Ms. Goodling appeared to contradict Mr. Gonzales’s testimony to the committee this month in which he said he had not spoken to his senior aides since the firings “to protect the integrity of this investigation.”
During a meeting in March before she resigned, Ms. Goodling said, Mr. Gonzales asked her questions that left her uncomfortable. She thought he might be trying to compare recollections, so their stories would be consistent if they were questioned about their actions, she said. “I just thought maybe we shouldn’t have that conversation,” she said.
Brian J. Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said in a statement that Mr. Gonzales “has never attempted to influence or shape the testimony or public statements of any witness in this matter, including Ms. Goodling. The statements made by the attorney general during this meeting were intended only to comfort her in a very difficult period.”
Ms. Goodling also accused Paul J. McNulty, the outgoing deputy attorney general, of misleading Congress when he testified on Feb. 6 to a Senate panel. Specifically, she said Mr. McNulty knew more details about the White House involvement in the firings than he acknowledged in his testimony.
“I believe he was not fully candid,” she said.
Later, Mr. McNulty sharply denied her assertions. “I testified truthfully at the Feb. 6, 2007, hearing based on what I knew at that time,” he said in a statement. “Ms. Goodling’s characterization of my testimony is wrong and not supported by the extensive record of documents and testimony already provided to Congress.”
We all recall the concerted campaign to go to war with Iraq – Weapons of Mass Destruction, al Qaeda connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. Then it became clear that neither thing was true. And then we learned that there never was any real solid evidence that those things were true. And yet we are still at War in Iraq for no reason except conquest in search of oil rights.
When the Valerie Plame Affair came up, we were assured that anyone in the Administration caught leaking her name would be fired. Now we know of twenty or so such leaks. And while Scooter Libby was convicted of a related crime, there have been no actions of any kind by the Administration.
Now we have the firing of the U.S. Attorneys. We were assured that they were for performance related reasons, not political reasons. We now know that is not true – very not true. And there have been no disciplinary firings, nothing. The Attorney General just keeps telling us he did nothing wrong. The President doesn’t do anything. Essentially, the lies up front, like in the other two examples, are just not mentioned. The most we hear is "mistakes were made," a telling use of the passive voice to disavow responsibility for anything.
They simply ignore charges and move ahead, adjusting today’s lies to cover yesterday’s lies, in preparation for tomorrow’s lies. Now, with the utter paralysis of the Justice Department, the Congress can have hearings ad nauseum, but until Congress takes action on its own, nothing is going to happen. We will smolder along in Iraq, smolder along at the Justice Department, and Congress will have its hands tied with the rest of the government essentially taken over by the Bush Administration.
We’ve never had a government that simply ignores everything and goes along doing whatever it wants to do. The only recourse is for Congress to act, and I’m not sure it can do that right now. The problem is the Republican Senators who just keep supporting their corrupt Executive Branch. When there is a crime wave, the responsibility falls on the police force. When there is an Administration as bad as this one, the responsibility rests with the Congressmen who refuse to vote honestly, respecting their constituency over their Party. Very discouraging. Meanwhile, the former Justice Department employees are arguing about who was a bad guy in this particular scandal. I think the answer is "Yes." They all let us down. They’re all bad guys. They are all still letting us down. And the Administration just keeps on with its ignore-ant stance…
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