Reuters: Cheney and Gonzales Indicted

From Reuters:

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A grand jury in South Texas indicted U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and former attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday for "organized criminal activity" related to alleged abuse of inmates in private prisons.

The indictment has not been seen by a judge, who could dismiss it.

The grand jury in Willacy County, in the Rio Grande Valley near the U.S.-Mexico border, said Cheney is "profiteering from depriving human beings of their liberty," according to a copy of the indictment obtained by Reuters.

The indictment cites a "money trail" of Cheney's ownership in prison-related enterprises including the Vanguard Group, which owns an interest in private prisons in south Texas.

Former attorney general Gonzales used his position to "stop the investigations as to the wrong doings" into assaults in county prisons, the indictment said.

Could not have happened to two nicer guys!
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Gonzales To Be Charged?

Spokesman.com is reporting:

The U.S. Inspector General may recommend criminal prosecution of departed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the conclusion of an investigation, possibly as early as next month, the fired former U.S. attorney for Western Washington told a Spokane audience Friday.

Some details from McKay:

Gonzales “lied about” reasons for the firings when questioned under oath in July by the Senate Judiciary Committee and now has hired a lawyer and is refusing to answer questions from the Inspector General, McKay said.

The White House said McKay was fired for poor performance ratings of his office, but the ex-U.S. attorney said he and his office got exemplary reviews just three months before he was fired.

“The chief law enforcement officer for the United States should not lie under oath,’’ McKay told the bar association.

It was reported last week that Gonzales has now retained a high-profile defense lawyer, and apparently is refusing to answer questions from the Inspector General, which could signify the investigation is nearly complete, McKay said.

And this guy was appointed by dubya, remember.

There's some deeper stuff over at Next Hurrah.

Gonzales Finds New JobMoves to Pgh to Work for Ravenstahl Administration

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl remarked of the new hire, "Myself, I'm tired of questions about who I eat or play golf with. After an exhaustive national search I've found someone to advise me on ethics and honesty and Alberto Gonzales is my guy."

Ravenstahl added, "I'm moving forward with this thing and I better get some points in the media for diversity too."

After the mini press conference, Ravenstahl and Gonzales changed out of their suits and played nine holes. Mayor Ravenstahl said he would have preferred to get in 18 but it was, after all, a work day.

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Gonzales' Resignation: Local Reactions

First the Trib. They only point out the US Attorney firings, not the torture or the domestic surveillance or the lying to Congress, just the US Attorney firings.

When Congress questioned the firing of several U.S. attorneys, Gonzales needed to say only one thing: "They served at the pleasure of the president. Under the Constitution neither the president nor his attorney general owes Congress an explanation."

Instead, Gonzales dug a hole defending a thing that required no defense.

Of course once it came out that the Republican US Attorneys were being fired because they weren't "loyal Bushies" enough, it tainted the rest of the US Attorneys everywhere as being little more than political appointees doing the bidding of the Bush White House - and that was the problem. And then he lied about it to Congress.

The P-G takes a different tack - they include some of (the now disgraced and soon-to-be former) AG "Fredo" Gonzales dubious accomplishments:

His fingerprints had been all over some of the worst excesses of the administration -- the expanding of presidential powers, the eavesdropping, the justifications for harsh treatment bordering on torture and the dubious rules for prosecuting detainees in the war on terror. He came under fire, justifiably, in March when it was revealed that the FBI had improperly used the Patriot Act to obtain information about people and businesses -- which was all of a piece with his earlier record.

Though I would, of course, quibble with the phrase "harsh treatment bordering on torture." When the International Red Cross says it's "tantamount" to torture, it is torture - not bordering on torture.

Both editorials, however, lay some of the blame at dubya's feet. The Trib:

We cannot leave this without assessing the performance of the president who promoted Gonzales largely because he was a friend.

And the P-G:

Mr. Gonzales was not chosen attorney general because of his legal scholarship but because he was an old friend from Texas who didn't know how to say no to Mr. Bush.

Heckova job, dubya. Heckova job.

First Rummy, then Turd Blossom, now Abu Gonzales

The rats are either fleeing the sinking ship or resigning in disgrace . . .

Jesus, Mary and Joseph! If I hear one more talking head on TV spew how Alberto Gonzales embodies/lived "The American Dream" I'll start spewing chunks.

The American Dream does not include torture.

The American Dream does not include warrantless wiretaps on its citizens.

The American Dream does not include firing good US Attorneys because they won't play politics with justice.

The American Dream does not include lying to Congress.

The American Dream does not include advising the President of these United States that he can break any law and ignore the US Constitution.

Back on Friday, January 28, 2005, we published a post entitled "Unacceptable" at 2 Political Junkies that opened with:

It is simply unacceptable for the United States of America to have the prime legal architect for the policy of torture adopted by the Bush Dynasty as the Attorney General of this country.

A country founded on the rights of the individual cannot sanctify a person to be the Attorney General of these United States who sanctified torture as long as it wasn't "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

The US Attorney General's job is to function as the chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government. In that capacity the US Attorney General provides assistance and guidance to the heads of executive departments of the Government.

We already know that Alberto R. Gonzales advised the President that the United States Constitution does not apply to his actions as Commander in Chief, and thus the President could declare the Geneva Conventions (which Gonzales views as "quaint") inoperative.

We know that Alberto R. Gonzales believes that the President has the power to ignore the Constitution, laws duly enacted by Congress and International treaties duly ratified by the United States.

These views are unacceptable in a US Attorney General.

For these reasons, the 2 Political Junkies blog opposes the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, and we urge the Senate to reject him.

Anyone with half a brain should have known back then exactly what kind of justice to expect from Abu Gonzales:


They should have known that he was the kind of guy, for example, who would go over the head of the acting Attorney General to harass a sick old man (Ashcroft) in the ICU to try to get him to allow Abu to keep spying on the citizens of this country -- and lie to the Congress about the whole sick, sordid episode later.

For some recent examples of Abu's problems as covered by 2pj, you can click here. Even many Republicans could no longer stomach the guy.

But, let's not forget that when you hear the MSM call Abu the last of Bush's "Texas Mafia" in the White House how accurate that description is.

The Mafia needs sleazy attorneys to keep them in business and Gonzales was exactly that from the start. After all, he's the guy who in 1996 got Bush out of jury duty so that his DUI wouldn't come out before an election.


Alberto Gonzales and George W. Bush forgot that the United States Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government. He's not supposed to be one of it's chief criminals.

But, it shouldn't end with his resignation. While Gonzales is now on his way out, he still must be held accountable for his illegal actions as must the rest of this gangland crew.

Three down,* two to go!**

* Rumsfeld, Rove, Gonzales
** Cheney, Bush

Bush, FISA, and More Deceptions

First - were you at all curious about the timing of the new FISA discussions in Congress? Me too. Reuters has a possible explanation:

A U.S. intelligence court earlier this year secretly struck down a key element of President George W. Bush's warrantless spying program, The Washington Post reported in its Friday edition.

The decision is one reason Congress is trying to give legal authorization to the spying program in fevered negotiations with the Bush administration this week, the Post reported.

The intelligence-court judge, who remains anonymous, concluded that the government had overstepped its authority by monitoring overseas communications that pass through the United States, the Post said, citing anonymous government and congressional sources.

But wait - it was a secret? How did we find out about it then? Check out today's Washington Post:

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disclosed elements of the court's decision in remarks Tuesday to Fox News as he was promoting the administration-backed wiretapping legislation. Boehner has denied revealing classified information, but two government officials privy to the details confirmed that his remarks concerned classified information.

What is it with these Republicans leaking classified information for political gain? Don't they know that it's a dangerous world? Leaking classified information is tantamount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy, or so I'm told.

So the secret, classified FISA court struck down part of dubya's domestic surveillance plan (in secret, of course) and yet when a Repulican member of the House discloses that information on the Republican "news" channel, it's somehow not "revealing classified information."

Yea, and Valerie Plame wasn't covert, either.

But beyond that - what would this new FISA scenario look like? This is from the AP:

The law generally requires court review of government surveillance of suspected terrorists in the United States. It does not specifically address the government's ability to intercept messages believed to come from suspects who are overseas, opening what the White House considers a significant gap in protecting against attacks by foreigners targeting the U.S.

Democrats, who control Congress, would allow the messages from foreign targets to be intercepted, but only after a review by the special FISA court to make sure the surveillance does not focus on communications that might be sent to and from Americans.

They reject the Bush administration's proposal to give Gonzales speedy authority to decide if the surveillance properly targets people overseas _ and not in the United States.

The Bush Administration wanted to give more authority to AG Gonzales?

This AG Gonzales?

Senators in both parties concede they don't have enough evidence to make a perjury charge stick against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. But that doesn't mean they're going to quit trying to pry him from office.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is considering asking the Justice Department's inspector general to examine whether Gonzales' answers to questions from lawmakers amount to misconduct.

"I am deeply concerned about the seriousness of his misleading testimony and the pattern that has developed with regards to the attorney general's testimony over the years," Leahy said Thursday. "At the very least, I am considering sending his answers as they stand to the inspector general for review."

Ranking committee Republican Arlen Specter doesn't sound like he'd stand in the way.

"I think we need to finish this (the committee's) investigation and find a way to end the tenure of Attorney General Gonzales," Pennsylvania Sen. Specter said Thursday at a hearing.

End the tenure of Alberto Gonzales. IMPEACH.

So it was Data Mining!

This weekend, the NYTimes reported:

A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program.

Later on in the article, there's some interesting stuff.

The Justice Department announced in January that eavesdropping without warrants under the Terrorist Surveillance Program had been halted, and that a special intelligence court was again overseeing the wiretapping. The N.S.A., the nation’s largest intelligence agency, generally eavesdrops on communications in foreign countries. Since the 1978 passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, any eavesdropping to gather intelligence on American soil has required a warrant from the special court.

In that it's a felony (an "offense") to eavesdrop in any way other than what's allowed by FISA. And:

In addition, court approval is required for the N.S.A. to search the databases of telephone calls or e-mail records, usually compiled by American phone and Internet companies and including phone numbers or e-mail addresses, as well as dates, times and duration of calls and messages. Sometimes called metadata, such databases do not include the content of the calls and e-mail messages — the actual words spoken or written.

Now look at this part:

The first known assertion by administration officials that there had been no serious disagreement within the government about the legality of the N.S.A. program came in talks with New York Times editors in 2004. In an effort to persuade the editors not to disclose the eavesdropping program, senior officials repeatedly cited the lack of dissent as evidence of the program’s lawfulness.

I seem to recall that the Times took some heat because it knew about the warrantless domestic surveillance before the 2004 election - and yet didn't say anything. Do you think dubya's administration was lying then about the "lack of dissent" in order to bolster the Republicans' chances in November of that year? For an administration that politicizes everything, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

Mr. Gonzales defended the surveillance in an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2006, saying there had been no internal dispute about its legality. He told the senators: “There has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed. There have been disagreements about other matters regarding operations, which I cannot get into.”

By limiting his remarks to “the program the president has confirmed,” Mr. Gonzales skirted any acknowledgment of the heated arguments over the data mining. He said the Justice Department had issued a legal analysis justifying the eavesdropping program.

The dispute, it seems, was not about the program itself, but the data that the program sifted through. Yea, that makes sense.

But even the Times misses one:

On Tuesday, to respond to Mr. Comey’s account, Mr. Gonzales testified in a Senate appearance that he went to the hospital only after meeting with Congressional leaders about the impending deadline for the reauthorization. He said the consensus was that the program should go on, so he felt he had no choice but to seek Mr. Ashcroft’s approval.

Where's the mention that this is also completely wrong? Take a look:

Tom Daschle. Jay Rockefeller. And now Nancy Pelosi.

That makes three members of the Gang of Eight -- the bipartisan congressional leadership briefed about President Bush's warrantless surveillance -- to dispute Alberto Gonzales's testimony that the Gang demanded the surveillance continue after a March 2004 briefing telling them that acting Attorney General James Comey refused to reauthorize the program.

Perhaps it depends on what the definition of "consensus" is.

New York Times Editorial: Impeach Gonzales

Today:

As far as we can tell, there are three possible explanations for Mr. Gonzales’s talk about a dispute over other — unspecified — intelligence activities. One, he lied to Congress. Two, he used a bureaucratic dodge to mislead lawmakers and the public: the spying program was modified after Mr. Ashcroft refused to endorse it, which made it “different” from the one Mr. Bush has acknowledged. The third is that there was more wiretapping than has been disclosed, perhaps even purely domestic wiretapping, and Mr. Gonzales is helping Mr. Bush cover it up.

Democratic lawmakers are asking for a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Gonzales’s words and deeds. Solicitor General Paul Clement has a last chance to show that the Justice Department is still minimally functional by fulfilling that request.

If that does not happen, Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales.

Impeach.

One Spy Program or Two?

That's what they're asking over at TPMCafe.

Alberto Gonzales' testimony that there was "no serious disagreement" within the Bush Administration about the NSA warrantless surveillance program has left senators sputtering and fulminating about the attorney general's apparent prevarications. But a closer examination of Gonzales' testimony and other public statements from the Administration suggest that there may be a method to the madness.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that Gonzales's careful, repeated phrasing to the Senate that he will only discuss the program that "the president described" was deliberate, part of a concerted administration-wide strategy to conceal from the public the very broad scope of that initial program. When, for the first time, Program X (as we'll call it, for convenience's sake) became known to senior Justice Department officials who were not its original architects, those officials -- James Comey and Jack Goldsmith, principally -- balked at its continuation. They did not back down until the program had undergone as-yet-unspecified but apparently significant revisions. But when President Bush announced what he would call the "Terrorist Surveillance Program' in December 2005, he left the clear impression that the program had always functioned the same way since its 2001 inception.

It's always nice to see Hamlet referenced in the news. In the play, Polonius notices a certain rationality in Hamlet's seeming insanity:

Though this be madness, yet there is a method in't. (Hamlet II, ii, 206)

But let's get back to the current madness, this administration.

It's an interesting article. The main point being that the domestic surveillance program as originally conceived and put into operation is very different from the one dubya described in Dec, 2005.

In essence, the issue is this: if Gonzales succeeds in convincing the committee that there really is a material distinction between the program as it existed before and after Comey’s intervention, he won't just save himself from perjury. He will perhaps have preserved an administration strategy of concealing the scope of Program X from the public and most of Congress -- making it appear that the program that Bush disclosed in December 2005, incorporating Comey's objections, is the same program that existed since October 2001, long before Comey put the brakes on at least some aspects of it. That may be at the heart of the White House's claim of executive privilege to prevent the Senate Judiciary Committee from seeing documents detailing the genesis of Program X.

I don't think I'm following this, however as there seems to be a contradiction. If Gonzales succeeds in convincing the committee there is a distinction between the programs (pre- and post- Comey's intervention), then he will possibly be preserving the administrations strategy of concealing the scope of the program as originally implemented and keeping up the appearance that the two programs (pre- and post-Comey's intervention) are the same?

Am I reading it wrong? Am I reading too deeply? Should I just drink the kool-aid and blame it all on Clinton (doesn't matter which - Hill or Bill) and the "Democrat Congress" instead?

More Trouble For AG Gonzales

From the AP:

Documents show that eight congressional leaders were briefed about the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program on the eve of its expiration in 2004, contradicting sworn Senate testimony this week by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The documents, obtained by The Associated Press, come as senators consider whether a perjury investigation should be opened into conflicting accounts about the program and a dramatic March 2004 confrontation leading up to its potentially illegal reauthorization.

A Gonzales spokesman maintained Wednesday that the attorney general stands by his testimony.

I saw this on Olbermann last night. More details:

At a heated Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Gonzales repeatedly testified that the issue at hand was not about the terrorist surveillance program, which allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on suspects in the United States without receiving court approval.

Instead, Gonzales said, the emergency meetings on March 10, 2004, focused on an intelligence program that he would not describe.

But if the document, a four page memo from the Director of National Intelligence, is right, then AG Gonzales is lying. If the memo is incorrect then there's some other intelligence gathering program out there.

Looks like it's the first one. I guess an AG who's perjured himself is better than another illegal domestic surveillance program, right?

Right?

So Many Lies...

I've been having a bit of difficulty choosing which clip of AG Alberto Gonzales to use. Should it be this one that shows him refusing to answer Senator Shumer's questions?

Or this one where he's either lying OR admitting that there is more than one intelligence gathering system (other than the one that's already known about)?

To remind everyone, it was this news item from December 2005 about how the NSA was instructed to conduct warrantless surveillance on US Citizens that compelled us (if my memory serves me correctly) to post that big word IMPEACH above the 2PJ banner.

Now either AG Gonzales is actively lying to a Congressional Committee OR there are more surveillance programs that the Bush administration hasn't told us about.

Impeach. Impeach. Impeach.

Best to start with Gonzales

Another lie from AG Gonzales

The Washington Post is reporting:

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

And:

Caroline Fredrickson, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the new documents raise questions about whether Gonzales misled Congress at a moment when lawmakers were poised to renew the Patriot Act and keenly sought assurances that there were no abuses. "It was extremely important," she said of Gonzales's 2005 testimony. "The attorney general said there are no problems with the Patriot Act, and there was no counterevidence at the time."

I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart.

EVENT TODAY: Summer fun and…Alberto Gonzales?

WHAT: Alberto Gonzales Impeachment Rally in Downtown Pittsburgh by Democracy for Pittsburgh
WHEN: Thursday, June 21, 2007, 12:15 PM to 12:30 PM
WHERE: Mellon Square: 6th and William Penn (corner of park), Pittsburgh PA 15219

Summertime is starting. It’s time for sun and games.

Fifty-three senators will enjoy the independence day recess feeling good about their vote to censure Alberto Gonzales. After the recess, it will be Congress’s turn to take up the job of impeaching Mr. Gonzales.

Right now, it’s our turn to move the issue from the Senate to the House.

In this happy moment as summer begins, Democracy for Pittsburgh invites everyone!

Come to a lunchtime “flash event”—15 minutes of summer fun—and help us “put impeachment on the table.” Table will be provided.

Meet by 12:15 at Mellon Square (the corner by 6th and William Penn) downtown Pittsburgh, for this 15 minute event.

No speeches, just brief fun. Gonzales masks and signs welcome. Other “candidates for impeachment” welcome.

You can RSVP here or just show up!

UPDATE: Want a Gonzales mask to wear today's event? Right click on the picture below to save it to your PC. Then you can copy it into a Word file and stretch it there to fit. Then you simply need to print it up and cut it out and add string/ribbon to the holes indicated on both sides of the mask (above the ears).



UPDATE 2: You can see pictures of the event here.
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Alberto Gonzales' Respect for Congress

Read about this at Rawstory.

Early in June, a bill, more than clumsily titled the "Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act of 2007" and passed by both the Senate (on March 20) and the House (on May 22), was sent to the President's desk for him to sign. According to Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy the bill:

repeals that portion of the Patriot Act Reauthorization that had allowed the Attorney General to circumvent advice and consent with respect to U.S. Attorneys.

It passed the Senate overwhelmingly 94 to 2 and the House 320 to 114. Somebody check my math, but aren't these both vetoproof? I'm asking.

According to Thomas.gov, the bill was signed yesterday (Thursday, June 14th).

In the meantime lookie-lookie-lookie what also happened that day:

In a Senate Judiciary Committee business meeting Thursday morning, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) revealed that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales once again used an interim appointment authority at the heart of the US Attorneys controversy that Congress banned in a bill sent to the President for signature on June 4.

Some details from Terry Schmaler, spokeswoman for Senator Leahy:

It just so happens the committee got notice yesterday, that on June 16, George Cardona's 210 days as Acting U.S. Attorney in the Central District of California will have run out and the Attorney General will appoint him as an interim U.S. Attorney at that time (i.e. still using the end-run authority because Bush has slow-walked signing the bill).

Does this mean AG Gonzales just got it in under the wire? Or that he didn't know that the Bill would be come law today (June 15th) if the President didn't sign it in the ten days after getting it (according to Article One, Section 7 of the Constitution)? Or that the law takes effect the date it's signed?

These loyal Bushies' incompetence and/or contempt for Congress and the will of the American people knows absolutely no bounds.

Ashcroft, Gonzales and The Domestic Surveillance Program

I can't speak for the OPJ, but my main reason for having the big word IMPEACH plastered above this blog's logo can be described in three words: warrantless domestic surveillance.

If memory serves, we hoisted the banner just after learning that George W. Bush ok-ed the warrantless electronic surveillance of American citizens. It was already possible to surveil citizens if necessary via the FISA court. But for some reason, that wasn't good enough for dubya.

I understand (though I can't condone) the decisions of the Congressional Democrats NOT to pursue Impeachment, but the insult to the Constitution is so great that someone has to be punished for it.

One curiously distasteful aspect of the story has bubbled up recently - the trip to AG Ashcroft's hospital bedside in March 2004.

According to Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, Congress wants speak to Ashcroft about it.

The Nation has a good description of what happened (sub. req):

The frantic race to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's bedside on March 10, 2004, sounds more Hollywood than history: Acting AG James Comey's foot-to-the-floor drive to head off then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card; FBI Director Robert Mueller's startling imperative to his agents to defy any attempt by Gonzo and Card to throw Comey out; the sedated and badly ailing Ashcroft rousing himself from his sickbed to defend the Constitution; the resignation threats by Comey and Mueller. As Washington lore, the episode joins Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre and Thaddeus Stevens's being carried on a stretcher to vote in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson. And behind all this, the President pushing a wiretap program so blatantly illegal that his own top Justice appointees were threatening to resign.

Some telling details:

• According to Comey's testimony, for two years the White House had endorsed still unspecified secret wiretaps by the National Security Agency without a warrant or authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In other words, for two years the NSA and telephone companies had been committing a federal crime with the full endorsement of the Oval Office.

And:

• In spring 2004, when Ashcroft, Comey and every other responsible official in the Justice Department had reviewed the program and declared that the taps blatantly violated the surveillance law, Card, Gonzales and Bush himself all indicated their intention to go forward anyhow. In plain English, that is a conspiracy.

The Nation continues with a further charge. Since Comey had already been assigned the duties of the AG, while Ashcroft was in the hospital, Ashcroft had no authority to sign off on the program. Whatever "authority" they were looking to present would have been fraudulent. They add:

That is how determined the President was to continue an illegal program.

Now perhaps Impeachment doesn't seem too strong a reaction.

Mary Beth Buchanan - A Curious Plot Twist

Yesterday the Washington Post reported:

Unreleased government records obtained by the Washington Post show that the Justice Dept. listed 26 U.S. attorneys as candidates for firing, including nine who were fired in 2006. The roster of prosecutors is much longer than previously acknowledged.

Included on this list?

Our very own US Attorney, Mary Beth Buchanan.

The Post showed the evolving list of US Attorneys to be fired. On September 13, 2006 Kyle Sampson, AG Gonzales' Chief of Staff (and, ashamed as I am to note it, possible dayvoe-lookalike) Kyle D. Sampson sent a memo to the White House including nine US Attorneys recommended for firing. Incidentally, five of the nine would be dismissed. Buchanan shows up on a list compiled a couple weeks later by Michael Elston, Chief of Staff to the Deputy Attorney General "suggesting five other candidates."

The Washington Post points out elsewhere that:

The documents do not specify why removals were contemplated or why some prosecutors kept their jobs, the sources said.

And no one really knows anything about anything. From Pamela Reed Ward in today's P-G:

But Michael Elston, chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, said yesterday through his attorney that his e-mail was taken out of context.

Ok this is where it gets confusing.

The names that were included had been suggested to him by others, and Mr. Elston never thought anyone on that list should be fired.

"To the contrary, Mike's view is that the five U.S. Attorneys mentioned in the e-mail are among the Department's best," the statement said.

But a few paragraphs down:

According to attorney Robert Driscoll, Mr. Elston was asked in October 2006 by others in the Justice Department "if there were any concerns about U.S. Attorneys that senior department leadership was not aware of."

When Mr. Elston asked around, his attorney said, he was not specifically asking for names of people to be terminated, only for those who others might have a problem with.

So - these are the "Department's best" but Elston's looking for "any concerns" about them? How does that make sense? However that's a separate issue. The big problem is how (and why) these names made it, however temporarily, onto a "fire" list. From the Post:

The number of names on the lists demonstrates the breadth of the search for prosecutors to dismiss. The names also hint at a casual process in which the people who were most consistently considered for replacement were not always those ultimately told to leave.

When shown the lists of firing candidates late yesterday, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), perhaps the most outspoken critic of the way Gonzales handled the prosecutor dismissals, said they "show how amok this process was."

The whole thing was a mess. A complete mess. When it wasn't politicizing the DoJ, the administration was just simply screwing it all up anyway.

Buchanan was asked for a comment:

"Simply put, there is no logical reason that my name would appear as part of an e-mail suggesting prosecutors to be considered for replacement," she said, noting that she's had "unprecedented success" during her tenure.

And the White House as well:

Yesterday, Justice Department officials issued a brief statement on the matter, saying the department would not publicly confirm whether any U.S. attorney was on one of Mr. Sampson's lists, which were used by him in the discussion process.

"Many names on these lists which have been shared with Congress, clearly did not represent the final actions or views of the Department's leadership or the Attorney General," the statement said.

"Whether they are on any list or not, U.S. Attorneys currently serving enjoy the full confidence and support of the Attorney General and Department of Justice."

Later in the day, Mr. Gonzales sent another statement, specifically about Ms. Buchanan, saying that she has his full confidence and support.

Considering, though, the drubbing Gonzales has been taking in the Congress recently, I'm not sure that's a recommendation one would want to keep in handy.

In Case You Missed It

Within the larger context of the administration seeking to "revise" the rules for domestic surveillance in front of a very skeptical the Senate Intelligence Committee, The New York Times is reporting this morning that:

Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.

Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.

As a result of the January agreement, the administration said that the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program has been brought under the legal structure laid out in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for the wiretapping of American citizens and others inside the United States.

But on Tuesday, the senior officials, including Michael McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, said they believed that the president still had the authority under Article II of the Constitution to once again order the N.S.A. to conduct surveillance inside the country without warrants.

Looks like we're back to someplace before square one. What is says is that basically while dubya's domestic surveillance had been brought under the legal structure of FISA as of January 2007, there's no guarantee that it will continue to be. Oh yea, and dubya still claims the Constitutional authority to ignore the law, even if he's not Constitutionally ignoring it now.

Here's the letter AG Gonzales sent to Congress outlining the change last January 17. His first paragraph:

I am writing to inform you that on January 10, 2007, a judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued orders authorizing the Government to target for collection internal communications into or out of the United States where there is probable cause to believe that one of the communicants is a member or agent of al Qaeda or an associated terrorist organization. As a result of these orders, any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

But on whether the rules are "revised" the New York Times editorial board has an opinion. It's less of a revision, they write, than a gutting. They also lay out the reason dubya's pushing for it:

Mr. Bush’s motivations for submitting this bill now seem obvious. The courts have rejected his claim that 9/11 gave him virtually unchecked powers, and he faces a Democratic majority in Congress that is willing to exercise its oversight responsibilities. That, presumably, is why his bill grants immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated in five years of illegal eavesdropping. It also strips the power to hear claims against the spying program from all courts except the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret.

In case you missed it.

So How Badly DID Gonzales Do?

The next-day reaction to AG Alberto Gonzales runs (as they say) the gamut of A-to-B. A being bad and B being way bad.

From the AP:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales came to Capitol Hill with only one mission: to placate Republican and Democratic senators dissatisfied with his account of how eight federal prosecutors were fired.

Apparently, he failed. For the first time, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee broke ranks and said it might be best if Gonzales stepped down.

Byron York at the National Review (in a piece titled "Alberto Gonzales' Disastrous Day"):

Judging by his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, there are three questions about the U.S. attorneys mess that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wants answered: What did I know? When did I know it? And why did I fire those U.S. attorneys?

As the day dragged on, it became clear — painfully clear to anyone who supports Gonzales — that the attorney general didn’t know the answers. Much of the time, he explained, he didn’t really know much at all — he was just doing what his senior staff recommended he do

And that's York being nice.

The New York Times editorial board:

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had gone to the Senate yesterday to convince the world that he ought to be fired, it’s hard to imagine how he could have done a better job, short of simply admitting the obvious: that the firing of eight United States attorneys was a partisan purge.

Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch.

And they offered up this as background:

He delegated responsibility for purging their ranks to an inexperienced and incompetent assistant who, if that’s possible, was even more of a plodding apparatchik. Mr. Gonzales failed to create the most rudimentary standards for judging the prosecutors’ work, except for political fealty. And when it came time to explain his inept decision making to the public, he gave a false account that was instantly and repeatedly contradicted by sworn testimony.

Here's the Washington Post editorial board:

YESTERDAY'S "reconfirmation hearing" for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) called it, didn't go particularly well -- but then again, there was no reason to expect that it would. It was impossible to watch the hearing without feeling sorry for Mr. Gonzales, who is bogged down in uncomfortable terrain. He has to acknowledge that he knew something, but not much, about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, which makes him appear a feckless manager, a dissembler, or both. His long-awaited appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee underscored the degree to which his credibility gap has widened into a chasm, for Republicans as well as Democrats.

Boston Globe editorial board:

IT IS DIFFICULT to say which version of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's role in the firing of eight US attorneys more disqualifies him as the nation's chief law enforcement officer. There is his version, in which he was only tangentially involved in an unprecedented mid term purge of federal prosecutors. If that is true, he allowed unsupervised underlings to handle one of the most important responsibilities of the Justice Department.

The other version is the one described by three of those aides: that Gonzales was closely involved in selecting US attorneys to be fired and building a case against them. If that version is true, Gonzales was lying again yesterday when he downplayed his role in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In either case, he should have long since resigned.

Josh Marshall at Talkingpointsmemo:

A lot's been said so far about Attorney General Gonzales's testimony today. I've said plenty myself. The key though was the response from the committee's Republicans. You know that Sen. Coburn (R-OK), an extremely conservative but not necessarily party-regular senator, told Gonzales he should resign. There was more though. Two other Republican senators, I think, basically told Gonzales that they weren't going to tell him to resign but that he should. That's my interpretation of Sens. Specter and Graham's statements, certainly. And you don't have to agree. But I think it's a fair one. And even Sen. Sessions (R-AL), who normally I'd expect to be signing the administration line, was pretty damning.

I think it's fair to say that Gonzales has lost the confidence of at least half the Republican senators on the committee. He's given people too many causes of termination to choose from. You can want him to go for subverting the federal justice system. Or if that's too much for you to handle you can say he should go for running Main Justice like some ungainly combination of a Young Republicans summer camp and Michael Brown's FEMA. And if even that creates too much collateral damage for you to deal with you can just say he should go for lying about everything that happened.

Plenty of reasons to go around.

I'll let our Great and Glorious President, Defender of all that is Good against all that is Scary, Thwarter of Evil-Doers' Evil Deeds, Decider-in-Chief, George "Dubya" Bush have the last word:

President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General's testimony today. After hours of testimony in which he answered all of the Senators' questions and provided thousands of pages of documents, he again showed that nothing improper occurred. He admitted the matter could have been handled much better, and he apologized for the disruption to the lives of the U.S. Attorneys involved, as well as for the lack of clarity in his initial responses.

The Attorney General has the full confidence of the President, and he appreciates the work he is doing at the Department of Justice to help keep our citizens safe from terrorists, our children safe from predators, our government safe from corruption, and our streets free from gang violence.

Full confidence. Now that's scary.

The Trib's Got Dubya's Back

The Trib's got an editorial out today that hits all the Republican talking points regarding AG Alberto Gonzales. Well two of them, actually.

As the day progresses and some non-Virginia Tech news slips into the national coverage, listen for these two points:

• But the bottom line remains that these federal prosecutors serve solely at the pleasure of the administration. (Paragraph 4, sentence 1 of the editorial)
  
• There's absolutely no evidence of any illegalities in the firings. (Paragraph 6, sentence 1 of the editorial)

Of course each is beside the point. Heck, that first point's been debunked on the pages of the Trib itself.

Yesterday.

"U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president," [Texas Republican Lamar]Smith responded in a written statement. "Every president has the right to be served by people who support their policies."

The debate over the firings has eclipsed that rhetoric, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor. Now at issue is whether the firings were politically motivated, he said

And notice the weasel words in the Trib's other point: There's absolutely no evidence of any illegalities in the firings. Of course not. The way the US Attorneys were fired - someone picked up a phone and dialed a number and delivered the bad news - is again, not the point.

Let me reiterate. The issue is whether there was pressure put on some (if not all) US Attorneys to go easy on Republicans and go hard on Democrats (especially prior to the last election) and when they didn't, a little more than half-dozen were fired and replaced with "loyal Bushies."

The attempt to politicize the supposedly apolitical DoJ alone is enough for hearings, isn't it?

Then there are contradicting the sworn statements of AG Gonzales. I thought Republicans hated perjury. I mean they impeached a sitting President because of perjury. So if a guy contradicts himself in testifying more than once to Congress, as long as what he's lying about isn't illegal, the perjury's OK?

Then there's the e-mails stored on RNC servers in an obvious attempt to side step Congressional oversight. I thought Republicans were in favor of the rule of law.

Don't they read the Constitution over there?

Mary Beth Buchanan in the News!

An astute reader sent me the link to this Post-Gazette article by Pamela Ward earlier today.

The chair of the House Judiciary Committee has requested an interview with U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan in relation to the ongoing investigation into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys late last year.

Ms. Buchanan is one of eight people identified in the letter sent to Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling yesterday by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Michigan.

According to a judiciary staffer, the committee has received information that causes concern about both the process of the firings and politically motivated prosecutions across the country.

Here's the letter Congressman Conyers sent.

Included on that list is Steven Biskupic, US Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin. He's the guy described in this blog posting. Biskupic was reportedly on the purge list, but came off it at about the same time he prosecuted a staffer in the office of the Wisconsin's Governor just before the 2006 election. The Republicans in that race used the prosecution to "prove" corruption in the Democratic Governor's administration, by the way.

Geez, will wonders never cease.

WTAE has some more information.

The Justice Department consulted with U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan in Pittsburgh when it was drawing up a list of prosecutors to be fired, a former top aide to the attorney general told investigators, and now a House committee wants to interview her.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, told Senate investigators Sunday that Buchanan was one of the senior officials he consulted about which U.S. attorneys should be asked to resign, according to a Senate Judiciary Committee aide who read a transcript of the interview. The aide requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Turns out that Ms Buchanan was, from mid-2004 to mid-2005, the director of Executive Office of US Attorneys. The EOUSA's missions and functions (according to it's website) include:

• Evaluate the performance of the Offices of the United States Attorneys, making appropriate reports and taking corrective action where necessary.

Seems a natural that they'd want to talk to her. I just wonder what they're gonna ask.

Can't say it enough. Congressional oversight is a bee-you-tiful thing!