A faithful liberal reader of this site sent me an email asking me to do a post on the charges of perjury being leveled against the Attorney General of the United States. He was extremely worried about the implications such charges had for the country:
As a citizen, the implications of the alleged behavior terrify me. Most Conservatives I personally know don’t defend Mr. Gonzales, but they essentially get off the topic as quickly as possible.
To me, “Rightwing” always had a connotation of Rebellion against Government. If anybody was going to use a shotgun to tell a government official to get off their property, it sure as hell wasn’t a liberal. The very likely extension of the perjury (if true), would have unbelievably damning implications for the W Bush Administration—the type of implications that I would have assumed would have “Rightwing” conservatives stocking up on ammo.
Excellent insight – save the shotgun toting conservative telling the “government” to get off his land. As a metaphor for conservatives wishing to have government take a back seat in people’s lives, it’s fine. However, I’m not sure even a liberal wouldn’t stand up to the government if they felt their private property was threatened.
“Mike” is correct about the right’s relationship with Gonzalez. As with just about anything regarding the Bush Administration these days, he is very difficult to defend. And I don’t think it’s necessarily because of what he’s done as a member of the Administration. One problem is that he may be the most incoherent public official I’ve ever heard. His testimony before Congress on just about anything reveals a man who can’t seem to finish a thought before moving on to the next one. This causes all sorts of problems. It is amazing how many times he is asked to clarify or repeat something simply because it is so difficult to follow his meandering, disjointed responses.
Incoherence is not a criminal offense. Neither is incompetence. But the way the firing of 8 US Attorneys was handled does not reflect well on Gonzalez and his management style. Allowing so much leeway to subordinates in such an important matter and then not being aware of what they were doing (if you believe that) bespeaks a boss without much of a clue as to what was going on in his own office.
The fact is, the Administration has sought to politicize the Department of Justice as they have tried to stamp politics on most every other aspect of government. Of course, few President’s politicized their Justice Department more than Clinton. And given the angry, partisan mood in Congress, this may be the wave of the future for Presidents; taking what used to be a semi-independent cabinet department and turning it in to an adjunct to the White House. In fact, since the Carter Administration, DOJ has progressively become less and less independent with the Clinton Administration going over the top in making Justice just another federal agency.
Anyone remember Johnnie Chung, Charlie Trie and the slew of illegal fundraising cases that the Clinton Justice Department, according to an Inspector General’s audit did not handle correctly? Ties to Chinese intelligence, money laundering at a Buddhist Temple, Commerce Department waivers in exchange for cash – all of these cases were either not pursued or followed up. Clearly, Democrats have extremely short memories about politicizing DOJ actions in the wake of Clinton Administration’s outrageous fundraising activities.
But that’s in the past. What we have today is an Attorney General who can’t seem to explain to Congress the various intelligence activities being carried out by the NSA to catch terrorists before they can strike here in the US. Part of that is certainly the fact that much of it is classified (something the AG offered to clarify in closed session – Democrats refused, wanting their circus to be televised). But beyond that, Gonzalez can’t seem to summon the coherence to differentiate between the already acknowledged “Terrorist Surveillance Program” and “other intelligence activities” being carried out by NSA.
Here is the basis for what the Democrats are calling perjury. They point to Gonzalez testimony in May on the visit to John Ashcroft’s hospital bed to re-authorize the terrorist surveillance program. The story was told by James Comey who, due to Ashcroft’s illness, was Acting AG at the time. He refused to sign off on what appeared to be a routine re-authorization of the program. And other top DOJ officials and career DOJ attorneys threatened to resign if it was given the go ahead without modifying some of its technical aspects.
Ashcroft preferred allowing his deputy Comey to do his duty because he was in no shape physically (as the left likes to paint the picture, Ashcroft was being browbeaten into approving something while on his deathbed). As Comey testified, he and Ashcroft had decided the morning the AG went into the hospital not to re-authorize the program. Not being aware of this, the White House’s Andy Card and Gonzalez went to the hospital hoping the AG would over ride what they thought was Comey’s decision.
Be that as it may, Gonzalez testified in May that what was being sought from the AG was a re-authorization of the already revealed NSA program and that there was no dispute over that “program” (the word “program” is important as we shall soon see), that the dispute was over another related classified program. Gonzalez exact words:
“[t]here 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.â€
It turns out today, that the “other matters” involved in the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program related to a massive, legal, data mining operation:
A fierce dispute within the Bush administration in early 2004 over a National Security Agency warrantless surveillance program was related to concerns about the NSA’s searches of huge computer databases, the New York Times reported today.The agency’s data mining was also linked to a dramatic chain of events in March 2004, including threats of resignation from senior Justice Department officials and an unusual nighttime visit by White House aides to the hospital bedside of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, the Times reported, citing current and former officials briefed on the program.
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, one of the aides who went to the hospital, was questioned closely about that episode during a contentious Senate hearing on Tuesday. Gonzales characterized the internal debate as centering on “other intelligence activities” than the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program, whose existence President Bush confirmed in December 2005.
Data mining is not illegal as long as the identity of the person whose records are being mined is not captured or revealed – we think. I use that caveat because no one knows exactly how the NSA data mining operation – carried out as a part of the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program – actually worked. The speculation on why DOJ attorneys balked at re-authorization of the program at that time centers around the idea that although the data mining was legal, what the NSA wanted to do with the results may have crossed the line of legality.
So is the data mining operation a different “program?” If so, that would seem to put Gonzalez in the clear as far as perjury charges are concerned:
The report of a data mining component to the dispute suggests that Gonzales’s testimony could be correct. A group of Senate Democrats, including two who have been privy to classified briefings about the NSA program, called last week for a special prosecutor to consider perjury charges against Gonzales.The report also provides further evidence that the NSA surveillance operation was far more extensive than has been acknowledged by the Bush administration, which has consistently sought to describe the program in narrow terms and to emphasize that the effort was legal.
Again, this goes back to Mr. Gonzalez incoherence in trying to differentiate between the NSA efforts at terrorist surveillance (where one party in the communication was overseas and the other here in America) and the massive collection of data which all took place in the US with the cooperation of phone giants like AT&T and Sprint. They allowed NSA to tap into their “switching stations” in order to feed the monster computers who were chewing on trillions of bits of information in order to discern patterns of communication that could have led to a terrorist cell in this country.
But if the data mining were a part of the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program, how can they be two separate programs?
I think the most logical explanation is that they were separately reauthorized by DOJ, although probably at the same time. Separate paperwork could mean a separate program to many bureaucrats even though on the surface, it would appear to a lay person that both were part of the same program.
Another logical but unprovable explanation is that the technical aspects of the data mining operation were handled by a different entity than NSA. ABLE DANGER’s data mining was done in Florida out of the headquarters for Special Operations. Whether such a distinction would legally constitute a separate “program,” I haven’t a clue.
Marty Lederman has another explanation:
There was some sort of data mining program going on. Probably not of content, almost certainly not content reviewed by humans. That is to say, it involved computers searching through “meta-data” related to calls and e-mails, looking for certain patterns that might suggest connections to Al Qaeda or to suspicious activity that might be terrorism-related. (I have my theories as to what the programs might have been looking for, but don’t want to get into such speculation in this forum. And in any case, my theories are probably way off.)This data-mining indicated that it might be valuable to do more targeted searches of particular communications “pipelines” (John Yoo’s phrase), looking for more specific information. But that’s where FISA came in. In order to target a particular U.S. person, or to wiretap a particular “facility,” FISA requires that the NSA demonstrate to the FISA court probable cause to believe (i) that the target of the electronic surveillance is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power, and (ii) that each of the facilities or places at which the electronic surveillance is directed is being used, or is about to be used, by a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. 50 U.S.C. 1805(a)(3).
Perhaps, as John Yoo suggests in his book, FISA would have prohibited following up on the leads revealed by the data mining with more targeted wiretaps of suspicious “channels” or “pipelines,” “because we would have no specific al Qaeda suspects, and thus no probable cause.”
Besides all of this, Tom McGuire points out that it would be virtually impossible to make any perjury charges against Gonzalez stick for the simple reason that to do so would expose massive amounts of classified details about our intelligence gather efforts:
Let me ask an obvious question that seems to have eluded some of our Senators and is not broached by the Times – how in the world is a perjury prosecution going to proceed without a massive declassification of these classified and presumably ongoing programs? Will the jury and the public see what Sen. Feingold saw?The greymail issue was reported by the Times in the context of the Libby trial, so let’s use their definition (if not their spelling):
Graymail is the practice of discouraging a prosecution from proceeding by contending that a defendant may need to disclose classified or sensitive information as part of a full defense. Such an approach can force the government to choose between dropping the prosecution or allowing the information to be disclosed at a trial.
In the Libby case the classified issues were somewhat tangential to the question of whether Libby lied about his interaction with various reporters, but in the Gonzales situation, I can’t imagine how a jury could rule on whether this reasonably be characterized as more than one program without a fair amount of information about the underlying activities.
God knows what a determined Democratic Congress would be willing to do in order to get Gonzalez. But I think McGuire has a good point; the downside in revealing classified data would probably prevent even the Democrats from trying to make the case.
Josh Marshall is unconvinced and believes there’s much more lurking beneath the surface that the White House is desperate to cover up:
As you can see, we now have the first hint of what was at the center of the Ashcroft hospital room showdown. According to the New York Times, what the White House calls the ‘terrorist surveillance [i.e., warrantless wiretap] program’ originally included some sort of largescale data mining.I don’t doubt that this is true as far as it goes. But this must only scratch the surface because, frankly, at least as presented, this just doesn’t account for the depth of the controversy or the fact that so many law-and-order DOJ types were willing to resign over what was happening. Something’s missing.
Marshall is speculating based on his take of the Bush Administration’s past “illegal” activities (quotes are necessary because no one has proven anything the Bushies done is “illegal”). But to be honest, how such speculation can be considered valid when there is so much we don’t know about the warrantless surveillance and why those same attorneys who were willing to resign over these “other matters” relating to the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program had no problem with Ashcroft re-authorizing the program 20 times previously. Marshall is right. Something doesn’t fit. But whether it involves a “cover up” of other, more intrusive or illegal intelligence programs or a simple desire to hold close the most important secrets vital to our national security cannot be said with anything approaching certainty or even intelligently be guessed at.
Gonzalez should have been allowed to resign months ago over the US Attorney firings. Not because of anything illegal he did but because of the incompetent way it was handled. But Bush stuck with him and now must weather another storm of controversy that weakens him politically (if he could get any weaker). Some might admire the President’s steadfastness (I call it stubbornness) in standing behind his Attorney General. But there must come a point when doing so harms the office of the President as well as the country. That time has long passed. It’s time for Gonzo to go.
11:41 am
Able Danger, Alberto Gonzales, And The Senate (Update: Who Leaked It?)...
Two years ago, the tantalizing story of Able Danger came to light as three of its team went public with information on the cutting-edge data-mining program. Coincidentally, as the AD story got fitfully reported over the succeeding months, the New…...
12:09 pm
rick: “Comey himself confirmed this in his own testimony”
No. The quote you attribute to Comey is actually from AGAG.
No need to make a confusing situation even more confusing.
12:19 pm
[...] Rick Moran writes, What we have today is an Attorney General who can’t seem to explain to Congress the various intelligence activities being carried out by the NSA to catch terrorists before they can strike here in the US. Part of that is certainly the fact that much of it is classified (something the AG offered to clarify in closed session – Democrats refused, wanting their circus to be televised). But beyond that, Gonzalez can’t seem to summon the coherence to differentiate between the already acknowledged “Terrorist Surveillance Program†and “other intelligence activities†being carried out by NSA. [...]
12:21 pm
rick: “Ashcroft begged off making the decision … thought it best that Comey … was in a better position to make the call.”
That’s a distortion of what we learned from Comey’s testimony:
a week before that March 11th deadline [for the renewal of the program], I had a private meeting with the attorney general for an hour, just the two of us, and I laid out for him what we had learned and what our analysis was in this particular matter. And at the end of that hour-long private session, he and I agreed on a course of action. And within hours he was stricken and taken very, very ill … We had concerns as to our ability to certify its legality, which was our obligation for the program to be renewed. The attorney general was taken that very afternoon to George Washington Hospital.
http://gulcfac.typepad.com/georgetown_university_law/files/comey.transcript.pdf
You’re suggesting that Ashcroft had not yet made a decision, or was avoiding making a decision. That’s not so. Before he got sick, Ashcroft and Comey had already “agreed on a course of action.”
This is an important point. Before entering the hospital room, Gonzales either did know, could have known or should have known that Ashcroft had already made a decision. This supports Comey’s perspective, that Gonzales was specifically trying to take advantage of Ashcroft’s condition to get Ashcroft to reverse a decision that Ashcroft had already made.
12:22 pm
Oops, sorry about that. Hopefully it’s obvious that I forgot to close the italics tag at the end of “George Washington Hospital.”
12:27 pm
After the most extensive FBI investigation in history the Justice Department and special prosecutors couldn’t find any evidence against Clinton beyond a blow job. After more subpoenas and hearings than ever before in our country’s history the Congress also couldn’t find any evidence of wrongdoing.
Of COURSE this means there was a massive cover-up, and the Justice Department was politicized. What ELSE could it mean?
12:38 pm
I don’t think Gonzo will go, if only because his incoherence is a feature, not a bug of the Bush administration. Gonzo is the ideal decoy / flare. And I suspect he can run out the clock with his nonsensical rambling. Bush is acting like any good coach: put the C squad in during garbage time.
12:40 pm
rick: “the slew of illegal fundraising cases that the Clinton Justice Department, according to an Inspector General’s audit, simply ‘blew?’ ”
By putting that word (“blew”) in quotes you seem to be suggesting that word is a quote from the Inspector General.
As far as I can tell, the report you’re talking about is here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/1999/07/dojoig.html
And it doesn’t use that word.
Then again, maybe you meant those as scare quotes, and I’m being too fussy.
12:56 pm
You’re right. That wasn’t a quote from the IG report (although I don’t know if your link is the one being referred to in this piece:
http://www.aim.org/media_monitor/A3261_0_2_0_C/
And Dave – here’s a quote from Orrin Hatch and the summary of an article on the fundraising scandals from that same link:
This just scratches the surface. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee was a guest on the same show. He has generally been very forgiving of Janet Reno’s handling of matters at Justice. But this day he took off his gloves. “This is the most politicized Justice Department I can remember in the whole time I’ve been in the United States Senate in 23 years,” he declared. He also claimed to have information that most of the people named now want to tell their stories about what really went on with fund-raising for the DNC, but that the Justice Department has brushed it aside.
AP reporter Pete Yost reported that the normal random assignment of these cases to judges has been dropped. The cases involving Clinton friends and Democratic donors are being assigned to judges appointed by Clinton who have records of going easy on Clinton’s friends. Also, columnist Bob Novak recently obtained a Justice Department memo listing politically sensitive “ongoing” or “pending inactive investigations” that have long been dormant. He suggests that they are being kept open in order to keep Congress from investigating them. He says the list was released by mistake and the Justice Department is trying to retrieve all copies.
Gee – no politics there, huh?
1:03 pm
rick: “other career DOJ attorneys threatened to resign if it was given the go ahead without modifying some of its ‘technical’ aspects.”
More of those pesky quotes (“technical”). You seem to be suggesting that Comey used that word. Trouble is, he didn’t.
Also, you’re understating the situation when you say “other career DOJ attorneys threatened to resign.” According to Comey, it was Ashcroft, Mueller and a bunch of other senior people who were ready to resign. That’s a much stronger statement than just “other career DOJ attorneys.” And Comey himself wasn’t just a “career DOJ attorney[s].” He was DAG, and acting AG.
“Robert Comey”
James, not “Robert.”
“Ashcroft preferred allowing his deputy Comey to do his duty”
Not just that. Ashcroft and Comey had already “agreed on a course of action.” I see you later acknowledge this.
“Not being aware of this, the White House’s Andy Card and Gonzalez went to the hospital hoping the AG would over ride Comey’s decision.”
First of all, it wasn’t just “Comey’s decision.” That implies Ashcroft was being led around by the nose by Comey. Not exactly fair.
Also, you don’t know that Gonzales was “not … aware of this [not aware that Ashcroft had already made the same decision as Comey].” As far as I can tell, Gonzales has not made this claim, and there is nothing in the record to suggest such a claim. I think you’re simply making a charitable assumption.
By the way, if at the moment he entered the hospital room, Gonzales really didn’t know if Comey was acting with Ashcroft’s explicit support, then Gonzales had a simple way to find out: ask Comey. If Gonzales didn’t do this, then he should have done this.
The circumstances seem to indicate that Gonzales knew quite well where Ashcroft stood, and was simply hoping that a sedated Ashcroft could be convinced, one way or another, to scribble his name anyway. This is appalling, to say the least.
1:04 pm
Rick, thanks very much for fixing my dangling tag in #4. I also see that you’re fixing what I mentioned in #2.
1:11 pm
Just a clarification on intelligence “programs.” The intelligence community divides highly-classified programs into “compartments.” Each compartment has its own codename, access and dissemination requirements, etc. Personnel will be “read in” to these programs separately based on their job and “need to know.”
Now, it’s not clear from what I’ve read if these “programs” are combined into one or are separate as I described. If they are run by separate agencies then it’s more likely they are separate, but it’s no certainty.
But you’re right that it’s not clear if separate compartments has a meaningful difference legally, particularly when separate programs may be closely related and derive from a common authorizing order/legislation.
Personally, I think Gonzalez is a tool and has to go, but the Democrats are wasting their time with perjury. Prosecution would require declassification and exposure of US sources and methods – something that is very unlikely to occur.
1:15 pm
As for the state of mind when Card/Gonzalez entered Ashcroft’s hospital room, you have as much evidence for your talking point as I have for mine (which as I recall was given by an unnamed Bush WH official at the time of the Comey testimony).
If I wanted to do a post using Democratic talking points, I would have called Harry Reid and have him write it.
And your last comment was deleted for being non germane. If you want to start another thread on what the GOP Congress did during the Clinton years, you’ll have to wait until I write about it.
1:17 pm
Your “evidence” is a quote from Senator Hatch, and Bob Novak saying it “suggests” the Justice Dept is politicized?
It was the Clinton Justice Department that assigned so many cases to special prosecutors, investigated Clinton so thoroughly, etc. So their own interest in maintaining public confidence that the system was not being abused, that even the appearance of propriety was always maintained, was being used to make it look like they were doing something wrong.
No one ever found ANY evidence of wrongdoing in the Clinton administration. Not one Clinton official was prosecuted or even had to resign because of wrongdoing – except one guy who took a helicopter to play golf. That is the entire record of wrongdoing in the Clinton administration. Nothing else. After all those investigations. The most subpoenas and hearings by the Congress ever in our country’s history. Days of hearings on Clinton’s Christmas card list…
Compare that to today…
1:23 pm
Just off the top of my head…
Web Hubbell went to jail. Did he serve as associate AG from his cell?
Ron Brown almost certainly would have been indicted for lying to the FBI if he hadn’t been tragically killed in that airplane accident.
That’s just off the top of my head – and doesn’t include Johnnie Huang who I believe was a Commerce deputy (he or Chng – can’t remember which).
To believe that the Clinton Justice department wasn’t politicized is to believe in fairy tales.
1:29 pm
rick: “I don’t know if your link is the one being referred to in this piece”
I expect better from you, but maybe I shouldn’t.
It’s always fun to peel back the layers of the onion this way. Here’s your sentence which caught my eye:
the slew of illegal fundraising cases that the Clinton Justice Department, according to an Inspector General’s audit, simply “blewâ€
An innocent person reading that sentence would ordinarily conclude that you are quoting the Inspector General. So I asked you who you are quoting. It turns out you are quoting Cliff Kincaid who is quoting Carl Cameron (of Fox).
It’s not OK for you to take a word out of Cameron’s mouth and pretend that it came out of the Inspector General’s mouth. You’re also off your rocker if you think that a non-wingnut reader is likely to perceive Cameron as someone who can be trusted to fairly paraphrase the Inspector General.
“I don’t know if your link is the one being referred to in this piece”
Yes, as far as I can tell, the link I provided is “the one being referred to in this piece.” Of course, I can’t really know for sure, since “this piece” is extremely vague, and doesn’t tell us exactly what is “being referred to.”
It’s worth noting that you, Kincaid and Cameron are all propagating information about “an inspector general’s report,” even though none of you have offered any specifics about the report (like, for example, what it was called, when it was issued, or where a reader could find it, or relevant text that is quoted from it, which would help one identify it).
You seem to be well-aware that Gonzales has no credibility whatsoever. I’m surprised that you’re this careless with your own.
1:33 pm
We Hubble went to jail for overcharging clients years BEFORE he entered the Clinton admin. His prosecution was an example of what I am talking about here. They investigated everyone around Clinton so thoroughly, trying to get leverage to get someone to say Clinton did something wrong, that they uncovered a billing overcharge from years earlier. That is ALL they could come up with! They told Hubble they’d let him go if he could give them some dirt on Clinton. He couldn’t, so he went to jail.
Brown wasn’t indicted. “Almost certainly” is not a standard that applies.
1:40 pm
First of all, I forgot to change the quotes on “blew” which I have now done and added that it came from Carl Cameron.
I am always open to corrections of the facts – not in the interpretation of those facts by someone with as obvious a political agenda as you have. So I think you’re questioning my credibility is a laugh.
As far as the IG Report – from what I read, it showed that indeed the Clinton DOJ “blew it” although not ascribing any ulterior motives to them for it. I think it interesting that a partisan could in fact put that kind of spin on it – that the mishandled and obscured documents could be seen as agenda driven – even though the IG didn’t put it quite that way.
All of that aside, perhaps you should resist the temptation to put your spin on everything I write and remember that there are. in fact, two sides to every argument. I thank you for your corrections of the facts. I damn you for your attempt to spin my piece in a way that I, as the author, did not intend nor appreciate.
1:49 pm
Lets assume that your interpretation of the facts is correct, and there is a potential explanation that “clears” Gonzales.
First, even if it is possible to analyze the facts in a way that may be non-perjury, the situation remains that the “innocent” explanation is one that clearly does not flow smoothly from the facts, but one that has to be reached for. When Gonzales testified that there were no disagreements, he was clearly trying to assure the Senate that the Administration was taking great pains to make sure the program(s) were run legally, and therefore Congres should just quit asking questions. Even if he didn’t “lie” (a statement I don’t personally agree with), it seems pretty blatant he was trying to deceive Congress—“no problem, nothing to see here, move along now.” That’s intentional deceit to me (or gross stupidity).
Second, what about the “I didn’t talk to anyone” statement? During the April testimony, he made clear that the reason he couldn’t remember a damn thing was because he had carefully avoided talking to anybody relevant, so as to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Then Ms. Goodling not only testifies that they talked, but she felt he was trying to get their stories on the same page. When asked last week, Gonzales said that there was no lie in his first statement that he didn’t talk to anybody since he only discussed the facts with her because she was an emotional woman, not to, y’know, coach her. The statemet in April wasn’t “I didn’t coach anybody” but “I didn’t talk to anybody.” Isn’t that perjury (as well as deception)?
Third, these attempts to explain just what the heck Gonzales means always seem to happen after conflicting facts come out. The attys were fired for cause, we’re certain. Oh, they wern’t? Well, then I must have just thought they were (cuz otherwise I’d be lying). White House had absolutely nothing to do with this. Oh, they did (as shown by the Rove e-mail)? Well, I must not have known that (cuz otherwise I’d be lying).
I didn’t talk to anybody. Oh, I did? Well, I meant something else. Don’t worry about our surveillance, its totally legal. Oh, the DoJ and Ashcroft (Ashcroft!) thought it was illegal? Well, I must have meant some other program, or something else, but I’m certainly not lying.
As a liberal independent, it infuriated me when Clinton played the “it depends on what ‘is’ is” game. Yes, its possible he forgot how to use the present tense of the verb To Be in general conversation, but you show me a Conservative who doesn’t believe it was a flat, bald-faced lie.
1:56 pm
rick: “I forgot to change the quotes on “blew†which I have now done”
Huh? The word had quotes before, and it still has quotes, so I’m not sure what you “have now done.”
“added that it came from Carl Cameron”
That’s definitely an improvement. But my unsolicited opinion is that your sentence is now incomprehensible, because of the way it says “according to” twice.
“I think you’re questioning my credibility is a laugh.”
Your original sentence, which pretended that Cameron’s word (“blew”) appeared in the Inspector General’s report, speaks for itself. (That sentence can be seen in #8.)
“your attempt to spin my piece”
I don’t see where anything I’ve said is fairly described as an “attempt to spin [your] piece.”
1:58 pm
Rick,
You deserve a great deal of credit for writing, “The fact is, the Administration has sought to politicize the Department of Justice as they have tried to stamp politics on most every other aspect of government.”
Yes, this is happening. It goes beyond anything even Nixon tried to do and was forced – by Republicans – to resign for. When the power of government is used to promote one party and to crush the other we are on a dangerous path. For example, the wiretapping – the temptations are so great, and we don’t yet know if they were listening to their political opponents, for example. Would any of us put it past someone with that power to use it? I know you would be accusing Clinton of that if this were happening under his watch.
Which brings me to my point. You followed the above by writing, “Of course, few President’s politicized their Justice Department more than Clinton.” This makes it sound like you’re using a “they all do it” defense.
1) They don’t all do it. Saying so pro,otes a cynicism and acceptance of wrongdoing. The current situation in the Justice Dept. is unprecedented and dangerous.
2) Even IF Clinton did it, this should make you MORE likely to demand that this crowd resign for it,not less. You either accept this conduct or you don’t – and if you don’t you should be especially horrified when “your guys” are doing it.
2:09 pm
rick: “As for the state of mind when Card/Gonzalez entered Ashcroft’s hospital room, you have as much evidence for your talking point as I have for mine”
One difference is that I described my reasoning (in #10), so that the line between fact and opinion is clear. Your talking point (“not being aware of this”) was presented flatly, as if it were an established fact. But it’s not, and the closest thing you have to a source (“an unnamed Bush WH official”) is not much of a source at all.
Also, your talking point makes no sense once you realize that this simple question hasn’t been answered: if Gonzales was really “not … aware” of whether or not Ashcroft had already made a decision, and whether or not Comey was acting with Ashcroft’s full support, then why not simply ask Comey?
It’s very hard to understand why a person acting in good faith wouldn’t start with that step: ask Comey where Ashcroft stood. If Comey couldn’t be trusted to answer such a question honestly, then he shouldn’t have been working as a janitor at DOJ, let alone as DAG and acting AG.
2:09 pm
Okay – you win. I dropped “blew” alltogether and substituted that they “did not handle it correctly” which even you would agree the report makes clear.
Dave:
The point is that the modern presidency seems to lend itself to this DOJ politicization – and I made the observation that this has been true since after Nixon. That the Carter Administration and Griffin Bell politicized EEOC cases, for instance (going after some companies, not others for political reasons). It’s not exactly an “everyone does it defense” but rather a comment on the changing nature of the presidency and government.
This idea of DOJ being semi-independent is fairly new. Presidents used to appoint their most trusted cronies to the post. Only the modern presidency has seen the necessity of keeping much of politics (some cannot be avoided) out of DOJ business. The fact this may be changing is more a reflection of the atmosphere in DC than any attempt to prorouge any perogatives of the judiciary or Congress for that matter.
As far as my take on Bush politicizing government, I have been writing about it for more than a year. Where have you been :-)?
2:10 pm
rick: “Web Hubbell … Ron Brown … Johnnie Huang”
The following is a list of GOP folks who have been in serious legal trouble in recent years. I think it’s pretty clear that there’s no comparison:
Jack Abramoff, Claude Allen, Richard Berglund, Ed Buckham, John Colyandro, Lester Crawford, Tom DeLay, Jim Ellis, Robert Fromm, Shaun Hansen, Adam Kidan, Thomas Kontogiannis, Scooter Libby, Chuck McGee, Bob Ney, Allen Raymond, Warren RoBold, Tony Rudy, David Safavian, Michael Scanlon, Roger Stillwell, James Tobin, Neil Volz, Cherie Carroll, Terrence Gasper, Brian Hicks, Douglas Moorman, Thomas Noe, Donna Owens, Sally Perz, Betty Shultz, Robert Taft, Douglas Talbott, Maggie Thurber, Jim Adams, Darrell Brock, Stan Cave, Dave Disponett, Dan Druen, Vincent Fields, Ernie Fletcher, Daniel Groves, Keith Hall, Tim Hazlette, Marshall Hughes, Cory Meadows, Richard Murgatroyd, Bill Nighbert, Basil Turbyfill and Bob Wilson.
I’m sure I forgot a few, but those fifty or so are a good start.
2:14 pm
Jesus Christ! You want me to name every Democrat who’s been arrested the last 60 days?
Lord God some of those are state officials! What do they have to do with the White House malfeasance?
As far as your belief regarding Card/Gonzalez – again, that is YOUR OPINION, YOUR SPIN.
Get it through your head that other people have a differnt take on the same information. You are guessing at their motiviations. At least I have a source for my take.
2:25 pm
rick: “substituted that they ‘did not handle it correctly’ ”
Fair enough. That’s a big improvement, in my opinion. I respect many things about your work, including your willingness to make corrections. I’m amazed at how some of your ideological pals let their errors stand (which creates the impression that they’re not innocent “errors”).
For the record, the report used language no stronger than this: “shortcomings … poor judgment … poor communication … counterproductive institutional practices.” They also said they did not find “intentional malfeasance.”
By the way, I think it’s hard to imagine any study of any large organization that was not able to find some signs of “shortcomings … poor judgment … poor communication … counterproductive institutional practices.”
2:32 pm
There is much that I write on this blog (articles for other sites are different) that I take things from memory or after scanning a piece or two. My memory is unusually good but fails me on occasion – “Robert” Comey is a mistake I’ve made in two separate blog posts for instance.
Not an excuse – but when I’m wrong on the facts, it seems stupid not to correct it. What’s the point of not doing so? You only prove you don’t care about what you write – something I care deeply about.
2:50 pm
rick: “My memory is unusually good but fails me on occasion”
Don’t be too hard on yourself. I’ve seen worse. There are folks at the White House who think that the CIA used to be run by a guy named Tenent:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/images/20010929.html
Fred Thompson also can’t spell:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/FredThompson/2007/05/09/tenent’s_time_with_tim
2:54 pm
rick: “You want me to name every Democrat who’s been arrested the last 60 days?”
Obviously the defining characteristic is not “every Democrat.” The defining characteristic is “every Democrat who is holding some kind of public office, and/or has some kind of leadership position as a Democrat.”
“some of those are state officials!”
True. But the pattern seems to be that the GOP has a problem with corruption from top to bottom. It would interest me to see a similar list of Dem state officials who’ve been in legal trouble recently. I think the list just isn’t as long.
“What do they have to do with the White House malfeasance?”
I think it’s pretty clear that for better and worse Rove runs a tight political ship, which means that there’s a lot of integration between local GOP and national GOP. So I think it’s appropriate to view the system as a whole.
Specific example: in the NH phone-jamming case, the RNC paid $3 million in legal fees on behalf of the local officials. There were also “22 phone calls from Tobin to the White House between 11:20 a.m. Election Day, two hours after the phone jamming was shut down, and 2:17 a.m. the next day, four hours after the outcome of the election was announced.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/16/AR2006051601712.html
So it’s quite reasonable to imagine that this crime was an extension of “White House malfeasance.” Likewise for matters involving other “state officials” I mentioned.
And I think that even after you remove all the “state officials,” the number of national names is pretty stunning, and way beyond what the Clinton era produced.
“You are guessing at their motiviations.”
I’ve explained why my guess is logical and why yours is not. I appreciate that you’ve been very responsive in this thread, but I also notice you haven’t responded to that specific point. This tends to confirm what I believe: it’s very hard to think of any legitimate reason why Gonzales would simply fail to ask Comey the question. I have never seen anyone suggest such a reason. If you could think of such a reason, I think you would have mentioned it by now.
If, pre-hospital, Gonzales truly did not know where Ashcroft stood, that means Gonzales didn’t ask Comey. If he didn’t ask, I can’t imagine why. Unless he already knew the answer, and knew that by virtue of asking, it would be even harder to make the visit seem legitimate.
Sometimes when we don’t ask a question, it’s because we already know the answer. And we have some interest in being able to pretend otherwise.
2:57 pm
busboy, I think your #19 is a very nice summary of Gonzales’ testimony.
4:59 pm
jukeboxgrad,
You know, if you have that much time on your hands, I’ve got a fence that needs painting and a roof that needs some new shingles.
Rick,
You asked the question: ” God knows what a determined Democratic Congress would be willing to do in order to get Gonzalez”
And to answer that..it appears that Senator Chuck Schumer has about as much idle time on his plate as my pal, jukeboxgrad, so I would answer your question with: Anything and everything.
Course Chuck Schumer is not after Gonzales, he’s hoping that Gonzales’ testimony will lead him to some deep dark cavern of untold deceptions and crimes committed by the one who Schumer really wants mounted on his office wall. That being Dick Cheney.
8:15 pm
Looks like we have what the whiners on the left call a “troll.” Unlike the leftards, discourse is allowed on normal American bloggers’ sites and jukebox…. is treated like an actual bona fides person in the marketplace of ideas. Try doing that on ThinkProgress or other sites ruled by hysterics of a non-masculine mindset.
But the substance of the Gonzalez case involves all sorts of intricate covert back-pages of top secret programs—-so the Dems play politics and pull off another “process crime” show trial a la Scooter Libby. The Dems are perfecting this gotcha-game legal trickery to the point that they are tying up the government completely in investigation/prosecution and neglecting legislation. The American public will only be diverted from this circus-trial syndrome for a short time before again falling into accepting the liberal MSM shibboleths as virtually true.
The MSM/Hollyweird/academicide nexus has allies in the trial lawyer community which stand them in good stead in this purge-trial parody of democracy. But can the plurality of conservatives in the US body politic withstand the constant drumbeat & siren songs of a media that has pushed GWB into a corner? Can they separate the voodoo chants from actual skullduggery?
From the way that the Clinton history of “Johnnie Chung, Charlie Trie and the slew of illegal fundraising cases that the Clinton Justice Department, according to an Inspector General’s audit did not handle correctly? Ties to Chinese intelligence, money laundering at a Buddhist Temple, Commerce Department waivers in exchange for cash” were all covered over by a pliant media, the Dems have an advantage.
With houseboys like jukebox… et al digging endlessly & myriads of Waxman wannabes in Congress ready to slap subpoenas on the GWB agencies & departments, the Dems can do their damnedest to thwart a real marketplace of ideas by overloading the circuits with spurious snipe hunts.
Because when ideas are put forward, the Dems are definitely behind the curve.
8:45 pm
My favorite Gonzo-ism is this past week when Schumer asked him about something and Gonzo answered “my spokeperson clarified my previous statement the next day” (paraphrasing here) Schumer then asked Gonzo what his spokesperson had said to clarify his statement. Gonzo said I don’t know what my spokesperson said to clarify my statement.He then tells Schumer he can look into it and get back to him. wtf? I know Bush will keep this lapdog, but the country knows Gonzo is a laughingstock…..doesn’t that bother Bush or his top advisers. Not usually a conspiracy nut but this does hint of Bush and company trying to hide something. Has Bush reached a point where there is no outrage in his blunders because the bar has been lowered so many times? Its no wonder the prosecution of the Iraq War was so idiotic, these people should be dressed as clowns. The Gonzogate is just a perfect metaphor for these people.And fight4theright…..have you EVER ripped on a republican? Or do you work for the RNC and make appearances on this blog to root for the “decider” just wondering.
10:55 pm
rick: “It turns out today, that the ‘other matters’ involved in the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program related to a massive, legal, data mining operation”
If it was legal, why did Ashcroft et al threaten to quit over it?
And there’s another problem. On 5/11/06, Bush said we don’t do data mining: “we’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.”
So this latest spin from the White House, apparently intended to make Gonzales looks like less of a liar, has the unavoidable side-effect of making Bush look like more of a liar.
5:52 am
@jukeboxgrad:
thank you for the comment. Much appreciated.
@daveinboca:
“But the substance of the Gonzalez case involves all sorts of intricate covert back-pages of top secret programs—-so the Dems play politics and pull off another “process crime†show trial a la Scooter Libby.”
Really? What the heck does firing a US Attorney have to do with “covert back-pages and top secret programs”? Inglesias sure seems like he was canned for not bringing the voter-fraud case the New Mexico GOP wanted brought—care to explain how this has anything to do with the War on Terror (copyright 2001 W’s White House). Lam sure seems like she was canned for digging into the Cunningham affair a little too effectively (what was it she was told? You have days, not weeks, to get the hell out of your office—forget the investigation). Cummings ( think it was Cummings) got canned for not bringing a bogus voter-fraud case against ACORN. Schlozman gets rushed in to file the case. Again, what the heck does this have to do with National Security? “If I told you, I’d have to kill you” just stops being a viable defense at some point.
You complain that this is all just for show. While I don’t doubt the Dems are milking it for all they can squeeze out if it, does that mean that Gonzales hasn’t been lying to Congress? If a cop stops a speeding vehicle because the driver was black, does that mean the car wasn’t speeding? You compared it to the “sham” of the Libby trial—so you don’t think Libby lied? W does. The Judge and Jury were pretty confident of it. Why don’t you think he lied? How were the lies anything but an attempt to cover up the “smear Wilson” campaign? How does showing that the yellowcake uranium story was pure crap merit a smear campaign? Oh, thats right, you cant tell us—national security.
ANY government, Right or Left, that refuses to tell its citizenry what the hell is going on, and relies on “just trust us,” is anathema to the American Ideal. Answer me this: are you defending Gonzales because he is unfairly being picked on (i.e. didn’t lie), or because he’s on the Side of Goodness, and therefore must be protected regardless of his actions?
Washington Post:
“When Alberto R. Gonzales was asked during his January 2005 confirmation hearing whether the Bush administration would ever allow wiretapping of U.S. citizens without warrants, he initially dismissed the query as a “hypothetical situation.”
But when Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) pressed him further, Gonzales declared: “It is not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes.”
As Mr. Eggen notes, the warrantless wiretapping had already benn going on for years at that point. A flat, bald-faced lie. I suppose you could argue that he HAD to lie, to protect our secrets, but if thats the case why not give one of his “I can’t go into that” answers? There’s only one logical explanation—he thought he could get away with lying, no one would be the wiser, and no harm, no foul.
This is the chief law enforcement officer of my country, lying (repeatedly) to my elected representatives.
Sidenote: with all of the “it must have been two seperate programs” defending going on, its intersting to note that the only members of the Gang of Eight who have spoken out so far have flatly refuted his version of the 2004 meeting—everybody agrees it was the TSP that was discussed. Well, everybody erxcept Gonzales. Guess all those Senators must be idiots, because if its everybody’s word versus Gonzales, well, everybody must be wrong. Thank God there aren’t any records of the meeting—hate to have definitive proof of what happened or what was said.
And Tony Snow can’t figure out why “no transcript” interviews with Admin officials doesn’t sound like a good offer.
8:27 am
Schumer, Leahy, Kennedy, and any other Democrat who thinks its their prerogative to appoint cabinet members either needs to a) read the Constitution and drink a big glass of STFU juice or b) run for President and win. I stopped counting long ago the number of times one of these clowns “demanded” the resignation of a Bush administration cabinet member, and they’re out of their minds if they think Republicans won’t remember these antics the next time we have a Democrat in the White House and a Republican majority in Congress.
9:30 am
@ Sirius Familiaris:
I’m sure Republicans will remember this, but will they also remeber your position to “read the Constitution and drink a big glass of STFU juice “? So Congress can’t impeach Gonzales, according to you? If I get your position correctly, Gonzales could literally be selling crack out of the DoJ, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it if the Prez says its okay. You sure about that? I believe there have been impeachments of Cabinet officials in the past (at least one . . . Belknap, about 150 years ago) so unless the law has been re-written, it is legal for Congress to impeach a cabinet official.
And they are NOT appointing cabinet officals—they are removing cabinet officials. Slight difference.
10:33 am
Lets also not forget the unprecedented fallout that this whole nightmare is starting to bring. Not only do the actions of the administration undermine prosecutor credibility, but they open the window for defendants to challenge their cases, demanding dismissals or retrials based on prosecutorial political motivation in bringing the cases in the first place. Yes, this is happening right now across the country. I wonder how much credibility and money this will end up costing?
Oh, and by the by, David Iglesias is a f’ing national hero. If the republicans had a guy like that running, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat. Integrity. But unfortunately, a guy like that would never run in the first place.
11:36 am
Please identify the impeachable offenses committed by Gonzales, Rumsfeld, Rice and the other administration officials who have been the targets of repeated calls for resignation by cantankerous Democrats, and I’ll gladly concede your point.
5:38 pm
@ Sirius:
You want a Bill of Particulars, that may take a few days to research the legal threshold for cabinet officals—impeachment runs under a different legal preinciple than criminal charges. I never impeached a cabinet offical before, so I don’t have any pre-research done.
My reason for mentioning it was your post seemed to imply that Congress is incapable of impeaching cabinet officials, and I was trying to point out that it is legally possible, in that is has happened in the past.
Grounds? For Gonzales, lying to Congress, as I discussed above. If on nothing else, he lied about not talking to anybody in regards to the fired attys. Since lying to Congress under oath is a crime, I assume Felonious behavior would be gounds to impeach (but again I’m guessing at this point).
Give me a few days for a legal standard.
As for the others, I never mentioned them—in this thread at least, I’m talking about Fredo. One thing at a time.
7:09 pm
sirius: “Please identify the impeachable offenses”
You’re ignorant about many things, including the nature of “impeachable offenses.” Pay attention to what a famous Republican once said:
“An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history”