Gonzo is still under the gun

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine announced today that his office is investigating outgoing disgraced attorney general Alberto Gonzales to determine if he should face charges of perjury for lying in his testimony before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.

In a letter today to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), Fine said his office "has ongoing investigations" related to Gonzales's testimony on several key issues, including the prosecutor firings and allegations of improper hiring; the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program; the FBI's use of national security letters; and allegations that Gonzales sought to improperly influence a witness who was under investigation by Congress and the Justice Department.

Gonzales's often contradictory remarks and his repeated assertions that he could not recall key events drew fire from lawmakers of both parties and contributed to his dwindling support on Capitol Hill.

Prior to todays acknowledgment, Fine would only confirm that he was looking into allegations that the Attorney General sought to influence the testimony of Monica Goodling before she appeared before Congress.

Earlier this month Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy had requested Fine expand the scope of his investigation to include Gonzales contradictory testimony. Today, Fine indicated that he was already on it, and so was the Office of Professional Responsibility. The two offices are jointly conducting an investigation into the illegal politicization of Justice.

Leahy issues a statement that he was "pleased" that Gonzales was being investigated, but indicated that the Congress would continue investigating Gonzales as well. "The current Attorney General is leaving, but these questions remain," Leahy said. "It is appropriate that the Inspector General will examine whether the Attorney General was honest with this and other Congressional committees about these crucial issues."

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Specter Strikes a Tough Pose

The Hill is reporting that Arlen Specter left a White House briefing late Monday, having given the Bush administration 18 hours to resolve the contradictions in Alberto Gonzales’s testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. His aides released a statement late in the day that indicated something big is in the offing for Tuesday.

“Given the difficulty of discussing classified matters in public, I think it is preferable to have a letter addressing that question [of Gonzales’ veracity] from the administration … by noon tomorrow, which will be made available to the news media,” Specter wrote in the statement. “The administration has committed to producing such a letter.”

Specter expects the letter clarifying the attorney general’s testimony to be addressed to himself and Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who declined to comment on the matter.

Specter was equally cagey, telling reporters to wait until Tuesday for any further comment from him.

When asked whether Gonzales should be forced to resign, Specter said any such speculation would be "premature to consider." He said other senators were present for the administration briefing, which was given by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and others, but declined to identify them.

In last week’s testimony, Gonzalez appeared to perjure himself last week when he disputed the testimony of James Comey, Deputy Attorney General under John Ashcroft. Gonzales insisted that the legality of the Bush administrations propensity for and policy of spying on American citizens had never been at issue in the Justice Department.

The bald-faced lying led many Democrats to call for a Special Prosecutor to investigate illegality inside the Justice Department and the chief law enforcement officer in the land for perjury. The clamoring of Democrats prompted Specter to request the classified briefing on Monday.

Remember, it was only last Thursday that Specter openly flouted the president on Air Force One, first by mingling with the press corps, and then by dissing the president. Pretty bold. There are only two rules for politicians traveling with the president – don’t mingle with the press corps and don’t trash-talk the pres or his team. Specter broke both “rules.” Before take-off.

So what does Specter have planned for tomorrow? And does it involve Karl and Harriet?

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If this isn’t grounds for a Congressional perjury charge against Gonzo, what is?

Corpus Juris has written on this subject; I wanted to add a little more.

As this Newsweek/Washington Post article spells out, Alberto V-05 clearly perjured himself before Congress. The details:

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.

Now, I can already tell you what the various reactions out of Gonzo’s mouth might be:
• “These were just procedural issues;
• “Trust me, nobody’s civil liberties were violated”
• “Mistakes were made”;

Already, DOJ spokesperson Brian Roehrkasse is seeking to “contextualize” Gonzo’s statements.

However, he and Gonzo are undercut, in the story, despite Roehrkasse’s attempt to spin that, as well:

Each of the violations cited in the reports copied to Gonzales was serious enough to require notification of the President's Intelligence Oversight Board, which helps police the government's surveillance activities. The format of each memo was similar, and none minced words.

The oversight board, staffed with intelligence experts from inside and outside government, was established to report to the attorney general and president about civil liberties abuses or intelligence lapses. But Roehrkasse said the fact that a violation is reported to the board "does not mean that a USA Patriot violation exists or that an individual's civil liberties have been abused."

Looking beyond this spin, this revelation about Gonzo’s brazenness is not a tree falling in a people-deserted forest. Instead, it topples right in the midst of multiple House and Senate attempts to obtain new White House testimony on DOJ, its warrantless wiretapping, its politically-based firings of district attorneys, Vice President Cheney’s secretiveness and more.

Will Democrats do what they need to do and prefer charges against Gonzo? Will they push back? I, for one, am not holding my breath too long at this point.

Cross-posted at Socratic Gadfly .

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Fred Fielding Goes Long

Okay, buckle up and grab the dashboard. The route of Republican logic (snort at that oxymoron) we are about to traverse is as twisted a path as any Missouri two-lane blacktop.

White House Counsel Fred Fielding has sent along a letter ‘splainin’ why the White House is refusing to let Sara Taylor and Harriet Meyers testify if there is any record of the exchange.

Writes F²

"Obviously, there has been a lot of discussion back and forth in that regard. The position that the president took and conveyed to the committees and the offer of compromise did not include transcripts. The accommodation was designed to provide information, not to appear to be having testimony without having testimony. One of the concomitants of testimony, of course, is transcripts.

"As far as the debate goes, often cited is that a transcript is not wanted because otherwise there would be a perjury trap. And, candidly, as everyone has discussed, misleading Congress is misleading Congress, whether it's under oath or not. And so a transcript may be convenient, but there's no intention to try to avoid telling the truth." (emphasis added)

Perjury trap? Are they planning to lie?

I guess if you are a part of this freakshow, it’s better to be assumed a liar than to open your mouth to prove it.

Sara Taylor was overheard explaining to a friend at lunch that “orange makes me look sallow.”

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Welcome to America, 2.0

“I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me,” Taguba said. “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”

Sometimes you have to hang back. You become aware of something, and you go charging hell-bent-for-leather into the topic. And by god – you are preachin’ the gospel. That is what I was doing when I first read the Seymour Hersch article on Saturday evening.

And then it hit me. The reason I was so fucking mad is because what I was writing about is the invalidation of my entire life, spent in service to the Constitution of this nation.

That is the net effect of what is revealed in Seymour Hersch’s article in The New Yorker. Everything my life has stood for up to now is null and void. I’ve suspected for quite some time, but now I know for sure. I feel stateless. You might as well revoke my god-damned citizenship, because I am a woman without a country.

The perfidy of the Bush administration, well documented and so vast as to be overwhelming, has undermined the Honor Code and the confidence of – and in – the officer corps.

At this point, I don’t have to rehash the article. Everyone has read it who is going to. But I am going to excerpt the passage that made me livid and enraged me:

When Taguba urged one lieutenant general to look at the photographs, he rebuffed him, saying, “I don’t want to get involved by looking, because what do you do with that information, once you know what they show?”

(Let me answer that for you, General. You stand the fuck up for the ideals that your uniform represent, and you stand up for what is right because you are a god damned General, and by definition a leader of men, and when you act like a punk you are a disgrace. You stand the fuck up and you aren’t too chickenshit to even look at some god-damned photographs.)

Here is how I see it. We have destroyed the military and trashed the Honor Code, and as far as I can tell, the chain of command is as quaint as the Geneva Conventions, the Great Writ, and the Constitutional guarantee of Due Process (rooted in the Great Writ “Set forth in the Meadow Runnyemead”) – all of which have been sacrificed on the altar of the “Global War On Terror™”

Rumsfeld lied to Congress – under oath. He needs to face the consequences of that action. Plausible deniability my ass. Common sense needs to trump weasel-words in this instance.

If these bastards get away with this – then the American experiment is over. It is that simple, and that much is at stake.

Constituents, what say you?

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Bradley Schlozman Wants To "Revise" His Remarks

Nine times during his testimony Bradley Schlozman said he had acted "at the direction" of the DoJ's Public Integrity Section. He specifically mentioned Craig Donsanto's name several times. If you look at the tape you will notice that he was absolutely cock sure that he had been told to bring the charges.

After being America's laughing stock for a few days, apparently after being told that the people in the Public Integrity Section aren't really planning on backing him up, and most importantly realizing that he has clearly committed perjury, Bradley Schlozman's camp told Bloomberg this afternoon that he wants to clarify his remarks. According to at least two unnamed Department of Justice Officials.

A clarification of Schlozman's testimony would stress that he consulted with the section and was given guidance, not direction, said the officials, who asked to remain anonymous because the matter is being deliberated internally. The clarification wouldn't say that Schlozman's Senate testimony was inaccurate, the officials added.

I watched the tape. His statements were clear as crystal. He wanted everybody to think that the decision was made by Craig Donsanto. Anybody who knew anything about the process knew that he was lying when he testified.

My questions are as follows:

1) Who are the anonymous Department of Justice Officials who want to revise Schlozman's sworn testimony?

2) Are they lawyers?

3) Who do they represent?

4) If they are representing Schlozman, why are they claiming to be Department of Justice Officials?

5) If they are representing the Department of Justice, why aren't they pursuing a perjury indictment?

Look, people screw up under the pressure of the national spotlight. Patrick Leahy is a tough interrogator. So are the others. Sometimes mistakes are made. Memories are faulty. Sometimes a timely correction is in order. No harm, no foul. Ordinarily, I would have no problem with a clarification. I wouldn't even think about it twice.

In this case, however, Schlozman said he was "directed" by the Public Integrity Section (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) nine times. It wasn't a slip of the tongue. It was an incompetent responsibility dodge, but a dodge that was obviously planned.

America endured an impeachment because Bill Clinton once lied under oath about cheating on his wife, once. The Republicans didn't allow him to revise his testimony. I heard all kinds of nonsense about the end of American civilization if he wasn't prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I guess a Gonzales' Department of Justice Official isn't held to the same high standard. Maybe a Gonzales' Department of Justice Official isn't held to any standard at all. That is sad, and possibly the end of American civilization.

What is he going to have us believe next? He didn't know that ACORN was a left leaning group? Oops. I guess he is asking us to believe he didn't . . . .

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How much longer do we have to abide this joker?

Of course we know why AGAG is still on the job...Anyone Bush found acceptable would not get past the confirmation process, and anyone the Democratically controlled congress would confirm...would burn the Bush maladministration to the ground.

It sure looks to me like the Attorney General of the United States should face perjury charges for lying to the House Judiciary Committee last week when he told the committee that the firing of U.S. Attorneys for political purposes was limited to the eight attorneys in the original inquiry.

The Washington Post reports this morning that he was lyin’ like a rug when he told that (tall) tale. It turns out that fully 25% of the U.S Attorneys were considered for dismissal.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified last week that the effort was limited to eight U.S. attorneys fired since last June, and other administration officials have said that only a few others were suggested for removal.

In fact, D. Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales's chief of staff, considered more than two dozen U.S. attorneys for termination, according to lists compiled by him and his colleagues, the sources said.

They amounted to more than a quarter of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys. Thirteen of those known to have been targeted are still in their posts.

I can’t see Representative Conyers having much of a sense of humor about it all. Senator Schumer does not appear to be mollified. "When you start firing people for invalid reasons, just about anyone can end up on a list," he said. "It looks like the process was out of control, and if it hadn't been discovered, more would have been fired."

At least one of the targeted attorneys is not going to be placated by platitudes. Christopher J. Christie, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey and a major GOP fundraiser, is steamed about his name appearing on Mr. Sampson’s hit list.

He has a stellar record and is not accepting apologies. "I was completely shocked. No one had ever told me that my performance had been anything but good," Christie said. "I specifically asked him why he put my name on the list. He said he couldn't give me an explanation." (Because there was no legal one to offer, perhaps?)

Have we seen enough of this guy yet? Good lord – just this week we have learned about more than enough stuff to meet the burden of proof to initiate impeachment proceedings against the Attorney General.

The removal of Gonzales from his post is mandatory if we are to restore the concept of justice to Justice.

[Cross-posted from Blue Girl, Red State]

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