1 Boring Old Man

Alberto Gonzales Won’t Be Charged Over Eavesdropping Testimony
New York Magazine
By Murray Waas
11/23/09

Alberto Gonzales, pilloried for allegedly misleading Congress about the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program, has been exonerated — sort of. According to public records and interviews with federal law-enforcement officials, the Justice Department has concluded that there’s insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against the former attorney general. His critics might groan, but they have some solace: The Justice Department’s inspector general, who conducted the investigation, concluded that his testimony before Congress about the eavesdropping program was “confusing,” “incomplete,” and had the “effect of misleading” both Congress and the public…

Gonzales also remains under investigation by the Justice Department for matters connected to the wiretaps and the firings, thought to be politically motivated, of nine U.S. attorneys — scandal aplenty. But it’s been allegations about his eavesdropping testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee that put him in the greatest legal jeopardy by far. A major reason he escaped criminal charges, according to people close to the investigation, was that he finally admitted what he never would have before, when he seemed the most loyal of George W. Bush’s servants: that many of his most controversial decisions [first as White House counsel, and later, as attorney general] in authorizing, overseeing, and concealing the eavesdropping program were done at the specific direction of the former president. In other instances, Gonzales and his attorneys argued that his actions were done in furtherance of the Bush administration’s policies — meaning, for what it’s worth, that he did not act with personal intent to do wrong.

“He was willing to be a lightning rod in the past for the president,” said one legal source close to the investigation. “He has done that during the entire course of his career. But it was pressed upon him that that was not going to work in this instance — and he did what he had to do”…

Bush’s “nightmare scenario” apparently averted, Gonzales remains under investigation by the Justice Department he once led for two matters: the firings of those nine U. S. attorneys, and — this should sound familiar — whether Gonzales and other government attorneys acted properly in authorizing and overseeing the eavesdropping program [The latter case is being brought by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility]. Little could be learned about those investigations, but it has long been widely believed that Gonzales’s most serious legal charges were the ones he now seems to have dodged. Give the guy credit — he’s a lawyer, after all.

Alberto Gonzales came to the White House with President Bush as the President’s Counsel in 2001. At the beginning of Bush’s second term, he was appointed to be the Attorney General, of the United States, replacing John Ashcroft. This particular investigation involved his second job, Attorney General. Did he mislead Congress? I watched that hearing. No question about it – he did mislead Congress. Waas says, "… Gonzales and his attorneys argued that his actions were done in furtherance of the Bush administration’s policies — meaning, for what it’s worth, that he did not act with personal intent to do wrong." It seems to me that the Attorney General  of the Department of Justice isn’t in the policy arm of the government. In fact, it’s part of the oversight mechanism designed to look into the legality of that policy. Maybe, as the President’s General Counsel, the fact that he was acting in "… furtherance of the Bush administration’s policies," is legit. But not as Attorney General. Neither Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, nor Jay Bybee and John Yoo as DOJ Office of Legal Counsel officials, had any business talking about furthering the policy of the Bush Administration or evading the questions of the Congressional Investigators. I don’t know if they were vulnerable to criminal charges, but what they did was sure not part of the offices they were appointed to serve.