Gonzales' Testimony Undergoing Scrutiny

The Justice Department's inspector general says
he is looking into whether the outgoing attorney general was
candid during congressional hearings. 

RICHARD B. SCHMITT / Los Angeles Times 31aug2007

[More on Gonzales]

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department's inspector general acknowledged Thursday that he was examining whether outgoing Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales made false or misleading statements to Congress about the National Security Agency's terrorist surveillance program, the fired U.S. attorneys affair and other subjects.

Responding to a congressional query, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said his office was investigating Gonzales' conduct as part of several ongoing probes into the activities of department lawyers on Gonzales' watch. Though it had long been assumed that the statements Gonzales had made would be part of those inquiries, it was the first public confirmation by the department's internal watchdog.

"You identified five issues and asked that we investigate whether the statements made by the attorney general were intentionally false, misleading or inappropriate," Fine wrote in a letter to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). "The OIG has ongoing investigations that relate to most of the subjects addressed by the attorney general's testimony that you identified."

Gonzales on Monday announced his resignation, effective Sept. 17, after a tumultuous 2 1/2 years as attorney general. The White House has launched a search for a new attorney general, but President Bush is not expected to announce his choice for a successor before leaving Monday for the Asia-Pacific economic summit in Australia.

In recent months, Democratic and Republican lawmakers had lost confidence in Gonzales because of his perceived lack of candor.

"The current attorney general is leaving, but these questions remain," said Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It is appropriate that the inspector general will examine whether the attorney general was honest with this and other congressional committees about these crucial issues."

At a news conference in March, Gonzales denied that he was involved in deliberations that led to the firing of nine U.S. attorneys last year. But internal Justice Department documents that surfaced later showed he attended at least one meeting in which the firings were discussed and approved.

Gonzales also has come under attack for telling members of Congress that there was little dissent within the Bush administration about the legality of a warrantless electronic surveillance program that was launched by the NSA after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But that appeared to be contradicted in testimony by a former deputy attorney general, who said several top Justice officials at one point threatened to resign over a disagreement with the White House.

Without identifying the program, James B. Comey testified that he and other Justice officials were very concerned about its legality, which led to an unusual hospital-room standoff in 2004 between Gonzales and then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft. Comey, acting for Ashcroft, had refused to approve the program; Gonzales, then the White House counsel, tried to persuade the bedridden Ashcroft to countermand Comey, although Ashcroft refused.

In July, Gonzales' testimony was further undercut by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who told the House Judiciary Committee that he had had serious reservations about the wiretapping program.

In an Aug. 16 letter, Leahy asked Fine to assess other statements by Gonzales, including testimony that he had not talked with other Justice employees about the ongoing U.S. attorney probe because he did not want to be perceived as trying to influence the investigation. A former top aide who was involved in the firings, Monica M. Goodling, subsequently testified that Gonzales had tried to engage her in a discussion about the series of events leading to the dismissal of the prosecutors and that the approach had made her "uncomfortable."

The Justice Department had no comment on Fine's letter.

Gonzales has said that he misspoke when he told reporters that he was not involved in selecting U.S. attorneys to be fired. He has stood by his testimony that there was no internal dissent over the anti-terrorism program — but acknowledged there was dissent with other intelligence activities that remain classified.

Gonzales has also denied trying to influence the testimony of Goodling, saying he was only attempting to reassure a distraught employee that she had done nothing wrong.

source: 31aug2007

Clock Ticking for Gonzales Replacement

STEPHEN LOSEY / Federal Times 31aug2007

Departing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales leaves behind a damaged Justice Department, and whoever replaces him will not have much time for repairs, experts say.

Months of sparring between lawmakers and Gonzales over issues such as the controversial firing of eight U.S. attorneys and the politicizing of the department has battered Justice’s reputation and hurt the morale of its 106,000 employees.

Seven top officials besides Gonzales are gone, most resigning in the fallout from the fired attorneys scandal, and most of those jobs remain unfilled.

And the ensuing turmoil has preoccupied the entire department, officials said.

But they now hope the department can finally move forward.

“This clears the decks,” said Richard Delonis, an assistant U.S. attorney in Michigan’s Eastern District and president of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys. “It lets people get back to the substantive work that needs to be done. The fight [over the fired attorneys] was more of a distraction that takes us away from what we need to focus on.”

Mending morale

Gonzales’ resignation, which he announced Aug. 27, could by itself do wonders for departmental morale, said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University.

“I imagine that there’s some celebrating in the halls at DoJ,” Light said. “Morale can’t go anywhere but up.”

The Office of Personnel Management’s 2006 Federal Human Capital Survey showed mixed results for morale at Justice. Employees overwhelmingly feel that their work is important, and Justice was ranked fifth among all agencies on job satisfaction. But only 38 percent of employees reported that their leaders motivated them in 2006.

And the survey showed growing concern about politicization at Justice: The percentage of employees who reported that favoritism and coercion for partisan purposes was not tolerated dipped from 49 percent in 2004 to 45.5 percent. Employees also were concerned that their performance and creativity was not being recognized, that promotions were not based on merit, and that poor workers were not being dealt with. Delonis said the new attorney general will need to reopen lines of communication with employees throughout Justice.

“Reassurance is the word,” Delonis said. “The new attorney general needs to make clear that he’s there to lead and that the department’s traditional values are important. That will go a long way.”

But experts say that for morale to improve, the person chosen to lead Justice will have to be respected by lawmakers. Delonis said that even Justice employees who disagreed with Gonzales were disheartened by the constant criticism of him from Capitol Hill and the press.

“It’s no fun to go to work each day when your boss is called a liar,” said Charles Jones, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Return to nonpartisanship

Retired FBI agent Byron Sage said that the new attorney general must have enough character to resist the political forces that often try to sway the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

“Morale has the tendency to follow ethics,” Sage said. “If the person in charge has the moral fortitude to focus on professionalism and keep the staff following him, morale will go up. Pride, esprit de corps — you’ve got to live a high standard to keep these things up.”

But some critics say that in recent years, Justice too often operated for the benefit of the Republican Party.

A February study by professors at the University of Missouri at St. Louis and Illinois State University found that since President Bush took office, U.S. attorneys have investigated or indicted four times as many elected Democratic officials as Republicans.

Joseph Rich, who was chief of the voting section in Justice’s Civil Rights Division from 1999 to 2005, published a column in the Los Angeles Times in March that said his office had been politicized. He said his superiors told him to alter performance evaluations to favor attorneys who supported the administration and punish those who disagreed with the White House. Rich said that no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of black or Native American voters between 2001 and 2006 and that his office was ordered to focus on voting fraud cases instead.

This crushed morale in his section, Rich said, and drove more than half of the voting office’s attorneys to go to other offices or leave the department since 2005.

“There’s a general agreement that there’s a cloud over the department when it comes to the nonpartisan way it does prosecutions,” said Dennis Boyd, executive director of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Leadership void

With President Bush’s final term coming to a close in less than 17 months, time will be short for the new attorney general to put Justice back on track.

He should have enough time to fix most of the problems, Jones and Delonis said. But Delonis said the new attorney general may have a tough time filling other vacant spots in Justice’s leadership.

Gonzales’ resignation was preceded by the resignations of chief of staff Kyle Sampson, deputy attorney general Paul McNulty, McNulty chief of staff Michael Elston, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division Wan Kim, and White House liaison Monica Goodling. Acting associate attorney general William Mercer withdrew his nomination to be Justice’s No. 3 official June 22. Those positions are still not filled permanently.

Amy Doolittle contributed to this article.

source: 31aug2007

Gonzales Resignation
Just the Beginning

RYAN McGREAL / Raise The Hammer 31aug2007

Democrats are painting the announced resignation of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as an affirmation of their approach to the Bush administration in light of criticism that they're not forceful enough.

Gonzales' resignation is certainly welcome, but it does not go nearly far enough toward restoring the rule of law to US domestic politics.

All the evidence indicates that Gonzales is guilty of very serious crimes.

Obstruction of Justice Gonzales authorized the dismissal of several US Attorneys who has positive job performance reviews but were insufficiently loyal to the Republican Party or who undertook investigations that damaged the Party's image, and replace them with what Kyle Samson, Gonzales' chief of staff, called "loyal Bushies".

When called to testify to the US Congress, Gonzales denied specific knowledge of the details of the dismissals, denied active involvement in the decisions, and denied recalling any details that might help the investigating committee discover what had actually happened. (During his, er, memorable appearance on April 19, 2007, Gonzales used a variant of the phrase, "I don't recall" 64 times.)

However, internal documents indicate that he was directly involved in at least some of the firings.

This debacle already demonstrates a level of criminal cronyism that goes far beyond the normal workings of the US partisan system. However, Gonzales' crimes go far beyond obstruction of justice.

Authorizing Torture As President Bush's Legal Counsel, Gonzales crafted a memo for the President that offered a justification for ignoring the Geneva Convention, allowing the US to deny identified "unlawful enemy combatants" the basic rights due to prisoners of war and justifying the use of torture.

The memo reads in part:

In my judgment, this new paradigm [the "war against terrorism"] renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning the enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions ...

Although some of these provisions do not apply to detainees who are not POWs [prisoners of war], a determination that GPW [the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War] does not apply to al Qaeda and the Taliban eliminates any argument requiring the need for case-by-case determinations of POW status. It also holds open options for the future conflicts in which it may be more difficult to determine whether an enemy force as a whole meets the standard for POW status. [emphasis added]

In other words, Gonzales argued that the US is not bound by the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War. However, Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution reads:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

By allowing torture and denial of habeas corpus (the right not to be detained without being charged with a crime and tried in an a court of justice) in contravention of the Geneva Convention, a treaty to which the US is a party, the Bush administration - with Gonzales' help - has violated the Constitution they swore an oath to support.

Warrantless Wiretapping The Bush administration authorized the US National Security Agency (NSA) to initiate a widespread, secret program of wiretapping domestic phone calls without a warrant, in direct violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Previous Attorney General John Ashcroft had taken ill, and his deputy, James Comey, refused to sign off on the illegal program. Gonzales and former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card visited Ashcroft in his hospital room and tried to pressure him into overruling Comey. Ashcroft refused.

On later questioning, Gonzales denied that the visit was about the wiretapping program, but the testimonies of the other involved parties contradicted Gonzales' account. Senator Patrick Leahy has announced that Gonzales will be subpoenaed again in connection to the program and his role in it.

Denying Habeas Corpus In what may be the most weasel-worded argument in a career characterized by such arguments, Gonzales attempted to argue that the US Constitution does not guarantee habeas corpus.

Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the US Constitution reads, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

On January 8, 2007, Gonzales was being questioned by Arlen Specter, a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, by arguing that this does not guarantee habeas corpus. As he tried to explain: "The fact that the Constitution - again, there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away."

When Specter interjected that the Constitution stating habeas corpus can't be taken away means by definition that it is granted, Gonzales demurred again.

I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn't say, "Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas." It doesn't say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except by -

Spector interrupted him again, saying, "You may be treading on your interdiction and violating common sense, Mr. Attorney General." By this point, almost no one, even in his own party, still believed Gonzales had any credibility.

A Loyal Bushie Still, that didn't stop the President from insisting that Gonzales was the victim of "months of unfair treatment" and that he had been forced out "for political reasons."

Throughout his close and cozy relationship with George W. Bush dating back to his job as legal counsel when Bush was the Governor of Texas, Gonzales has always demonstrated that his loyalty was to the man, not to the law.

He has perjured himself repeatedly, obstructed justice, and authorized torture, the denial of habeas corpus and warrantless surveillance of Americans. His resignation is only the beginning: Gonzales needs to stand trial for his crimes.

If the US is to re-establish itself as a nation governed by the rule of law, the US government must find the courage to hold accountable those high officials who have held the rule of law in total contempt for the past six years.

If it does not do this, the lesson that Americans - and future government officials - will learn is that the people running the country aren't accountable to the law, to the Constitution or to their electors.

The Democrats' Task Ahead Now the big question is: after they were given a majority to stop the Bush administration and bring accountability to the law back into government, how much credibility will the Democrats have if they don't go after every appointee of Bush who appears to have broken the law?

Gonzales was the Attorney General: the very top of a pyramid of people whose job it is to enforce the law. He's performed his job so cynically, so criminally, so appallingly (note I don't use the word "incompetently" - everything he has done has been a deliberate and calculated move in this administration's plan) that he makes John "Let the Eagle Soar" Ashcroft look like a model of professionalism and statesmanship by comparison.

The Democrats and independents (and even some Republicans) who elected the Democratic Party to a majority in both Houses of Congress did so for one reason: to start cleaning up the Bush administration's mess. Salon's Glenn Greenwald does an excellent job of explaining what this means for the Democrats who seem more concerned with tactics than principle:

Since Democrats took over Congress in January, there have been three major attributes characterizing their conduct: (1) a failure to stop or restrict the war in Iraq; (2) a general failure/unwillingness to stop Bush on much of anything else of significance (FISA, a failure to reverse any of the excesses of the GOP Congress, such as the Military Commissions Act, lack of limits on his ability to attack Iran, etc.); and (3) numerous investigations, sometimes flashly but thus far inconsequential. There is no rational way to argue that the numerous investigations (item (3)) are responsible for Congressional unpopularity given how overwhelmingly Americans want Congressional investigations of the administration.

Thus, the only rational conclusion is that Congress is so unpopular, particularly among Democrats, because of their ongoing capitulations to the Bush administration, their failure to place any limits on his Iraq policy, and their general inability/refusal to serve as a meaningful check on the administration. Democrats and independents overwhelmingly dislike the President. Thus, the weaker Congress is in defying the President, the more unpopular Congress becomes.

There's a hard core of somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of Americans who would support the Republicans even if they bit the heads off live babies. The rest of the country hates the Bush administration and its Congressional enablers, and voted for the Democrats because they promised to stop Bush in his tracks. Those people - the 70 percent who disagree with Bush and his policies - are angry with the Democrats for not keeping that promise so far.

Playing Politics It's a sad irony that people accuse Dennis Kucinich and other impeachment supporters of playing politics. They're just trying to uphold the Constitution. The people who oppose impeachment on tactical grounds - the Nancy Pelosis and Barack Obamas - are actually the ones playing politics, because they've abandoned their pledge to the Constitution out of fear that it will hurt their electoral chances in 2008.

The really sad thing, as Glen Greenwald recently argued, is that failing to enforce the law WRT the Bush administration is turning out to be a tactical disaster. After they were given a majority to stop the Bush administration and bring accountability to the law back into government, how much credibility will the Democrats have if they don't follow the Constitution and impeach high officials who appear to have broken the law?

With Gonzales out, there's a chance - albeit a slim one - that the Democrats can force Bush to appoint an independent Attorney General who will actually do his or her job and investigate the alleged crimes of the Bush administration's officials. At the very least, they can refuse to rubber-stamp the next loyal crony Bush tries to appoint.

If they roll over dead on this as well, e.g. by approving some craven sycophant like Michael Chertoff, they will squander the last of the goodwill voters gave them when they promised to clean up the government. Also, they will once again abandon their pledges to uphold the Constitution.

source: 31aug2007