mr. Gonzales’s testimony Tuesday was his first since Mr. Comey’s account drew national attention. He stuck to his account, repeatedly saying that the dispute involved a different intelligence activity.

Mr. Gonzales described an emergency meeting with Congressional leaders at the White House on March 10, 2004, to discuss the dispute. That evening, he and the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., went to the hospital bedside of Mr. Ashcroft in an unsuccessful effort to get his reauthorization for the secret program.

Lawmakers present at the afternoon meeting have given various accounts, but several have said that only one program, the Terrorist Surveillance Program, was discussed.

In addition, in testimony last year, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who was the N.S.A. director when the program started and now heads the Central Intelligence Agency, said the March 2004 meeting involved the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

source: 27jul2007

Perjury Probe For Gonzales?

Rove targeted Attorney general's testimony in question; Bush aide subpoenaed

LAURIE KELLMAN & LARA JAKES JORDAN
Indianapolis Star / AP 27jul2007

WASHINGTON — The head of the FBI contradicted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' sworn testimony and Senate Democrats requested a perjury investigation Thursday in a fresh barrage against President Bush's embattled longtime friend and aide.

In a third blow to the Bush administration, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas to compel the testimony of Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, in connection with its investigation of the firings of federal prosecutors.

"It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements," four Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote in a letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement calling for a special counsel to investigate.

The White House defiantly stuck by Gonzales on the perjury matter and flatly denied that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller on Thursday contradicted the attorney general's sworn testimony on internal Bush administration dissent over the president's secretive wiretapping program.

Gonzales repeatedly and emphatically told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that the program was not at issue during his hospital visit with ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004. Mueller, before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, said it was.

Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said Gonzales and Mueller can make only limited comments in public about the classified program.

"The FBI director didn't contradict the testimony," Snow said.

Gonzales took the toughest hits Thursday, when four Senate Democrats issued a list of examples of what they said was the attorney general lying to Congress under oath, the basis for their request to appoint a special counsel to investigate.

source: 27jul2007

FBI Chief Disputes Gonzales On Spying

Mueller Describes Internal Debate

DAN EGGEN & PAUL KANE / Washington Post 27jul2007

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III yesterday contradicted the sworn testimony of his boss, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, by telling Congress that a prominent warrantless surveillance program was the subject of a dramatic legal debate within the Bush administration.

Mueller's testimony appears to mark the first public confirmation from a Bush administration official that the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program was at issue in an unusual nighttime visit by Gonzales to the hospital bedside of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who was under sedation and recovering from surgery.

Mueller's remarks to the House Judiciary Committee differed from testimony earlier in the week from Gonzales, who told a Senate panel that a legal disagreement aired at the hospital did not concern the NSA program. Details of the program, kept secret for four years, were confirmed by President Bush in December 2005, provoking wide controversy on Capitol Hill.

"The discussion was on a national — an NSA program that has been much discussed, yes," Mueller said in response to a question from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.). Mueller told another lawmaker that he had serious reservations about the warrantless wiretapping program.

His testimony presents a new problem for the beleaguered attorney general, whose credibility has come under attack from Democrats and some Republicans. They say Gonzales deceived them on a number of issues, including the NSA program and events surrounding the firing last year of nine U.S. attorneys.

"He tells the half-truth, the partial truth and anything but the truth," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), as he and three other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department yesterday to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether Gonzales lied to Congress about the NSA program.

Complicating the administration's predicament, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) yesterday issued subpoenas to White House adviser Karl Rove and a deputy, demanding their testimony by Thursday as part of the panel's long-running investigation into the prosecutor firings and the alleged politicization of Justice Department career personnel jobs. The White House has refused such requests, prompting House lawmakers to move toward criminal contempt citations against a former Bush legal counsel and his current chief of staff.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said in a statement that Gonzales's testimony and statements about the NSA program have been accurate, but that "confusion is inevitable when complicated classified activities are discussed in a public forum."

Gonzales is under fire in particular for his testimony in February 2006 that there had been no "serious disagreement" about the NSA wiretapping program. Gonzales and his aides have since said that he was referring to the monitoring of international communications confirmed by Bush and not to other, undisclosed "intelligence activities" that attracted controversy within the administration.

"The disagreement that occurred in March 2004 concerned the legal basis for intelligence activities that have not been publicly disclosed and that remain highly classified," Roehrkasse said.

Other officials, including Mueller and several Democratic lawmakers who were briefed on the NSA's activities, have said that the surveillance, or some part of it, was at the heart of the dispute.

Mueller declined at the hearing to discuss Gonzales's statements on the topic. "I really can't comment on what Judge Gonzales was thinking or saying," he said. "I can tell you what I understood at the time."

Mueller's testimony is particularly striking in light of his opposition to Gonzales's view of the matter at issue during the 2004 legal dispute. Then-Acting Attorney General James B. Comey sought Mueller's help in ensuring that an FBI security detail did not evict Comey from Ashcroft's hospital room during the visit by Gonzales, then White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff.

Mueller was not present during the hospital visit but testified yesterday that Ashcroft briefed him on the conversation. He repeatedly said he agreed with Comey's version of events, which included testimony that Mueller, Ashcroft, Comey and others were prepared to quit if the program went ahead without changes to render it legal.

Bush agreed to make the changes after he met with Mueller and discussed the objections Mueller shared with Comey, according to Comey's account. Mueller conveyed that promise to Comey.

Signaling that Democrats intend to keep pursuing the issue, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) wrote to Mueller after yesterday's hearing, requesting notes about the 2004 hospital incident. Mueller testified that he kept records because the episode was "out of the ordinary."

FBI officials declined to comment.

The request by four senators to appoint a special prosecutor was sent to Solicitor General Paul D. Clement. He has taken charge of matters relating to the U.S. attorney firings and related controversies because Gonzales and numerous other aides are recused.

Leahy also raised the possibility this week of asking Justice Inspector General Glenn A. Fine to open a perjury investigation of Gonzales if the attorney general declines to correct testimony that Leahy considers inaccurate.

Besides demanding Rove's testimony on the attorney firings, Leahy sent a subpoena to J. Scott Jennings, the White House's deputy political director. Rove and Jennings appear in Justice Department e-mails discussing steps in the plan to fire the prosecutors.

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

source: 27jul2007

Bedtime for Gonzo

EUGENE ROBINSON / Washington Post 27jul2007

Gonzo (aka Gonzo the Great or the Great Gonzo) is a puppet character, one of the Muppets

It's way past bedtime for Gonzo. At this point, every day Alberto Gonzales continues as attorney general means more dishonor for the office and the nation — and higher blood pressure for Senate Judiciary Committee members trying desperately to get a straight answer out of the man.

Gonzo has managed to do something no one else in Washington has managed in years: create a spirit of true bipartisanship. After his pathetic act in front of the committee Tuesday, it's no surprise that Democrats are threatening to investigate him for perjury. But it was Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican, who looked Gonzo in the face and told him, "I do not find your testimony credible, candidly."

Specter seems ready to pop a gasket. "The hearing two days ago was devastating" for Gonzo, Specter said yesterday. "But so was the hearing before that, and so was the hearing before that."

Over time, one becomes almost numb to this administration's relentless lies and can-you-top-this transgressions. A kind of "outrage fatigue" sets in, accompanied by the knowledge that whatever it is that they've done this time, it could have been worse.

So when George W. Bush rewrote history the other day by saying that "al-Qaeda terrorists killed Americans on 9/11 [and] they're fighting us in Iraq," the tendency is to duly note that the president is not telling the truth — there is no evidence whatsoever that al-Qaeda in Iraq, which didn't exist on Sept. 11, 2001, takes orders from Osama bin Laden — and then move on. Hey, at least it's just talk. At least he didn't invade Iran or Pakistan. Yet.

For me, at least, Gonzo is the perfect antidote to midsummer apathy. The guy is . . . I was going to say the guy's unbelievable, but I'd just be repeating the bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill.

What set the senators a-sputtering was Gonzo's testimony about the night in 2004 when he showed up at the hospital bedside of his predecessor, John Ashcroft, to try to get him to overrule his deputy and reauthorize Bush's secret program of warrantless electronic eavesdropping. The Justice Department had concluded, most inconveniently for the White House, that the program as constituted was illegal.

James Comey, the former Ashcroft deputy who intercepted Gonzo in Ashcroft's hospital room, revealed that incident in gripping testimony earlier this year. But Gonzo had previously told Congress that there was no "serious disagreement" within the administration over the surveillance program.

Kind of a conflict there.

Asked about the glaring discrepancy, Gonzo said Tuesday that the disagreement and the hospital visit were about "other intelligence activities," and "not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people."

Specter's response: "Mr. Attorney General, do you expect us to believe that?"

No one believes it. The most generous interpretation is that Gonzo, fearful of facing a perjury rap, is insisting on an artificially and dishonestly narrow definition of "the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced" — leaving out "intelligence activities" that any reasonable person, including Comey, would consider part of the program. The nice word for that would be dissembling.

The not-so-nice word would be lying. Hence the call yesterday by a group of Senate Democrats for a perjury investigation.

I hope they nail him. Anyone tempted to feel sympathy for Gonzo should check out his weaselly explanation for why he would think it appropriate to buttonhole a sick man in his hospital room, regardless of the issue.

"There are no rules governing whether or not General Ashcroft can decide 'I'm feeling well enough to make this decision,' " Gonzo said. When Specter pointed out that Ashcroft had already turned his powers over to Comey, Gonzo replied, "And he could always reclaim it. There are no rules."

"While he was in the hospital under sedation?" Specter interrupted, before giving up on getting a straight answer.

Gonzo answered the question, all right — inadvertently, of course: "There are no rules."

That's the guiding philosophy of this administration. As far as these people are concerned, there are no rules of common decency. There are no rules of customary practice. There are no rules governing respect for the truth, or even respect for the privacy and health of an ailing colleague.

And we all know who sets that tone.

Sen. Chuck Schumer tried valiantly to get Gonzo to say who sent him on that Mafia-movie errand to the hospital. Gonzo's a loyal soldier; he wouldn't snitch. All Schumer got out of him was that the visit was "on behalf of the president of the United States."

source: 27jul2007