Robert D. Novak: Small Shoes at Justice

washingtonpost.com:
Robert D. Novak

I first met Gonzales in 2001 when, along with other conservative journalists, I went to the White House for a background briefing by presidential counsel Gonzales on the new president's judicial nominations. I was stunned by the incoherence of the briefer. When I checked with several Republican senators, I received the same verdict. Their judgment was that Gonzales was not qualified to hold a senior governmental position.
Gonzales's handling of the crisis over the firing of U.S. attorneys set new standards for incompetence. In the midst of the furor, he agreed to address the National Press Club on May 15 (insisting on breakfast instead of the usual lunch). It was by chance the 44th anniversary of this column, and I concluded that in all those years I had never seen anything like it.

Novak, the legendary journalistic "prince of darkness", is pretty much a jerk (and a hack, and a partisan flack)in my (long time) estimation. His judgment and sense of public duty are pretty well summed up by a simple juxtaposition: he chose to out Valerie Plame as a CIA analyst to punish Joe Wilson for (and deter others from) challenging the phony Bush-Cheney case for war, while withholding this (apparently widely shared) recognition of Gonzales' incompetence, until it could do no good. Thanks a lot, Bob.

Maybe W will award him a Medal of Freedom for his mis-spent career.

Embattled Attorney General Resigns

New York Times:

"The official who disclosed the resignation in advance today said that the turmoil over Mr. Gonzales had made it difficult for him to continue as attorney general. “The unfair treatment that he’s been on the receiving end of has been a distraction for the department,” the official said. ...

On Saturday night Mr. Gonzales was contacted by his press spokesman to ask how the department should respond to inquiries from reporters about rumors of his resignation, and he told the spokesman to deny the reports.

Good to the very last drop...

The Founders Had an Idea for Handling Alberto Gonzales

New York Times: By Adam Cohen

The founders did not want impeachment to be undertaken so casually that, in James Madison’s words, the president and other officers effectively served at the “pleasure of the Senate.” But they also did not want to limit it to a few specific offenses. The phrase “other high crimes and misdemeanors” was intended to give Congress leeway. Impeachment was one of the important checks and balances the founders built into the Constitution. At state ratification conventions, it was promoted as a tool for Congress to rein in any officeholder who “dares to abuse the power vested in him by the people.” Impeachment of Mr. Gonzales would fit comfortably into the founders’ framework. ...

If the House began an impeachment inquiry, Mr. Gonzales would most likely resign rather than risk the unpleasantness of the hearings, and the ignominy of being removed. Congress should think of it as a constitutional tap on the shoulder, to let the attorney general know that the time has truly come for him to go. If Mr. Gonzales did resign, this Congress would most likely be more gracious than the one in 1876, which ignored Mr. Belknap’s hurried resignation and impeached him anyway.

I'm not so sure about the prediction, but with Rove on the way out, maybe W is ready to clear the deck of his present set of personnel headaches. After all, he has a wedding to plan now.

Short of Perjury? Try Impeachment!

washingtonpost.com: By Ruth Marcus

I find myself in an unaccustomed and unexpected position: defending Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. ...

In his Senate testimony last week, Gonzales once again dissembled and misled. He was too clever by seven-eighths. He employed his signature brand of inartful dodging -- linguistic evasion, poorly executed. The brutalizing he received from senators of both parties was abundantly deserved.

But I don't think he actually lied about his March 2004 hospital encounter with then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. I certainly don't think he could be charged with -- much less convicted of -- perjury. ...

Congress deserves better than technically correct linguistic parsing. So the bipartisan fury at Gonzales is understandable. Lawmakers are in full Howard Beale mode, mad as hell at Gonzales and not wanting to take it anymore.

But perjury is a crime that demands parsing: To be convicted, the person must have "willfully" stated a "material matter which he does not believe to be true."

The Supreme Court could have been writing about Gonzales when it ruled that "the perjury statute is not to be loosely construed, nor the statute invoked simply because a wily witness succeeds in derailing the questioner -- so long as the witness speaks the literal truth" -- even if the answers "were not guileless but were shrewdly calculated to evade."

Marcus dismisses calls for a special prosecutor, arguing:

Rather, lawmakers need to concentrate on determining what the administration did -- and under what claimed legal authority -- that produced the hospital room showdown. They need to satisfy themselves that the administration has since been operating within the law; to see what changes might guard against a repetition of the early, apparently unlawful activities; and to determine where the foreign intelligence wiretapping statute might need fixes.

That's where Congress's focus should be -- not on trying to incite a criminal prosecution that won't happen of an attorney general who should have been gone long ago.

It's impossible to know from this vantage (without access to classified information) whether Gonzales could be successfully prosecuted for perjury. It doesn't, and shouldn't, follow that his apparent efforts to deceive Congress (not to speak of the American people), and to frustrate its oversight role, is not deserving of impeachment. Writers for the Washington Post all too often seem caught up in their technical admiration for virtuoso examples of how the Washington game is played; perhaps it is time to just say no to BS at this level, and throw the bums out. This is not a game; people's rights--and lives--are at stake; and we rejected the divine rights of Kings, and Presidents, long ago. Perhaps it's time for another reminder, since the lesson seems to have been lost on this Administration.

Democrats still pursuing prosecutor for Gonzales

Washington Post--The Talk:

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) joined Schumer and Democrats Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) on Thursday in asking the administration to appoint a special prosecutor. Feingold said today that he remains convinced that an independent investigation is needed.

'The attorney general, in my view, has at least lied to Congress and may have committed perjury, and I think we need to have somebody who's able to look at both the classified and non-classified material in a way that he can actually determine whether or not criminal charges have to be pursued,' Feingold said on 'Fox News Sunday.'...

The ranking members of the Judiciary Committee were on CBS's "Face the Nation," where Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), did not call for a special prosecutor. They said, however, that they have given Gonzales one week to amend his testimony and advised him to consult a lawyer in doing so.

"I think we ought to give the attorney general a chance to correct the record. There's no doubt, as I have said repeatedly for months now, that the Department of Justice would be much better off without him," Specter said.

Nice advice from a fellow Republican.
Looking back at past presidencies, I think Alberto has earned a place as W's "honorary brother", and should start merchandising Alberto Beer. He probably has some excellent, well-sorted lists to draw on for his mass marketing efforts, both domestic and international.

Mining of Data Prompted Fight Over Spying

New York Times: By SCOTT SHANE and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, July 28 — 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.

It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate. But such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues....

If the dispute chiefly involved data mining, rather than eavesdropping, Mr. Gonzales’ defenders may maintain that his narrowly crafted answers, while legalistic, were technically correct.

But members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who have been briefed on the program, called the testimony deceptive.

“I’ve had the opportunity to review the classified matters at issue here, and I believe that his testimony was misleading at best,” said Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, joining three other Democrats in calling Thursday for a perjury investigation of Mr. Gonzales.

“This has gone on long enough,” Mr. Feingold said. “It is time for a special counsel to investigate whether criminal charges should be brought.” ...

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. ...

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.

So maybe impeachment is more suitable than a perjury prosecution?

It has long been recognized that telling the literal truth when least expected is one of the most effective means of deception.

Mr. Gonzales’s Never-Ending Story

New York Times (Editorial):

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

Well, well.

Gonzales Testimony Part of Broader Effort to Conceal Surveillance Program

TPMmuckraker : By Spencer Ackerman and Paul Kiel

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.

The administration's consistent refusal to discuss any aspect of the program -- current or former -- aside from what President Bush disclosed in December 2005 appears to be intended, specifically, to gloss over Comey and Goldsmith's objections. If that's the case, it could mean that the public has been presented with an inaccurate picture of the origins and scope of Program X. The Bush administration is currently contesting a Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena for documentation establishing Program X's history -- in essence, trying to ensure that the public never learns more about the program and the internal deliberations over it than what President Bush chooses to reveal. ...

The different phases of the program’s implementation did not become clear until Comey’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May of this year. Comey did not identify the program, only calling it “a particular classified program.” We won't rehash his story in full here. But during his brief reign as acting attorney general, Comey refused to reauthorize Program X in March of 2004 (here’s an explanation as to why it took two years for this to happen). Comey’s refusal was based on the concerns of Jack Goldsmith, the head of the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, but the precise nature of Goldsmith’s concern isn’t publicly known. Goldsmith declined to comment for this story.

It all came to a head on March 10, 2004, with the deadline for reauthorizing Program X looming. That afternoon, the White House called a meeting with the so-called "Gang of Eight" -- those congressional leaders briefed about Program X -- and Gonzales and Andrew Card made their infamous visit to Ashcroft’s hospital bed that night. The President initially opted to continue the program despite Ashcroft’s refusal to overrule Comey. But the next day, March 11, when faced with the possible resignation of the top echelon of Department of Justice leadership, the President personally told Comey to recommend what changes needed to be made to Program X in order for the Department of Justice to sign off on its legality. ...

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.

Justice Dept. Lawyers Join Chorus Criticizing Gonzales

New York Times: By PHILIP SHENON and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, July 27 — Daniel J. Metcalfe, a lawyer who began his government career in the Nixon administration and retired from the Justice Department last winter, said morale at the department was worse under Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales than during Watergate.

John S. Koppel, who continues to work at the department as a civil appellate lawyer in Washington, wrote this month that he was “ashamed” of the department and that if Mr. Gonzales told the truth in recent Congressional testimony, “he has been derelict in the performance of his duties and is not up to the job.”

Even though they worry that it may hinder their career prospects, a few current and former Justice Department lawyers have begun to add to the chorus of Mr. Gonzales’s critics who say that the furor over his performance as attorney general, and questions about his truthfulness under oath, could do lasting damage to the department’s work. ...

Mr. Metcalfe, the retired lawyer who was the founding director of the department’s Office of Information and Privacy, said in an interview that the questions over Mr. Gonzales’s competence and credibility had shattered morale at the department, especially after the attorney general’s testimony this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“When you have an attorney general with his personal integrity and credibility so repeatedly reduced to shreds, not to mention in so public a forum, that’s just antithetical to the very nature of the Justice Department and its role in upholding the rule of law,” Mr. Metcalfe said. “This is the Department of Justice and the attorney general, where absolute integrity is Job 1.”

In an opinion article that was first published this month in The Denver Post and has since been circulated in the department, Mr. Koppel, the civil appellate lawyer, said that under the Bush administration the department had been “thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful.”

Mr. Koppel, who has been with the department since 1981, wrote that his decision to issue such a public criticism of Mr. Gonzales and the department “subjects me to a substantial risk of unlawful reprisal from extremely ruthless people who have repeatedly taken such action in the past.”

“But I am confident,” Mr. Koppel continued, “that I am speaking on behalf of countless thousands of honorable public servants, at Justice and elsewhere.”

Chatty Senator on Air Force One Pushes the Rules, and Buttons

New York Times: By JIM RUTENBERG

PHILADELPHIA, July 26 — Guests of President Bush aboard Air Force One generally know that he expects them to behave in a certain way: No showboating or mingling with the on-board press corps and, certainly, no criticizing the commander in chief or his team.

Senator Arlen Specter violated both points of decorum on Thursday. He visited with reporters aboard the presidential airplane before it lifted off for Philadelphia and lambasted the attorney general....

According to a pool report of the encounter, Mr. Specter expressed anew his criticism of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales but said he saw no signs that Mr. Gonzales would be forced to resign. Mr. Specter attributed Mr. Gonzales’s job security to Mr. Bush’s “personal loyalty” to him.

Mr. Specter spoke derisively of Mr. Gonzales’s appearance Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee ... “Our hearing two days ago was devastating,” Mr. Specter said. “But so was the hearing before that, and so was the hearing before that.”

Mr. Specter also waded into another uncomfortable subject, the Congressional demands for testimony from Karl Rove, the presidential adviser, and Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, among others.

He said that while he hoped “to reach an accommodation” with the White House, “I don’t see it now.” ...

White House officials seemed none too pleased with Mr. Specter’s remarks, but had no comment, either.

Bedtime for Gonzo

Eugenewashingtonpost.com: By Eugene Robinson

It's way past bedtime for Gonzo. At this point, every day Alberto Gonzales continues as attorney general means more dishonor for the office and the nation -- and higher blood pressure for Senate Judiciary Committee members trying desperately to get a straight answer out of the man.

Gonzo has managed to do something no one else in Washington has managed in years: create a spirit of true bipartisanship. After his pathetic act in front of the committee Tuesday, it's no surprise that Democrats are threatening to investigate him for perjury. But it was Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican, who looked Gonzo in the face and told him, 'I do not find your testimony credible, candidly.'

Specter seems ready to pop a gasket. 'The hearing two days ago was devastating' for Gonzo, Specter said yesterday. 'But so was the hearing before that, and so was the hearing before that.'...

Asked about the glaring discrepancy, Gonzo said Tuesday that the disagreement and the hospital visit were about "other intelligence activities," and "not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people."

Specter's response: "Mr. Attorney General, do you expect us to believe that?"

No one believes it. The most generous interpretation is that Gonzo, fearful of facing a perjury rap, is insisting on an artificially and dishonestly narrow definition of "the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced" -- leaving out "intelligence activities" that any reasonable person, including Comey, would consider part of the program. The nice word for that would be dissembling.

The not-so-nice word would be lying. Hence the call yesterday by a group of Senate Democrats for a perjury investigation.

I hope they nail him. Anyone tempted to feel sympathy for Gonzo should check out his weaselly explanation for why he would think it appropriate to buttonhole a sick man in his hospital room, regardless of the issue.

"There are no rules governing whether or not General Ashcroft can decide 'I'm feeling well enough to make this decision,' " Gonzo said. When Specter pointed out that Ashcroft had already turned his powers over to Comey, Gonzo replied, "And he could always reclaim it. There are no rules."

"While he was in the hospital under sedation?" Specter interrupted, before giving up on getting a straight answer.

Gonzo answered the question, all right -- inadvertently, of course: "There are no rules."

That's the guiding philosophy of this administration. As far as these people are concerned, there are no rules of common decency. There are no rules of customary practice. There are no rules governing respect for the truth, or even respect for the privacy and health of an ailing colleague. ...

More on Alberto's Excellent Adventure

New York Times:

The panel’s chairman, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and its ranking Republican, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, assailed Mr. Gonzales on a host of issues involving the Justice Department, including the firings of nine prosecutors last year and the White House’s assertion of executive privilege to keep key aides from testifying about those events.

Perhaps, Mr. Specter suggested, it was time for the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the firings of the prosecutors. “There is evidence of low morale, very low morale, lack of credibility,” Mr. Specter said, scoffing at Mr. Gonzales’s promise to repair his agency. “Candidly, your personal credibility.”

“What is this White House so desperate to hide?” Mr. Leahy asked early on, alluding to the administration’s invocation of executive privilege. “This White House claims to be above the law.”...

Mr. Specter signaled that he did not accept Mr. Gonzales’s explanation about the hospital incident. “What credibility is left for you?” the senator asked at one point.

Mr. Specter has accused Mr. Gonzales before of dodging questions, and he did so again today. At one point, the senator said, “I see it’s hopeless.” At another point, he said acidly, “Let’s see if somewhere, somehow we can find a question that you’ll answer.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, also expressed exasperation. “I listen to you,” she said. “Nothing gets answered directly. Everything gets obfuscated.”

Yet for all the hostility vented at Mr. Gonzales, there was no sign that today’s hearing would change anything. ...

And Mr. Gonzales, besides promising that he “will not tolerate any improper politicization of this department,” said he would not leave under a cloud.

Actually, it's the politicization that he considers proper that worries me. That, and the Class Five hurricane swirling around his head.

The Return of Alberto: It's Your Fault, Congress

New York Times:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales denied Tuesday that he and former White House chief of staff Andy Card pressured then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to recertify President Bush's domestic surveillance program during a now-famous 2004 hospital visit.

Gonzales said that he and Card had been urged by congressional leaders of both parties to ensure that the terrorist surveillance program survive a looming deadline for its expiration. To do that, Gonzales said, he needed the permission of Ashcroft, then the attorney general. Ashcroft at the time was in an intensive care unit recovering from gall bladder surgery.

''We went there because we thought it was important for him to know where the congressional leadership was on this,'' Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee in his first public explanation of the meeting....

Gonzales' version conflicts with that of James Comey, Ashcroft's deputy at the time. ...''I was angry,'' Comey testified in May, releasing details of the meeting for the first time. ''I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man who did not have the powers of the attorney general.''

Sometimes you've got to admire this guy's balls. Putting this disgusting episode on the Congressional leadership is a master stroke of the black arts.

When do they impeach this guy?

Overprivileged Executive

New York Times (Editorial):

It is hardly news that top officials in the current Justice Department flout the law and make false statements to Congress, but the latest instance may be the most egregious. When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wanted the USA Patriot Act renewed in the spring of 2005, he told the Senate, “There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse.” But The Washington Post reported yesterday that just six days earlier, the F.B.I. had sent Mr. Gonzales a report saying that it had obtained personal information it should not have.

There were multiple cases of FBI abuse, not just "one." Thus, AG Gonzales' statement was perfectly accurate. And to think these folks were critical of former President Clinton's attempts to parse what the meaning of "is", is.

This is hardly the first time Mr. Gonzales has played so free and loose with the facts in his public statements and Congressional testimony. In the United States attorneys scandal — the controversy over the political purge of nine top prosecutors — Mr. Gonzales and his aides have twisted and mutilated the truth beyond recognition.

"Free and loose"? You're being spoil sports. Mr. Gonzales was precisely
correct (and correct only precisely). I thought you guys knew about words.

Even if Mr. Bush was directly involved, Ms. Miers and Ms. Taylor would have no right to withhold their testimony. The Supreme Court made clear in the Watergate tapes case, its major pronouncement on the subject, that the privilege does not apply if a president’s privacy interests are outweighed by the need to investigate possible criminal activity. Congress has already identified many acts relating to the scandal that may have been illegal, including possible obstruction of justice and lying to Congress.

And speaking of using words: The first clause of this paragraph would appear to be a subjunctive (hypothesizing something contrary to truth), and as such, it takes "were" rather than "was". Surely the Times is beyond such grammatical errors. Is this a tricky way of insinuating that the Times believes W. actually was involved?

Other than that part about "obstruction of justice and lying to Congress," of course.

How Alberto Gonzales' incompetence became a defense for his wrongdoing

Slate Magazine: By Dahlia Lithwick

A few months ago, just after Alberto Gonzales turned in about the most dismal performance in the history of Senate testimony, I observed that he might have—oddly enough—done just what his boss had expected of him. Musing over his lame defenses for the partisan firings of nine U.S. attorneys—defenses ranging from 'I had no idea what my subordinates were doing' to 'I can't recall my middle name' to 'I didn't actually bestir myself to prepare for this hearing'—it occurred to me that Gonzales was the perfect attorney general for this administration. Way better, really, than John Ashcroft.

Viewed in that light, Gonzales' performances in the House and the Senate this past spring were in fact a tour de force. Why? Because if you accept as truth the great myth of the Untouchable Unitary Executive—and Gonzales surely does—it must also be true that the highest form of fealty to that Unitary Executive is to thwart congressional oversight any way you can. If you must behave like Beavis or Butthead in order to achieve that constitutional effect, so be it. Alberto Gonzales has it in him. ...

It's difficult to ascertain the precise moment in the Bush administration in which confessing not to have been doing one's job at all became the best defense against the claim that one did one's job badly. But given the choice between admitting to perjury or incompetence, you can bet that Gonzales will easily, indeed gleefully, cop to the latter. From the very beginning of the U.S. attorney scandal, he has admitted to being checked-out, hands-off, apathetic, and incurious. It's enough to have gotten him fired from a job at Dairy Queen, yet all part of a day's not-work, it seems, from the perspective of the White House. ...At the end of it all, the bargain the president seems always willing to accept is a tragic one: The lunatics are running the asylum, but at least the asylum is all his.

This Administration has entered its bunker for the duration. Let's hope the rest of us find a way to survive. Where is Nurse Ratched when we need her?

Gonzales Was Told of FBI Violations

washingtonpost.com: By John Solomon

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....

Marcia Hofmann, a lawyer for the nonpartisan Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, "I think these documents raise some very serious questions about how much the attorney general knew about the FBI's misuse of surveillance powers and when he knew it." A lawsuit by Hofmann's group seeking internal FBI documents about NSLs prompted the release of the reports.

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."

Some of the reports describe rules violations that the FBI decided not to report to the intelligence board. ...

See article for further details.
We really can't trust anything they say...
Can one be too cynical about this crowd? Increasingly, I doubt it.

DOJ Documents Show Sampson Deleted Email

Truthout: By Matt Renner

An internal Department of Justice email dealing with a series of the most controversial aspects of the US attorney firing scandal was deleted by a DOJ official the day after Congress began to address the firings. Three months later, the official told Congressional investigators he had not destroyed any documents or deleted any records relating to the US attorney firings.

This is the first publicly released evidence that individuals directly involved in the plan to fire eight US attorneys have destroyed documents that are of interest to Congressional investigators. This revelation has raised some eyebrows with members of Congress, but officials were unwilling to speak publicly about it. The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee did not respond in time for publication.

Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and a central coordinator of the US attorney purge, deleted an official email on January 12, 2007. The email was a correspondence between Sampson and the DOJ White House Liaison Monica Goodling that dealt with the controversial appointment of GOP loyalist Tim Griffin to the post of US attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

Three months after this email was deleted from Sampson's computer, he was interviewed behind closed doors by Congressional investigators. According to a Senior Congressional Aide with access to the non-public transcript of the interview, Sampson was asked directly if he destroyed documents or emails relating to the US attorney purge. He answered "No." The Congressional aide asked to remain anonymous because the interview transcript has not been made public.

The DOJ did not respond to repeated inquires into this matter. Kyle Sampson's lawyer did not return requests for comment.

Evidence that the email was deleted by Sampson came from the Justice Department's own documents released to Congress. They released a series of documents on June 21 that had previously been withheld. Many of the new documents are copies of emails from Monica Goodling's computer. On page 32 of the email sent, an email from Monica Goodling to Kyle Sampson shows that Sampson deleted an email from Goodling about five-and- a-half hours after it was written. The email system Goodling was using allowed users to track the progress of an email, recording when it was received, opened and deleted. For this particular email, the tracking system report read as follows: "Recipient: Sampson, Kyle. Deleted: 1/12/2007 7:12 PM."

The tracking program for email systems are bullet-proof, according to computer expert Frank Walton, an email systems developer and programmer and former information technology expert for the military contractor Northrop Grumman. "Tracking is what is happening to an email. It is the history of an email. It is not something someone can fake. It is a secure part of the email, meaning that a user cannot alter it," Walton said....

As the President has recently reminded us, punishment of senior officials for perjury and obstruction of justice is way harsh.

Selected highlights from Angler: Reading and weeping

From Angler in washingtonpost.com:

Gonzales, a former Texas judge, had the seniority and the relationship with Bush. But Addington -- a man of imposing demeanor, intellect and experience -- dominated the group. Gonzales "was not a law-of-war expert and didn't have very developed views," Yoo recalled, echoing blunter observations by the Texan's White House colleagues.


Powell asked for a meeting with Bush. The same day, Jan. 25, 2002, Cheney's office struck a preemptive blow. It appeared to come from Gonzales, a longtime Bush confidant whom the president nicknamed 'Fredo.'

"

Bush: He has my full confidence!

Justice Department's No. 3 Resigns

Truthout (AP): By Mary Clare Jalonick

Washington - President Bush's pick to be the No. 3 official in the Justice Department asked to have his nomination withdrawn Friday, four days before he was to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Bill Mercer sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales saying it was unlikely that the Senate would confirm him as associate attorney general, a post he has held on an interim basis since September. He plans to leave Washington and turn his full attention to his work as U.S. attorney for Montana....

Montana's two Democratic senators, Jon Tester and Max Baucus, have criticized Mercer for working two jobs and have called for him to resign as the state's U.S. attorney or give up his Justice Department post. In his letter, Mercer said he "heard the call" from the senators and said the change would address their concerns.

But a spokesman for Tester said Mercer's request for withdrawal "was too little, too late and something doesn't smell right."

"He decided to sneak out the back door only days before having to face, under oath, tough questions that he's been avoiding for months," said the spokesman, Matt McKenna. ...

The documents show that one of the fired prosecutors, Daniel Bogden of Nevada, claimed that Mercer told him the day he was fired that the dismissals were to make room for others to gain experience to let the Republican Party stack federal judgeships with loyalists.

Ashcroft Speaks, Senate Presses on Wiretapping

Truthout (AP):

Washington - The administration was sharply divided over the legality of President Bush's most controversial eavesdropping policies, a congressman quoted former Attorney General John Ashcroft as telling a House panel Thursday.

'It is very apparent to us that there was robust and enormous debate within the administration about the legal basis for the president's surveillance program,' Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, told reporters after a closed-door meeting with Ashcroft.

The point is critical to two matters being considered in the Democratic-controlled Congress: One is the House and Senate Intelligence committees' ongoing review of 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which includes an extensive examination of the president's warrantless eavesdropping program.

The other is the House and Senate Judiciary Committees' parallel examinations of current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' service to the administration. Under that probe, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey revealed that Gonzales, then White House counsel, tried to pressure him and a critically ill Ashcroft to certify the legality of the wiretapping program. ...

Democrats have insisted that the hospital story appears to contradict Gonzales' congressional testimony that there had been no significant disagreement within the administration over the program. Gonzales has stood by his testimony.