Cheney Shielded Bush From Crisis
By Barton Gellman | Washington Post Staff Writer | September 15, 2008
This is the second of two stories adapted from "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency," to be published Tuesday by Penguin Press.
Vice President Cheney convened a meeting in the Situation Room at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, March 10, 2004, with just one day left before the warrantless domestic surveillance program was set to expire. Around him were National Security Agency Director Michael V. Hayden, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and the Gang of Eight -- the four ranking members of the House and the Senate, and the chairmen and vice chairmen of the intelligence committees.
Even now, three months into a legal rebellion at the Justice Department, President Bush was nowhere in the picture. He was stumping in the battleground state of Ohio, talking up the economy.
With a nod from Cheney, Hayden walked through the program's vital mission. Gonzales said top lawyers at the NSA and Justice had green-lighted the program from the beginning. Now Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was in the hospital, and James B. Comey, Ashcroft's deputy, refused to certify that the surveillance was legal.
That was misleading at best. Cheney and Gonzales knew that Comey spoke for Ashcroft as well. They also knew, but chose not to mention, that Jack L. Goldsmith, chief of the Office of Legal Counsel at Justice, had been warning of major legal problems for months.
More than three years later, Gonzales would testify that there was "consensus in the room" from the lawmakers, "who said, 'Despite the recommendation of the deputy attorney general, go forward with these very important intelligence activities.' " By this account -- disputed by participants from both parties -- four Democrats and four Republicans counseled Cheney to press on with a program that Justice called illegal.
In fact, Cheney asked the lawmakers a question that came close to answering itself. Could the House and Senate amend surveillance laws without raising suspicions that a new program had been launched? The obvious reply became a new rationale for keeping Congress out.
The Bush administration had no interest in changing the law, according to U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, chief of the federal government's special surveillance court when the warrantless eavesdropping began.
"We could have gone to Congress, hat in hand, the judicial branch and the executive together, and gotten any statutory change we wanted in those days, I felt like," he said in an interview. "But they wanted to demonstrate that the president's power was supreme."
* * *
Late that Wednesday afternoon, Bush returned from Cleveland. In early evening, the phone rang at the makeshift FBI command center at George Washington University Medical Center, where Ashcroft remained in intensive care. According to two officials who saw the FBI logs, the president was on the line. Bush told the ailing Cabinet chief to expect a visit from Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.
A Senate hearing in 2007 described some of what happened next. But much of the story remained untold.
Alerted by Ashcroft's chief of staff, Comey, Goldsmith and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III raced toward the hospital, abandoning double-parked vehicles and running up a stairwell as fast as their legs could pump.
Comey reached Ashcroft's bedside first. Goldsmith and his colleague Patrick F. Philbin were close behind. Now came Card and Gonzales, holding an envelope. If Comey would not sign the papers, maybe Ashcroft would.
The showdown with the vice president the day before had been excruciating, the pressure "so great it could crush you like a grape," Comey said. This was worse.
Was Comey going to sit there and watch a barely conscious man make his mark? On an order that he believed, and knew Ashcroft believed, to be unlawful?
Unexpectedly, Ashcroft roused himself. Previous accounts have said he backed his deputy. He did far more than that. Ashcroft told the president's men he never should have certified the program in the first place.
"You drew the circle so tight I couldn't get the advice that I needed," Ashcroft said, according to Comey. He knew things now, the attorney general said, that he should have been told before. Spent, he sank back in his bed.
Mueller arrived just after Card and Gonzales departed. He shared a private moment with Ashcroft, bending over to hear the man's voice.
"Bob, I'm struggling," Ashcroft said.
"In every man's life there comes a time when the good Lord tests him," Mueller replied. "You have passed your test tonight."
* * *
Goldsmith was out the door. He telephoned Ed Whelan, his deputy, who was at home bathing his children.
"You've got to get into the office now," Goldsmith said. "Please draft a resignation letter for me. I can't tell you why."
All hell was breaking loose at Justice. Lawyers streamed back from the suburbs, converging on the fourth-floor conference room. Most of them were not cleared to hear the details, but a decision began to coalesce: If Comey quit, none of them were staying.
At the FBI, they called Mueller "Bobby Three Sticks," playfully tweaking the Roman numerals in his fancy Philadelphia name. Late that evening, word began to spread. It wasn't only Comey. Bobby Three Sticks was getting ready to turn in his badge.
Justice had filled its top ranks with political loyalists. They hoped to see Bush reelected. Had anyone explained to the president what was at stake?
Whelan pulled out his BlackBerry. He fired off a message to White House staff secretary Brett Kavanaugh, a friend whose position gave him direct access to Bush.
"I knew zilch about what the matter was, but I did know that lots of senior DOJ folks were on the verge of resigning," Whelan said in an e-mail, declining to discuss the subject further. "I thought it important to make sure that the president was aware of that situation so that he could factor it in as he saw fit."
Kavanaugh had no more idea than Whelan, but he passed word to Card.
The timing was opportune. Just about then, around 11 p.m., Comey responded to an angry summons from the president's chief of staff. Whatever Card was planning to say, he had calmed down suddenly.
What was all this he heard, Card asked, about quitting?
"I don't think people should try to get their way by threatening resignations," Comey replied. "If they find themselves in a position where they're not comfortable continuing, then they should resign."
"He obviously got the gist of what I was saying," Comey recalled.
It was close to midnight when Comey got home, long past the president's bedtime. Bush had yet to learn that his government was coming apart.
* * *
Trouble was spreading. The FBI's general counsel, Valerie E. Caproni, and her CIA counterpart, Scott W. Mueller, told colleagues they would leave if the president reauthorized the program over Justice Department objections.
Assistant Attorney General Christopher A. Wray, who ran Justice's criminal division, stopped Comey in a hallway.
"Look, I don't know what's going on, but before you guys all pull the rip cords, please give me a heads-up so I can jump with you," he said.
James A. Baker, the counselor for intelligence, thought hard about jumping, too. Early on, he got wind of the warrantless eavesdropping and forced the White House to disclose it to Lamberth. Later, Baker told Lamberth's successor that he could not vouch that the Bush administration was honoring its promise to keep the chief surveillance judge fully informed.
"I was determined to stay there and fight for what I thought was right," Baker said in an interview, declining to say what the fight was about, on or off the record. He had obligations, he said, to the lawyers who worked for him in the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. "If it had come to this, if people were willing to go to the mat and tolerate the attorney general and deputy attorney general resigning, that's pretty serious. God knows what else they would have come up with."
* * *
At the White House on Thursday morning, the president moved in a bubble so tight that hardly any air was getting in. It was March 11, decision day. If Bush reauthorized the program, he would have no signature from the attorney general. By now that was nowhere near the president's biggest problem.
Many of the people Bush trusted most were out of the picture. Karl Rove was not cleared for the program. Neither was Dan Bartlett or Karen Hughes.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice had the clearance, but Cheney did not invite her to the meetings that mattered.
Bush gave a speech to evangelicals that morning and left the White House for an after-lunch fundraiser in New York. In whatever time he took to weigh his options, the president had only Cheney, Card and Gonzales to advise him.
The vice president knew exactly where he stood, unswerving in his commitment to keep the program just as it was. Gonzales later told two confidants that he had broken with David S. Addington, Cheney's lawyer, urging Bush to find common ground with Justice. Card, too, told colleagues that he had urged restraint.
"My job was to communicate with the president about the peripheral vision, not just the tunnel vision of the moment," he said, deflecting questions about the details.
Did peripheral vision mean a broader view of the consequences?
"Yes," Card replied. "It was like -- I don't want to limit it to this particular matter, but that's part of a chief of staff's job. A lot of people who work in the White House have tunnel vision, and not an awful lot of people have peripheral vision. And I think the chief of staff is one of the people who should have peripheral vision."
Card didn't really need the corner of his eye to see a disaster at hand. Even so, Bush didn't know what his subordinates knew that Thursday morning.
Cheney, Addington, Card and Gonzales had plenty of data. Card had heard the news directly from Comey the night before. On Thursday, the FBI director delivered much the same warning.
For Cheney, it didn't matter much whether one official or 10 or 20 took a walk. Maybe they were bluffing, maybe not. The principle was the same: Do what has to be done.
"The president of the United States is the chief law enforcement officer -- that was the Cheney view," said Bartlett, Bush's counselor, who was later briefed into the program and the events of the day. "You can't let resignations deter you if you're doing what's right."
Cheney and Addington "were ready to go to the mat," he said, and the vice president's position boiled down to this: " 'That's why we're leaders, that's why we're here. Take the political hit. You've got to do it.' "
* * *
Addington opened the code-word-classified file on his computer. He had a presidential directive to rewrite.
It has been widely reported that Bush executed the March 11 order with a blank space over the attorney general's signature line. That is not correct. For reasons both symbolic and practical, the vice president's lawyer could not tolerate an empty spot where a mutinous subordinate should have signed. Addington typed a substitute signature line: "Alberto R. Gonzales."
What Addington wrote for Bush that day was more transcendent than that. He drew up new language in which the president relied on his own authority to certify the program as lawful. Bush expressly overrode the Justice Department and any act of Congress or judicial decision that purported to constrain his power as commander in chief. Only Richard M. Nixon, in an interview after leaving the White House in disgrace, claimed authority so nearly unlimited.
The specter of future prosecutions hung over the program, now that Justice had ruled it illegal.
"Pardon was in the air," said one of the lawyers involved.
It was possible to construct a case, he said, in which those who planned and carried out the program were engaged in a criminal conspiracy. That would be tendentious, this lawyer believed, but with a change of government it could not be ruled out.
"I'm sure when we leave office we're all going to be hauled up before congressional committees and grand juries," Addington told one colleague in disgust.
* * *
Bush signed the directive before leaving for New York around lunchtime on Thursday, March 11, 2004.
Comey got word a couple of hours later. He sat down and typed a letter.
"Over the last two weeks . . . I and the Department of Justice have been asked to be part of something that is fundamentally wrong," he wrote. "As we have struggled over these last days to do the right thing, I have never been prouder of the Department of Justice or of the Attorney General. Sadly, although I believe this has been one of the institution's finest hours, we have been unable to right that wrong. . . . Therefore, with a heavy heart and undiminished love of my country and my Department, I resign as Deputy Attorney General of the United States, effective immediately."
David Ayres, Ashcroft's chief of staff, pleaded with Comey to wait a few days. He was certain that Ashcroft would want to quit alongside him. Comey agreed to hold his letter through the weekend.
Bush was not a man to second-guess himself. By Friday morning, he would need new facts to save him. Somebody, finally, would have to tell him something.
It was Rice, largely in the dark herself, who threw the president a lifeline. She had a few minutes alone with him, shortly before 7:30 a.m., on the day after he renewed the surveillance order. She told Bush about Comey's agitated approach, the day before, to Frances Fragos Townsend, the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism. This was no way to keep a secret.
"It was a compartmented issue," Rice recalled in an interview. "Obviously, there was a security issue here and not just a legal one, because you didn't want this sort of bumping around."
Rice made a suggestion.
Comey is "a reasonable guy," she told the president. "You really need to make sure that you are hearing these folks out."
An hour later, Comey and Robert Mueller arrived at the White House for the regular 8:30 terrorism briefing. They had a lot to cover: Bombs aboard commuter trains in Madrid had killed 191 people.
Both men told aides that this would be their last day in government. There would be no door-slamming, but the president had made his choice and they had made theirs.
Bush stood as the meeting ended, crossing behind Cheney's chair. Comey moved in the opposite direction, on his way out. He had nearly reached the grandfather clock at the door, two witnesses said, when the president said, "Jim, can I talk to you for a minute?"
Bush nodded toward the private dining room a few steps from his desk, the one he shared with Cheney once a week. This time the vice president was not invited.
"I'll wait for you downstairs," Mueller told Comey.
* * *
By now, around 9:15 Friday morning, Bush knew enough to be nervous about what the acting attorney general might do. That did not mean he planned to reverse himself. One high-ranking adviser said there was still an "optimism that maybe you can finesse your way through this."
Afterward, in conversations with aides, the two men described the meeting in similar terms.
"You don't look well," Bush began.
Oldest trick in the book. Establish dominance, put the other guy off his game.
"Well, I feel okay."
"I'm worried about you. You look burdened."
"I am, Mr. President. I feel like there's a tremendous burden on me."
"Let me lift that burden from your shoulders," Bush said. "Let me be the one who makes the decision here."
"Mr. President, I would love to be able to do that."
Bush's tone grew crisp.
"I decide what the law is for the executive branch," he said.
"That's absolutely true, sir, you do. But I decide what the Department of Justice can certify to and can't certify to, and despite my absolute best efforts, I simply cannot in the circumstances."
Comey had majored in religion, William and Mary Class of 1982. He might have made a connection with Bush if he had quoted a verse from Scripture. The line that came to him belonged to a 16th-century theologian who defied an emperor.
"As Martin Luther said, 'Here I stand; I can do no other,' " Comey said. "I've got to tell you, Mr. President, that's where I am."
Now Bush said something that floored Comey.
"I just wish that you weren't raising this at the last minute."
The last minute! He didn't know.
The president kept talking. Not the way it's supposed to work, popping up with news like this. The day before a deadline?
Wednesday. He didn't know until Wednesday. No wonder he sent Card and Gonzales to the hospital.
"Oh, Mr. President, if you've been told that, you have been very poorly served by your advisers," Comey said. "We have been telling them for months we have a huge problem here."
"Give me six weeks," Bush asked. One more renewal.
"I can't do that," Comey said. "You do say what the law is in the executive branch, I believe that. And people's job, if they're going to stay in the executive branch, is to follow that. But I can't agree, and I'm just sorry."
If they're going to stay.
Comey was edging toward a breach of his rule against resignation threats.
This man just needs to know what's about to happen.
"I think you should know that Director Mueller is going to resign today," Comey said.
Bush raised his eyebrows. He shifted in his chair. He could not hide it, or did not try. He was gobsmacked.
"Thank you very much for telling me that," he said.
Comey hurried down to Mueller, who sat in the foyer outside the Situation Room. A Secret Service agent followed close behind. The president would like to see you, the agent told Mueller.
Comey pulled out his BlackBerry and sent a note to six colleagues at 9:27 a.m.
"The president just took me into his private office for a 15 minute one on one talk," he wrote. "Told him he was being misled and poorly served. We had a very full and frank exchange. Don't know that either of us can see a way out. . . . Told him Mueller was about to resign. He just pulled Bob into his office."
The FBI director was no more tractable than Comey. This was a rule-of-law question, he told the president, and the answer was in the Justice Department. The FBI could not participate in operations that Justice held to be in breach of criminal law. If those were his orders, he would respectfully take his leave.
And there it was, unfinessable. Bush was out of running room, all the way out. He had only just figured out that the brink was near, and now he stood upon it.
Not 24 hours earlier, the president had signed his name to an in-your-face rejection of the attorney general's ruling on the law. Now he had two bad choices. March on, with all the consequences. Or retreat.
The president stepped back from the precipice. He gave Mueller a message for Comey.
"Tell Jim to do what Justice thinks needs to be done," he said.
Seven days later, Bush amended his March 11 directive. The legal certification belonged again to the attorney general. The surveillance program stopped doing some things, and it did other things differently. Much of the operation remained in place. Not all of it.
* * *
Because Bush did not walk off the cliff, and because so much of the story was suppressed, an extraordinary moment in presidential history passed unrecognized.
"I mean, it would be damn near unprecedented for the top echelon of your Justice Department to resign over a position you've taken," Bartlett said.
There might be one precedent, he allowed. He did not want to spell it out.
"Not a good one," he said.
During the Watergate scandal, the attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned, refusing to carry out Richard Nixon's order to fire the special prosecutor. Nixon lost his top two Justice officials, and that was called the Saturday Night Massacre.
Bush had come within minutes of losing his FBI director and at least the top five layers at Justice. What would they call that? Suicide, maybe?
"You don't have to be the smartest guy to figure out that [mass resignations] would be pretty much the most devastating thing that could happen to your administration," said Mark Corallo, Ashcroft's communications director and, during Bush's first race for the White House, chief spokesman for the Republican National Committee. "The rush to hearings on the Hill, both in the House and Senate, would be unbelievable. The media frenzy that would have ensued would have been unlike anything we've ever seen. That's when you're getting into Watergate territory."
Long after departing as chief of staff, Card held fast to the proposition that whatever happened was nobody's business, and no big deal anyway.
"I think you're writing about something that's irrelevant," Card said. "Voyeurism."
Because?
"Nobody resigned over this," he said. It all boiled down to trash talk: " 'Oh, I was gonna swing at the pitch but it was too high.' "
That seems unlikely to stand as history's verdict. In the fourth year of his presidency, a man who claimed the final word was forced by subordinates to comply with their ruling on the law. Ashcroft, Comey, Goldsmith, Philbin -- believers, one and all, in the "unitary executive branch" -- obliged the commander in chief to stand down. For the first time, a president claimed in writing that he alone could say what the law was. A rebellion, in direct response, became so potent a threat that Bush reversed himself in a day.
"This is the first time when the president of the United States really wanted something in wartime, and tried to overrule the Department of Justice, and the law held," said Goldsmith, after studying similar conflicts under Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In the aftermath, the White House senior staff asked questions. Was the president getting timely information and advice? Had he relinquished too much control to Cheney?
Bush, aides said, learned something he would not forget. Cheney was the nearest thing to an anti-politician in elected office. Bush could not afford to be like that. In his second term, his second chance, the president would take greater care to consult his own instincts.
"Cheney was not afraid of giving pure, kind of principled advice," Bartlett said. "He thinks from a policy standpoint, and I think he does this out of pure intentions. He thinks of the national security interest or the prerogatives of the executive. The president has other considerations he has to take into account. The political fallout of certain reactions -- he's just going to calculate different than Cheney does."
"He grew accustomed to that," Bartlett said.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Showing posts with label Alberto Gonzales. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alberto Gonzales. Show all posts
WaPo : Cheney Shielded Bush From Crisis
Monday, September 15, 2008
Filed under
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Dick Cheney,
Michael Hayden
by Winter Patriot
on Monday, September 15, 2008
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Boston Globe : Judge declares mistrial in Fla. terrorism case
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Judge declares mistrial in Fla. terrorism case
Government plans to retry suspects in Jan.
By Curt Anderson | Associated Press | December 14, 2007
MIAMI - In a stinging defeat for the Bush administration, one of seven Miami men accused of plotting to join forces with Al Qaeda to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower was acquitted yesterday, and the case against the rest ended in a hung jury.
Federal prosecutor Richard Gregorie said the government planned to retry the six next year, and the judge said a new jury would be picked starting Jan. 7.
The White House had seized on the case to illustrate the dangers of homegrown terrorism and trumpet the government's post-Sept. 11, 2001, success in infiltrating and smashing terrorism plots in their earliest stages.
Lyglenson Lemorin, 32, had been accused of being a "soldier" for alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste. He buried his face in his hands when his acquittal was read.
Lemorin, a legal US resident originally from Haiti, was subject to an immigration hold and would not be immediately released, his lawyer said.
The jury gave up on the other defendants after nine days of deliberations on four terrorism-related conspiracy charges that carry a combined maximum of 70 years in prison.
The jury twice sent notes to the judge indicating they could not reach verdicts but were told to keep trying.
US District Judge Joan Lenard declared a mistrial after their third note, which she quoted as saying: "We believe no further progress can be made."
The group never actually made contact with Al Qaeda. Instead, a paid FBI informant known as Brother Mohammed posed as an Al Qaeda emissary.
The defense portrayed the seven men as hapless figures who were either manipulated and entrapped by the FBI or went along with the plot to con "Mohammed" out of $50,000.
The group never actually made contact with Al Qaeda and never acquired any weapons or explosives.
Prosecutors said no attack was imminent, acknowledging that the alleged terror cell was "more aspirational than operational."
But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said after the arrests in mid-2006 that the group was emblematic of the "smaller, more loosely defined cells who are not affiliated with Al Qaeda, but who are inspired by a violent jihadist message."
And US Attorney R. Alexander Acosta of Miami said: "Our mission is to disrupt these cells if possible before they acquire the capability to implement their plans."
Outside the courtroom, jury foreman Jeff Agron said the group took four votes but was split roughly evenly between guilt and innocence for the other six men. They spent hours viewing and listening to FBI recordings of meetings and conversations involving Batiste and the others, he said.
"People have different takes on what they saw, on what was said and what that meant," said Agron, 46, a teacher and lawyer. "My personal belief is that there may have been sufficient evidence on some of them as to some of the counts."
Agron said the evidence was weakest against Lemorin, who had moved with his wife and children to Atlanta and gotten a job at a shopping mall after splitting with Batiste months before the group was arrested.
In a statement to the FBI, Lemorin said he never wanted to be associated with Al Qaeda and that he knew "nothing good would come from this."
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
Government plans to retry suspects in Jan.
By Curt Anderson | Associated Press | December 14, 2007
MIAMI - In a stinging defeat for the Bush administration, one of seven Miami men accused of plotting to join forces with Al Qaeda to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower was acquitted yesterday, and the case against the rest ended in a hung jury.
Federal prosecutor Richard Gregorie said the government planned to retry the six next year, and the judge said a new jury would be picked starting Jan. 7.
The White House had seized on the case to illustrate the dangers of homegrown terrorism and trumpet the government's post-Sept. 11, 2001, success in infiltrating and smashing terrorism plots in their earliest stages.
Lyglenson Lemorin, 32, had been accused of being a "soldier" for alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste. He buried his face in his hands when his acquittal was read.
Lemorin, a legal US resident originally from Haiti, was subject to an immigration hold and would not be immediately released, his lawyer said.
The jury gave up on the other defendants after nine days of deliberations on four terrorism-related conspiracy charges that carry a combined maximum of 70 years in prison.
The jury twice sent notes to the judge indicating they could not reach verdicts but were told to keep trying.
US District Judge Joan Lenard declared a mistrial after their third note, which she quoted as saying: "We believe no further progress can be made."
The group never actually made contact with Al Qaeda. Instead, a paid FBI informant known as Brother Mohammed posed as an Al Qaeda emissary.
The defense portrayed the seven men as hapless figures who were either manipulated and entrapped by the FBI or went along with the plot to con "Mohammed" out of $50,000.
The group never actually made contact with Al Qaeda and never acquired any weapons or explosives.
Prosecutors said no attack was imminent, acknowledging that the alleged terror cell was "more aspirational than operational."
But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said after the arrests in mid-2006 that the group was emblematic of the "smaller, more loosely defined cells who are not affiliated with Al Qaeda, but who are inspired by a violent jihadist message."
And US Attorney R. Alexander Acosta of Miami said: "Our mission is to disrupt these cells if possible before they acquire the capability to implement their plans."
Outside the courtroom, jury foreman Jeff Agron said the group took four votes but was split roughly evenly between guilt and innocence for the other six men. They spent hours viewing and listening to FBI recordings of meetings and conversations involving Batiste and the others, he said.
"People have different takes on what they saw, on what was said and what that meant," said Agron, 46, a teacher and lawyer. "My personal belief is that there may have been sufficient evidence on some of them as to some of the counts."
Agron said the evidence was weakest against Lemorin, who had moved with his wife and children to Atlanta and gotten a job at a shopping mall after splitting with Batiste months before the group was arrested.
In a statement to the FBI, Lemorin said he never wanted to be associated with Al Qaeda and that he knew "nothing good would come from this."
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
Filed under
al Qaeda,
Alberto Gonzales,
bogus terror,
Brother Mohammed,
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lawyers,
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Richard Gregorie
by Winter Patriot
on Tuesday, December 18, 2007
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IHT : Secret U.S. endorsement of severe interrogations
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Secret U.S. endorsement of severe interrogations
By Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen | October 3, 2007
WASHINGTON: When the Justice Department publicly declared torture "abhorrent" in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.
But soon after Alberto Gonzales's arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.
Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on "combined effects" over the objections of James Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion's overreaching legal reasoning, Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be "ashamed" when the world eventually learned of it.
Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the CIA interrogation methods violated that standard.
The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President George W. Bush's second term and Gonzales's tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil.
Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the last two years to impose limits on interrogations, and the administration has responded as a policy matter by dropping the most extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics.
A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said Wednesday that he would not comment on any legal opinion related to interrogations. Fratto added, "We have gone to great lengths, including statutory efforts and the recent executive order, to make it clear that the intelligence community and our practices fall within U.S. law" and international agreements.
More than two dozen current and former officials involved in counterterrorism were interviewed over the past three months about the opinions and the deliberations on interrogation policy. Most officials would speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the documents and the CIA detention operations they govern.
When he stepped down as attorney general in September after widespread criticism of the firing of federal prosecutors and withering attacks on his credibility, Gonzales talked proudly in a farewell speech of how his department was "a place of inspiration" that had balanced the necessary flexibility to conduct the war on terrorism with the need to uphold the law.
Associates at the Justice Department said Gonzales seldom resisted pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney and David Addington, Cheney's counsel, to endorse policies that they saw as effective in safeguarding Americans, even though the practices brought the condemnation of other governments, human rights groups and Democrats in Congress. Critics say Gonzales turned his agency into an arm of the Bush White House, undermining the department's independence.
The interrogation opinions were signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who since 2005 has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. He has become a frequent public defender of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and detention policies at congressional hearings and press briefings, a role that some legal scholars say is at odds with the office's tradition of avoiding political advocacy.
Bradbury defended the work of his office as the government's most authoritative interpreter of the law. "In my experience, the White House has not told me how an opinion should come out," he said in an interview. "The White House has accepted and respected our opinions, even when they didn't like the advice being given."
The debate over how terrorism suspects should be held and questioned began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Bush administration adopted secret detention and coercive interrogation, both practices the United States had previously denounced when used by other countries. It adopted the new measures without public debate or congressional vote, choosing to rely instead on the confidential legal advice of a handful of appointees.
The policies set off bruising internal battles, pitting administration moderates against hard-liners, military lawyers against Pentagon chiefs and, most surprising, a handful of conservative lawyers at the Justice Department against the White House in the stunning mutiny of 2004. But under Gonzales and Bradbury, the Justice Department was wrenched back into line with the White House.
After the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the Geneva Conventions applied to prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda, Bush for the first time acknowledged the CIA's secret jails and ordered their inmates moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The CIA halted its use of waterboarding, or pouring water over a bound prisoner's cloth-covered face to induce fear of suffocation.
But in July, after a monthlong debate inside the administration, Bush signed a new executive order authorizing the use of what the administration calls "enhanced" interrogation techniques — the details remain secret — and officials say the CIA again is holding prisoners in "black sites" overseas. The executive order was reviewed and approved by Bradbury and the Office of Legal Counsel.
Douglas Kmiec, who headed that office under President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush and wrote a book about it, said he believed the intense pressures of the campaign against terrorism have warped the office's proper role.
"The office was designed to insulate against any need to be an advocate," said Kmiec, now a conservative scholar at Pepperdine University law school. But at times in recent years, Kmiec said, the office, headed by William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia before they served on the Supreme Court, "lost its ability to say no."
"The approach changed dramatically with opinions on the war on terror," Kmiec said. "The office became an advocate for the president's policies."
From the secret sites in Afghanistan, Thailand and Eastern Europe where CIA teams held Qaeda terrorists, questions for the lawyers at CIA headquarters arrived daily. Nervous interrogators wanted to know: Are we breaking the laws against torture?
The Bush administration had entered uncharted legal territory beginning in 2002, holding prisoners outside the scrutiny of the International Red Cross and subjecting them to harrowing pressure tactics. They included slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate, waterboarding.
Never in history had the United States authorized such tactics. While Bush and CIA officials would later insist that the harsh measures produced crucial intelligence, many veteran interrogators, psychologists and other experts say that less coercive methods are equally or more effective.
With virtually no experience in interrogations, the CIA had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture. The agency officers questioning prisoners constantly sought advice from lawyers thousands of miles away.
"We were getting asked about combinations — 'Can we do this and this at the same time?'" recalled Paul Kelbaugh, a veteran intelligence lawyer who was deputy legal counsel at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center from 2001 to 2003.
Interrogators were worried that even approved techniques had such a painful, multiplying effect when combined that they might cross the legal line, Kelbaugh said. He recalled agency officers asking: "These approved techniques, say, withholding food, and 50-degree temperature — can they be combined?" Or "Do I have to do the less extreme before the more extreme?"
The questions came more frequently, Kelbaugh said, as word spread about a CIA inspector general inquiry unrelated to the war on terrorism. Some veteran CIA officers came under scrutiny because they were advisers to Peruvian officers who in early 2001 shot down a missionary flight they had mistaken for a drug-running aircraft. The Americans were not charged with crimes, but they endured three years of investigation, saw their careers derailed and ran up big legal bills.
That experience shook the Qaeda interrogation team, Kelbaugh said. "You think you're making a difference and maybe saving 3,000 American lives from the next attack. And someone tells you, 'Well, that guidance was a little vague, and the inspector general wants to talk to you,'" he recalled. "We couldn't tell them, 'Do the best you can,' because the people who did the best they could in Peru were looking at a grand jury."
Kelbaugh said the questions were sometimes close calls that required consultation with the Justice Department. But in August 2002, the department provided a sweeping legal justification for even the harshest tactics.
That opinion, which would become infamous as "the torture memo" after it was leaked, was written largely by John Yoo, a young Berkeley law professor serving in the Office of Legal Counsel. His broad views of presidential power were shared by Addington, the vice president's adviser. Their close alliance provoked John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, to refer privately to Yoo as Yes for his seeming eagerness to give the White House whatever legal justifications it desired, a Justice Department official recalled.
Yoo's memorandum said no interrogation practices were illegal unless they produced pain equivalent to organ failure or "even death." A second memo produced at the same time spelled out the approved practices and how often or how long they could be used.
Despite that guidance, in March 2003, when the CIA caught Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, interrogators were again haunted by uncertainty. Former intelligence officials, for the first time, disclosed that a variety of tough interrogation tactics were used about 100 times over two weeks on Mohammed. Agency officials then ordered a halt, fearing the combined assault might have amounted to illegal torture. A CIA spokesman, George Little, declined to discuss the handling of Mohammed. Little said the program "has been conducted lawfully, with great care and close review" and "has helped our country disrupt terrorist plots and save innocent lives."
"The agency has always sought a clear legal framework, conducting the program in strict accord with U.S. law, and protecting the officers who go face-to-face with ruthless terrorists," Little added.
Some intelligence officers say that many of Mohammed's statements proved exaggerated or false. One problem, a former senior agency official said, was that the CIA's initial interrogators were not experts on Mohammed's background or Al Qaeda, and it took about a month to get such an expert to the secret prison. The former official said many CIA professionals now believe patient, repeated questioning by well-informed experts is more effective than harsh physical pressure.
Other intelligence officers, including Kelbaugh, insist that the harsh treatment produced invaluable insights into Al Qaeda's structure and plans.
"We leaned in pretty hard on K.S.M.," Kelbaugh said, referring to Mohammed. "We were getting good information, and then they were told: 'Slow it down. It may not be correct. Wait for some legal clarification.'"
The doubts at the CIA proved prophetic. In late 2003, after Yoo left the Justice Department, the new head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, began reviewing his work, which he found deeply flawed. Goldsmith infuriated White House officials, first by rejecting part of the National Security Agency's surveillance program, prompting the threat of mass resignations by top Justice Department officials, including Ashcroft and Comey, and a showdown at the attorney general's hospital bedside.
Then, in June 2004, Goldsmith formally withdrew the August 2002 Yoo memorandum on interrogation, which he found overreaching and poorly reasoned. Goldsmith left the Justice Department soon afterward. He first spoke at length about his dissenting views to The New York Times last month, and testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
Six months later, the Justice Department quietly posted on its Web site a new legal opinion that appeared to end any flirtation with torture, starting with its clarionlike opening: "Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms."
A single footnote — added to reassure the CIA — suggested that the Justice Department was not declaring the agency's previous actions illegal. But the opinion was unmistakably a retreat. Some White House officials had opposed publicizing the document, but acquiesced to Justice Department officials who argued that doing so would help clear the way for Gonzales's confirmation as attorney general.
If Bush wanted to make sure the Justice Department did not rebel again, Gonzales was the ideal choice. As White House counsel, he had been a fierce protector of the president's prerogatives. Deeply loyal to Bush for championing his career from their days in Texas, Gonzales would sometimes tell colleagues that he had just one regret about becoming attorney general: He did not see nearly as much of the president as he had in his previous post.
Among his first tasks at the Justice Department was to find a trusted chief for the Office of Legal Counsel. First he informed Daniel Levin, the acting head who had backed Goldsmith's dissents and signed the new opinion renouncing torture, that he would not get the job. He encouraged Levin to take a position at the National Security Council, in effect sidelining him.
Bradbury soon emerged as the presumed favorite. But White House officials, still smarting from Goldsmith's rebuffs, chose to delay his nomination. Harriet Miers, the new White House counsel, "decided to watch Bradbury for a month or two. He was sort of on trial," one Justice Department official recalled.
Bradbury's biography had a Horatio Alger element that appealed to a succession of bosses, including Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court and Gonzales, the son of poor immigrants. Bradbury's father had died when he was an infant, and his mother took in laundry to support her children. The first in his family to go to college, he attended Stanford and the University of Michigan Law School. He joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, where he came under the tutelage of Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent prosecutor.
Bradbury belonged to the same circle as his predecessors: young, conservative lawyers with sterling credentials, often with clerkships for prominent conservative judges and ties to the Federalist Society, a powerhouse of the legal right. Yoo, in fact, had proposed his old friend Goldsmith for the Office of Legal Counsel job; Goldsmith had hired Bradbury as his top deputy.
"We all grew up together," said Viet Dinh, an assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003 and very much a member of the club. "You start with a small universe of Supreme Court clerks, and you narrow it down from there."
But what might have been subtle differences in quieter times now cleaved them into warring camps.
Justice Department colleagues say Gonzales was soon meeting frequently with Bradbury on national security issues, a White House priority. Admirers describe Bradbury as low-key but highly skilled, a conciliator who brought from 10 years of corporate practice a more pragmatic approach to the job than Yoo and Goldsmith, both from the academic world.
"As a practicing lawyer, you know how to address real problems," said Noel Francisco, who worked at the Justice Department from 2003 to 2005. "At OLC, you're not writing law review articles and you're not theorizing. You're giving a client practical advice on a real problem."
As he had at the White House, Gonzales usually said little in meetings with other officials, often deferring to the hard-driving Addington. Bradbury also often appeared in accord with the vice president's lawyer.
Bradbury appeared to be "fundamentally sympathetic to what the White House and the CIA wanted to do," recalled Philip Zelikow, a former top State Department official. At interagency meetings on detention and interrogation, Addington was at times "vituperative," said Zelikow, but Bradbury, while taking similar positions, was "professional and collegial."
While waiting to learn whether he would be nominated to head the Office of Legal Counsel, Bradbury was in an awkward position, knowing that a decision contrary to White House wishes could kill his chances.
Charles Cooper, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel under Reagan, said he was "very troubled" at the notion of a probationary period.
"If the purpose of the delay was a tryout, I think they should have avoided it," Cooper said. "You're implying that the acting official is molding his or her legal analysis to win the job."
Bradbury said he made no such concessions. "No one ever suggested to me that my nomination depended on how I ruled on any opinion," he said. "Every opinion I've signed at the Office of Legal Counsel represents my best judgment of what the law requires."
Scott Horton, an attorney affiliated with Human Rights First who has closely followed the interrogation debate, said any official offering legal advice on the campaign against terror was on treacherous ground.
"For government lawyers, the national security issues they were deciding were like working with nuclear waste — extremely hazardous to their health," Horton said.
"If you give the administration what it wants, you'll lose credibility in the academic community," he said. "But if you hold back, you'll be vilified by conservatives and the administration."
In any case, the White House grew comfortable with Bradbury's approach. He helped block the appointment of a liberal Ivy League law professor to a career post in the Office of Legal Counsel. And he signed the opinion approving combined interrogation techniques.
Comey strongly objected and told associates that he advised Gonzales not to endorse the opinion. But the attorney general made clear that the White House was adamant about it, and that he would do nothing to resist.
Under Ashcroft, Comey's opposition might have killed the opinion. An imposing former prosecutor and self-described conservative who stands 6-foot-8, he was the rare administration official who was willing to confront Addington. At one testy 2004 White House meeting, when Comey stated that "no lawyer" would endorse Yoo's justification for the NSA program, Addington demurred, saying he was a lawyer and found it convincing. Comey shot back: "No good lawyer," according to someone present.
But under Gonzales, and after the departure of Goldsmith and other allies, the deputy attorney general found himself isolated. His troublemaking on NSA and on interrogation, and in appointing his friend Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, which would lead to the perjury conviction of I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, had irreparably offended the White House.
"On national security matters generally, there was a sense that Comey was a wimp and that Comey was disloyal," said one Justice Department official who heard the White House talk, expressed with particular force by Addington.
Comey provided some hints of his thinking about interrogation and related issues in a speech that spring. Speaking at the NSA's Fort Meade campus on Law Day — a noteworthy setting for the man who had helped lead the dissent a year earlier that forced some changes in the NSA program — Comey spoke of the "agonizing collisions" of the law and the desire to protect Americans.
"We are likely to hear the words: 'If we don't do this, people will die,'" Comey said. But he argued that government lawyers must uphold the principles of their great institutions.
"It takes far more than a sharp legal mind to say 'no' when it matters most," he said. "It takes moral character. It takes an understanding that in the long run, intelligence under law is the only sustainable intelligence in this country."
Gonzales's aides were happy to see Comey depart in the summer of 2005. That June, Bush nominated Bradbury to head the Office of Legal Counsel, which some colleagues viewed as a sign that he had passed a loyalty test.
Soon Bradbury applied his practical approach to a new challenge to the CIA's methods.
The administration had always asserted that the CIA's pressure tactics did not amount to torture, which is banned by U.S. law and international treaty. But officials had privately decided the agency did not have to comply with another provision in the Convention Against Torture — the prohibition on "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment.
Now that loophole was about to be closed. First Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and then Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who had been tortured as a prisoner in North Vietnam, proposed legislation to ban such treatment.
At the administration's request, Bradbury assessed whether the proposed legislation would outlaw any CIA methods, a legal question that had never before been answered by the Justice Department.
At least a few administration officials argued that no reasonable interpretation of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" would permit the most extreme CIA methods, like waterboarding. Bradbury was placed in a tough spot, said Zelikow, the State Department counselor, who was working at the time to rein in interrogation policy.
"If Justice says some practices are in violation of the CID standard," Zelikow said, referring to cruel, inhuman or degrading, "then they are now saying that officials broke current law."
In the end, Bradbury's opinion delivered what the White House wanted: a statement that the standard imposed by McCain's Detainee Treatment Act would not force any change in the CIA's practices, according to officials familiar with the memo.
Relying on a Supreme Court finding that only conduct that "shocks the conscience" was unconstitutional, the opinion found that in some circumstances not even waterboarding was necessarily cruel, inhuman or degrading, if, for example, a suspect was believed to possess crucial intelligence about a planned terrorist attack, the officials familiar with the legal finding said.
In a frequent practice, Bush attached a statement to the new law when he signed it, declaring his authority to set aside the restrictions if they interfered with his constitutional powers. At the same time, though, the administration responded to pressure from McCain and other lawmakers by reviewing interrogation policy and giving up several CIA techniques.
Since late 2005, Bradbury has become a linchpin of the administration's defense of counterterrorism programs, helping to negotiate the Military Commissions Act last year and frequently testifying about the NSA surveillance program. Once he answered questions about administration detention policies for an "Ask the White House" feature on a Web site.
Kmiec, the former Office of Legal Counsel head now at Pepperdine, called Bradbury's public activities a departure for an office that traditionally has shunned any advocacy role.
A senior administration official called Bradbury's active role in shaping legislation and speaking to Congress and the press "entirely appropriate" and consistent with past practice. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Bradbury "has played a critical role in achieving greater transparency" on the legal basis for detention and surveillance programs.
Though Bush repeatedly nominated Bradbury as the Office of Legal Counsel's assistant attorney general, Democratic senators have blocked the nomination. Senator Durbin said the Justice Department would not turn over copies of his opinions or other evidence of Bradbury's role in interrogation policy.
"There are fundamental questions about whether Mr. Bradbury approved interrogation methods that are clearly unacceptable," Durbin said.
John Hutson, who served as the navy's top lawyer from 1997 to 2000, said he believed that the existence of legal opinions justifying abusive treatment is pernicious, potentially blurring the rules for Americans handling prisoners.
"I know from the military that if you tell someone they can do a little of this for the country's good, some people will do a lot of it for the country's better," Hutson said. Like other military lawyers, he also fears that official American acceptance of such treatment could endanger Americans in the future.
"The problem is, once you've got a legal opinion that says such a technique is O.K., what happens when one of our people is captured and they do it to him? How do we protest then?" he asked.
By Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen | October 3, 2007
WASHINGTON: When the Justice Department publicly declared torture "abhorrent" in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.
But soon after Alberto Gonzales's arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.
Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on "combined effects" over the objections of James Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion's overreaching legal reasoning, Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be "ashamed" when the world eventually learned of it.
Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the CIA interrogation methods violated that standard.
The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President George W. Bush's second term and Gonzales's tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil.
Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the last two years to impose limits on interrogations, and the administration has responded as a policy matter by dropping the most extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics.
A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said Wednesday that he would not comment on any legal opinion related to interrogations. Fratto added, "We have gone to great lengths, including statutory efforts and the recent executive order, to make it clear that the intelligence community and our practices fall within U.S. law" and international agreements.
More than two dozen current and former officials involved in counterterrorism were interviewed over the past three months about the opinions and the deliberations on interrogation policy. Most officials would speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the documents and the CIA detention operations they govern.
When he stepped down as attorney general in September after widespread criticism of the firing of federal prosecutors and withering attacks on his credibility, Gonzales talked proudly in a farewell speech of how his department was "a place of inspiration" that had balanced the necessary flexibility to conduct the war on terrorism with the need to uphold the law.
Associates at the Justice Department said Gonzales seldom resisted pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney and David Addington, Cheney's counsel, to endorse policies that they saw as effective in safeguarding Americans, even though the practices brought the condemnation of other governments, human rights groups and Democrats in Congress. Critics say Gonzales turned his agency into an arm of the Bush White House, undermining the department's independence.
The interrogation opinions were signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who since 2005 has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. He has become a frequent public defender of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and detention policies at congressional hearings and press briefings, a role that some legal scholars say is at odds with the office's tradition of avoiding political advocacy.
Bradbury defended the work of his office as the government's most authoritative interpreter of the law. "In my experience, the White House has not told me how an opinion should come out," he said in an interview. "The White House has accepted and respected our opinions, even when they didn't like the advice being given."
The debate over how terrorism suspects should be held and questioned began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Bush administration adopted secret detention and coercive interrogation, both practices the United States had previously denounced when used by other countries. It adopted the new measures without public debate or congressional vote, choosing to rely instead on the confidential legal advice of a handful of appointees.
The policies set off bruising internal battles, pitting administration moderates against hard-liners, military lawyers against Pentagon chiefs and, most surprising, a handful of conservative lawyers at the Justice Department against the White House in the stunning mutiny of 2004. But under Gonzales and Bradbury, the Justice Department was wrenched back into line with the White House.
After the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the Geneva Conventions applied to prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda, Bush for the first time acknowledged the CIA's secret jails and ordered their inmates moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The CIA halted its use of waterboarding, or pouring water over a bound prisoner's cloth-covered face to induce fear of suffocation.
But in July, after a monthlong debate inside the administration, Bush signed a new executive order authorizing the use of what the administration calls "enhanced" interrogation techniques — the details remain secret — and officials say the CIA again is holding prisoners in "black sites" overseas. The executive order was reviewed and approved by Bradbury and the Office of Legal Counsel.
Douglas Kmiec, who headed that office under President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush and wrote a book about it, said he believed the intense pressures of the campaign against terrorism have warped the office's proper role.
"The office was designed to insulate against any need to be an advocate," said Kmiec, now a conservative scholar at Pepperdine University law school. But at times in recent years, Kmiec said, the office, headed by William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia before they served on the Supreme Court, "lost its ability to say no."
"The approach changed dramatically with opinions on the war on terror," Kmiec said. "The office became an advocate for the president's policies."
From the secret sites in Afghanistan, Thailand and Eastern Europe where CIA teams held Qaeda terrorists, questions for the lawyers at CIA headquarters arrived daily. Nervous interrogators wanted to know: Are we breaking the laws against torture?
The Bush administration had entered uncharted legal territory beginning in 2002, holding prisoners outside the scrutiny of the International Red Cross and subjecting them to harrowing pressure tactics. They included slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate, waterboarding.
Never in history had the United States authorized such tactics. While Bush and CIA officials would later insist that the harsh measures produced crucial intelligence, many veteran interrogators, psychologists and other experts say that less coercive methods are equally or more effective.
With virtually no experience in interrogations, the CIA had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture. The agency officers questioning prisoners constantly sought advice from lawyers thousands of miles away.
"We were getting asked about combinations — 'Can we do this and this at the same time?'" recalled Paul Kelbaugh, a veteran intelligence lawyer who was deputy legal counsel at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center from 2001 to 2003.
Interrogators were worried that even approved techniques had such a painful, multiplying effect when combined that they might cross the legal line, Kelbaugh said. He recalled agency officers asking: "These approved techniques, say, withholding food, and 50-degree temperature — can they be combined?" Or "Do I have to do the less extreme before the more extreme?"
The questions came more frequently, Kelbaugh said, as word spread about a CIA inspector general inquiry unrelated to the war on terrorism. Some veteran CIA officers came under scrutiny because they were advisers to Peruvian officers who in early 2001 shot down a missionary flight they had mistaken for a drug-running aircraft. The Americans were not charged with crimes, but they endured three years of investigation, saw their careers derailed and ran up big legal bills.
That experience shook the Qaeda interrogation team, Kelbaugh said. "You think you're making a difference and maybe saving 3,000 American lives from the next attack. And someone tells you, 'Well, that guidance was a little vague, and the inspector general wants to talk to you,'" he recalled. "We couldn't tell them, 'Do the best you can,' because the people who did the best they could in Peru were looking at a grand jury."
Kelbaugh said the questions were sometimes close calls that required consultation with the Justice Department. But in August 2002, the department provided a sweeping legal justification for even the harshest tactics.
That opinion, which would become infamous as "the torture memo" after it was leaked, was written largely by John Yoo, a young Berkeley law professor serving in the Office of Legal Counsel. His broad views of presidential power were shared by Addington, the vice president's adviser. Their close alliance provoked John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, to refer privately to Yoo as Yes for his seeming eagerness to give the White House whatever legal justifications it desired, a Justice Department official recalled.
Yoo's memorandum said no interrogation practices were illegal unless they produced pain equivalent to organ failure or "even death." A second memo produced at the same time spelled out the approved practices and how often or how long they could be used.
Despite that guidance, in March 2003, when the CIA caught Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, interrogators were again haunted by uncertainty. Former intelligence officials, for the first time, disclosed that a variety of tough interrogation tactics were used about 100 times over two weeks on Mohammed. Agency officials then ordered a halt, fearing the combined assault might have amounted to illegal torture. A CIA spokesman, George Little, declined to discuss the handling of Mohammed. Little said the program "has been conducted lawfully, with great care and close review" and "has helped our country disrupt terrorist plots and save innocent lives."
"The agency has always sought a clear legal framework, conducting the program in strict accord with U.S. law, and protecting the officers who go face-to-face with ruthless terrorists," Little added.
Some intelligence officers say that many of Mohammed's statements proved exaggerated or false. One problem, a former senior agency official said, was that the CIA's initial interrogators were not experts on Mohammed's background or Al Qaeda, and it took about a month to get such an expert to the secret prison. The former official said many CIA professionals now believe patient, repeated questioning by well-informed experts is more effective than harsh physical pressure.
Other intelligence officers, including Kelbaugh, insist that the harsh treatment produced invaluable insights into Al Qaeda's structure and plans.
"We leaned in pretty hard on K.S.M.," Kelbaugh said, referring to Mohammed. "We were getting good information, and then they were told: 'Slow it down. It may not be correct. Wait for some legal clarification.'"
The doubts at the CIA proved prophetic. In late 2003, after Yoo left the Justice Department, the new head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, began reviewing his work, which he found deeply flawed. Goldsmith infuriated White House officials, first by rejecting part of the National Security Agency's surveillance program, prompting the threat of mass resignations by top Justice Department officials, including Ashcroft and Comey, and a showdown at the attorney general's hospital bedside.
Then, in June 2004, Goldsmith formally withdrew the August 2002 Yoo memorandum on interrogation, which he found overreaching and poorly reasoned. Goldsmith left the Justice Department soon afterward. He first spoke at length about his dissenting views to The New York Times last month, and testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
Six months later, the Justice Department quietly posted on its Web site a new legal opinion that appeared to end any flirtation with torture, starting with its clarionlike opening: "Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms."
A single footnote — added to reassure the CIA — suggested that the Justice Department was not declaring the agency's previous actions illegal. But the opinion was unmistakably a retreat. Some White House officials had opposed publicizing the document, but acquiesced to Justice Department officials who argued that doing so would help clear the way for Gonzales's confirmation as attorney general.
If Bush wanted to make sure the Justice Department did not rebel again, Gonzales was the ideal choice. As White House counsel, he had been a fierce protector of the president's prerogatives. Deeply loyal to Bush for championing his career from their days in Texas, Gonzales would sometimes tell colleagues that he had just one regret about becoming attorney general: He did not see nearly as much of the president as he had in his previous post.
Among his first tasks at the Justice Department was to find a trusted chief for the Office of Legal Counsel. First he informed Daniel Levin, the acting head who had backed Goldsmith's dissents and signed the new opinion renouncing torture, that he would not get the job. He encouraged Levin to take a position at the National Security Council, in effect sidelining him.
Bradbury soon emerged as the presumed favorite. But White House officials, still smarting from Goldsmith's rebuffs, chose to delay his nomination. Harriet Miers, the new White House counsel, "decided to watch Bradbury for a month or two. He was sort of on trial," one Justice Department official recalled.
Bradbury's biography had a Horatio Alger element that appealed to a succession of bosses, including Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court and Gonzales, the son of poor immigrants. Bradbury's father had died when he was an infant, and his mother took in laundry to support her children. The first in his family to go to college, he attended Stanford and the University of Michigan Law School. He joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, where he came under the tutelage of Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent prosecutor.
Bradbury belonged to the same circle as his predecessors: young, conservative lawyers with sterling credentials, often with clerkships for prominent conservative judges and ties to the Federalist Society, a powerhouse of the legal right. Yoo, in fact, had proposed his old friend Goldsmith for the Office of Legal Counsel job; Goldsmith had hired Bradbury as his top deputy.
"We all grew up together," said Viet Dinh, an assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003 and very much a member of the club. "You start with a small universe of Supreme Court clerks, and you narrow it down from there."
But what might have been subtle differences in quieter times now cleaved them into warring camps.
Justice Department colleagues say Gonzales was soon meeting frequently with Bradbury on national security issues, a White House priority. Admirers describe Bradbury as low-key but highly skilled, a conciliator who brought from 10 years of corporate practice a more pragmatic approach to the job than Yoo and Goldsmith, both from the academic world.
"As a practicing lawyer, you know how to address real problems," said Noel Francisco, who worked at the Justice Department from 2003 to 2005. "At OLC, you're not writing law review articles and you're not theorizing. You're giving a client practical advice on a real problem."
As he had at the White House, Gonzales usually said little in meetings with other officials, often deferring to the hard-driving Addington. Bradbury also often appeared in accord with the vice president's lawyer.
Bradbury appeared to be "fundamentally sympathetic to what the White House and the CIA wanted to do," recalled Philip Zelikow, a former top State Department official. At interagency meetings on detention and interrogation, Addington was at times "vituperative," said Zelikow, but Bradbury, while taking similar positions, was "professional and collegial."
While waiting to learn whether he would be nominated to head the Office of Legal Counsel, Bradbury was in an awkward position, knowing that a decision contrary to White House wishes could kill his chances.
Charles Cooper, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel under Reagan, said he was "very troubled" at the notion of a probationary period.
"If the purpose of the delay was a tryout, I think they should have avoided it," Cooper said. "You're implying that the acting official is molding his or her legal analysis to win the job."
Bradbury said he made no such concessions. "No one ever suggested to me that my nomination depended on how I ruled on any opinion," he said. "Every opinion I've signed at the Office of Legal Counsel represents my best judgment of what the law requires."
Scott Horton, an attorney affiliated with Human Rights First who has closely followed the interrogation debate, said any official offering legal advice on the campaign against terror was on treacherous ground.
"For government lawyers, the national security issues they were deciding were like working with nuclear waste — extremely hazardous to their health," Horton said.
"If you give the administration what it wants, you'll lose credibility in the academic community," he said. "But if you hold back, you'll be vilified by conservatives and the administration."
In any case, the White House grew comfortable with Bradbury's approach. He helped block the appointment of a liberal Ivy League law professor to a career post in the Office of Legal Counsel. And he signed the opinion approving combined interrogation techniques.
Comey strongly objected and told associates that he advised Gonzales not to endorse the opinion. But the attorney general made clear that the White House was adamant about it, and that he would do nothing to resist.
Under Ashcroft, Comey's opposition might have killed the opinion. An imposing former prosecutor and self-described conservative who stands 6-foot-8, he was the rare administration official who was willing to confront Addington. At one testy 2004 White House meeting, when Comey stated that "no lawyer" would endorse Yoo's justification for the NSA program, Addington demurred, saying he was a lawyer and found it convincing. Comey shot back: "No good lawyer," according to someone present.
But under Gonzales, and after the departure of Goldsmith and other allies, the deputy attorney general found himself isolated. His troublemaking on NSA and on interrogation, and in appointing his friend Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, which would lead to the perjury conviction of I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, had irreparably offended the White House.
"On national security matters generally, there was a sense that Comey was a wimp and that Comey was disloyal," said one Justice Department official who heard the White House talk, expressed with particular force by Addington.
Comey provided some hints of his thinking about interrogation and related issues in a speech that spring. Speaking at the NSA's Fort Meade campus on Law Day — a noteworthy setting for the man who had helped lead the dissent a year earlier that forced some changes in the NSA program — Comey spoke of the "agonizing collisions" of the law and the desire to protect Americans.
"We are likely to hear the words: 'If we don't do this, people will die,'" Comey said. But he argued that government lawyers must uphold the principles of their great institutions.
"It takes far more than a sharp legal mind to say 'no' when it matters most," he said. "It takes moral character. It takes an understanding that in the long run, intelligence under law is the only sustainable intelligence in this country."
Gonzales's aides were happy to see Comey depart in the summer of 2005. That June, Bush nominated Bradbury to head the Office of Legal Counsel, which some colleagues viewed as a sign that he had passed a loyalty test.
Soon Bradbury applied his practical approach to a new challenge to the CIA's methods.
The administration had always asserted that the CIA's pressure tactics did not amount to torture, which is banned by U.S. law and international treaty. But officials had privately decided the agency did not have to comply with another provision in the Convention Against Torture — the prohibition on "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment.
Now that loophole was about to be closed. First Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and then Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who had been tortured as a prisoner in North Vietnam, proposed legislation to ban such treatment.
At the administration's request, Bradbury assessed whether the proposed legislation would outlaw any CIA methods, a legal question that had never before been answered by the Justice Department.
At least a few administration officials argued that no reasonable interpretation of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" would permit the most extreme CIA methods, like waterboarding. Bradbury was placed in a tough spot, said Zelikow, the State Department counselor, who was working at the time to rein in interrogation policy.
"If Justice says some practices are in violation of the CID standard," Zelikow said, referring to cruel, inhuman or degrading, "then they are now saying that officials broke current law."
In the end, Bradbury's opinion delivered what the White House wanted: a statement that the standard imposed by McCain's Detainee Treatment Act would not force any change in the CIA's practices, according to officials familiar with the memo.
Relying on a Supreme Court finding that only conduct that "shocks the conscience" was unconstitutional, the opinion found that in some circumstances not even waterboarding was necessarily cruel, inhuman or degrading, if, for example, a suspect was believed to possess crucial intelligence about a planned terrorist attack, the officials familiar with the legal finding said.
In a frequent practice, Bush attached a statement to the new law when he signed it, declaring his authority to set aside the restrictions if they interfered with his constitutional powers. At the same time, though, the administration responded to pressure from McCain and other lawmakers by reviewing interrogation policy and giving up several CIA techniques.
Since late 2005, Bradbury has become a linchpin of the administration's defense of counterterrorism programs, helping to negotiate the Military Commissions Act last year and frequently testifying about the NSA surveillance program. Once he answered questions about administration detention policies for an "Ask the White House" feature on a Web site.
Kmiec, the former Office of Legal Counsel head now at Pepperdine, called Bradbury's public activities a departure for an office that traditionally has shunned any advocacy role.
A senior administration official called Bradbury's active role in shaping legislation and speaking to Congress and the press "entirely appropriate" and consistent with past practice. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Bradbury "has played a critical role in achieving greater transparency" on the legal basis for detention and surveillance programs.
Though Bush repeatedly nominated Bradbury as the Office of Legal Counsel's assistant attorney general, Democratic senators have blocked the nomination. Senator Durbin said the Justice Department would not turn over copies of his opinions or other evidence of Bradbury's role in interrogation policy.
"There are fundamental questions about whether Mr. Bradbury approved interrogation methods that are clearly unacceptable," Durbin said.
John Hutson, who served as the navy's top lawyer from 1997 to 2000, said he believed that the existence of legal opinions justifying abusive treatment is pernicious, potentially blurring the rules for Americans handling prisoners.
"I know from the military that if you tell someone they can do a little of this for the country's good, some people will do a lot of it for the country's better," Hutson said. Like other military lawyers, he also fears that official American acceptance of such treatment could endanger Americans in the future.
"The problem is, once you've got a legal opinion that says such a technique is O.K., what happens when one of our people is captured and they do it to him? How do we protest then?" he asked.
Filed under
Alberto Gonzales,
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by Winter Patriot
on Thursday, October 04, 2007
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WaPo : In the End, Realities Trumped Loyalty
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
In the End, Realities Trumped Loyalty
By Dan Balz and Michael Abramowitz | Washington Post Staff Writers | August 28, 2007
Few attributes are more highly prized in President Bush's White House than loyalty -- and few have exacted a higher toll on the president and his political standing. Yesterday's resignation announcement by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales underscored once again the damage that can be done when loyalty becomes paramount in presidential decision-making.
Rarely has a Cabinet-level resignation been so anticipated, coming long after Gonzales's credibility had been irreparably undermined by controversy. After he seemingly could do no more harm to the administration, Bush's friend and longtime confidant finally called it quits.
Yet the resignation was almost as surprising as it was long expected. Bush repeatedly expressed confidence in his embattled attorney general, and Gonzales had stubbornly refused to yield to the political reality that his presence at the Justice Department meant continued conflict with Democrats and some Republicans in Congress as well as further investigations into the inner workings of the administration.
"Getting him out of there is about four months or five months late," said one Republican strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid appraisal of the situation. "It reemphasizes that this thing is broken."
If Gonzales's were the only case of loyalty overwhelming political hardheadedness in the Bush administration, there might be little more to his resignation than the fall from grace of a public official whose inspirational life story had almost a storybook quality to it. Gonzales rose from a childhood of poverty to a succession of distinguished appointments, culminating in his confirmation as the first Hispanic attorney general in the nation's history.
But his case is not unique -- and that is what has confounded Bush's allies. The same pattern occurred with former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Long before Rumsfeld tendered his resignation on the eve of the 2006 elections, many of Bush's advisers had concluded that he should go. But the president refused to give satisfaction to the retired generals and Democratic officials publicly calling for his dismissal.
So, too, with Bush's unexpected decision to nominate then-White House counsel Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2005. Her selection produced a firestorm on the right, as conservatives and others accused the president of cronyism and challenged Miers's credentials to sit on the highest court in the land.
Like Gonzales, Miers eventually faced reality. She asked that her name be withdrawn from consideration -- but only after an extraordinary month that further deflated the president's political standing at a time when he was on the defensive because of the slow White House response to Hurricane Katrina.
"It's clear that it has hurt Bush to have hung on to somebody who by all accounts was clearly failing in his job," said Kenneth Adelman, a Reagan administration official who suggested that Bush has had a misplaced sense of loyalty to such advisers as Rumsfeld and Gonzales.
"You're loyal to the mission. You're loyal to performance. You're loyal to the country," Adelman said. "You should always be nice to people, but there are more important things than being nice to your friends. You have to keep your eye on the mission and the performance in completing the mission."
Fred Greenstein, a Princeton University scholar of the presidency, said he believes that Bush may be more calculating than his critics suggest, noting that he was one of the key figures in helping push Chief of Staff John H. Sununu out of his father's administration. "His DNA has been to stick by his people," Greenstein said. "Then he moves or he bends and denies that he has done that."
Other Bush associates and former administration officials said the president has been heavily influenced by what he saw as personnel disarray during his father's term -- and feels it is important to stick by his people. "He has just seen good people lynched politically," said Mark McKinnon, the president's longtime media adviser. "He was a close observer of his father's administration and previous administrations."
Bush's comments yesterday seemed to reinforce that view. Saying he had reluctantly accepted his attorney general's resignation, he noted pointedly: "His good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons."
Gonzales will leave a trail of debris. His image has been badly tarnished. His refusal to resign sooner further soured the already acidic relations between Congress and the White House. His Justice Department, in the words of Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), became dysfunctional.
It may be too late to wonder how much of this could have been avoided, but it is clear when it started. Gonzales was promoted from White House counsel to attorney general at a moment when Bush believed he had limitless political capital, in the weeks after his reelection victory, when two other White House advisers -- Condoleezza Rice and Margaret Spellings -- were also given new jobs leading the State and Education departments.
Bush knew he could trust Gonzales with one of the most sensitive posts in any administration. But in doing so, the president left himself vulnerable to charges that he was politicizing the Justice Department -- and as controversies mounted, Gonzales proved incapable of insulating himself or his department from those charges.
The firings of nine U.S. attorneys and the Democratic takeover of Congress combined to provide the ingredients for Gonzales's undoing. Under fire, the attorney general was not able to offer explanations that satisfied lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
The revelation of Gonzales's role as White House counsel in trying to pressure an ailing John D. Ashcroft to sign off from his hospital bed on aspects of a controversial warrantless surveillance program -- and his tortured explanation of those events -- further undermined his standing.
The resignation may have been meant to quell the partisan warfare that has raged for months, but early reactions suggested that it may not be a political circuit breaker.
The search for Gonzales's replacement begins with a standoff between congressional Democrats' demands for a nonpartisan, non-controversial nominee and Bush's determination to not allow Democrats to become the de facto personnel directors for his administration.
The path of least resistance for the president would be to find someone with dependable Republican credentials who can win confirmation with Democratic support. The confirmation process will demonstrate the extent to which both sides can move beyond the Gonzales controversy, but in the current environment, prospects for a compromise seem uncertain at best.
What is not in doubt is the president's fierce commitment to those he selects to serve him.
Abramowitz reported from Bellevue, Wash.
By Dan Balz and Michael Abramowitz | Washington Post Staff Writers | August 28, 2007
Few attributes are more highly prized in President Bush's White House than loyalty -- and few have exacted a higher toll on the president and his political standing. Yesterday's resignation announcement by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales underscored once again the damage that can be done when loyalty becomes paramount in presidential decision-making.
Rarely has a Cabinet-level resignation been so anticipated, coming long after Gonzales's credibility had been irreparably undermined by controversy. After he seemingly could do no more harm to the administration, Bush's friend and longtime confidant finally called it quits.
Yet the resignation was almost as surprising as it was long expected. Bush repeatedly expressed confidence in his embattled attorney general, and Gonzales had stubbornly refused to yield to the political reality that his presence at the Justice Department meant continued conflict with Democrats and some Republicans in Congress as well as further investigations into the inner workings of the administration.
"Getting him out of there is about four months or five months late," said one Republican strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid appraisal of the situation. "It reemphasizes that this thing is broken."
If Gonzales's were the only case of loyalty overwhelming political hardheadedness in the Bush administration, there might be little more to his resignation than the fall from grace of a public official whose inspirational life story had almost a storybook quality to it. Gonzales rose from a childhood of poverty to a succession of distinguished appointments, culminating in his confirmation as the first Hispanic attorney general in the nation's history.
But his case is not unique -- and that is what has confounded Bush's allies. The same pattern occurred with former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Long before Rumsfeld tendered his resignation on the eve of the 2006 elections, many of Bush's advisers had concluded that he should go. But the president refused to give satisfaction to the retired generals and Democratic officials publicly calling for his dismissal.
So, too, with Bush's unexpected decision to nominate then-White House counsel Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2005. Her selection produced a firestorm on the right, as conservatives and others accused the president of cronyism and challenged Miers's credentials to sit on the highest court in the land.
Like Gonzales, Miers eventually faced reality. She asked that her name be withdrawn from consideration -- but only after an extraordinary month that further deflated the president's political standing at a time when he was on the defensive because of the slow White House response to Hurricane Katrina.
"It's clear that it has hurt Bush to have hung on to somebody who by all accounts was clearly failing in his job," said Kenneth Adelman, a Reagan administration official who suggested that Bush has had a misplaced sense of loyalty to such advisers as Rumsfeld and Gonzales.
"You're loyal to the mission. You're loyal to performance. You're loyal to the country," Adelman said. "You should always be nice to people, but there are more important things than being nice to your friends. You have to keep your eye on the mission and the performance in completing the mission."
Fred Greenstein, a Princeton University scholar of the presidency, said he believes that Bush may be more calculating than his critics suggest, noting that he was one of the key figures in helping push Chief of Staff John H. Sununu out of his father's administration. "His DNA has been to stick by his people," Greenstein said. "Then he moves or he bends and denies that he has done that."
Other Bush associates and former administration officials said the president has been heavily influenced by what he saw as personnel disarray during his father's term -- and feels it is important to stick by his people. "He has just seen good people lynched politically," said Mark McKinnon, the president's longtime media adviser. "He was a close observer of his father's administration and previous administrations."
Bush's comments yesterday seemed to reinforce that view. Saying he had reluctantly accepted his attorney general's resignation, he noted pointedly: "His good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons."
Gonzales will leave a trail of debris. His image has been badly tarnished. His refusal to resign sooner further soured the already acidic relations between Congress and the White House. His Justice Department, in the words of Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), became dysfunctional.
It may be too late to wonder how much of this could have been avoided, but it is clear when it started. Gonzales was promoted from White House counsel to attorney general at a moment when Bush believed he had limitless political capital, in the weeks after his reelection victory, when two other White House advisers -- Condoleezza Rice and Margaret Spellings -- were also given new jobs leading the State and Education departments.
Bush knew he could trust Gonzales with one of the most sensitive posts in any administration. But in doing so, the president left himself vulnerable to charges that he was politicizing the Justice Department -- and as controversies mounted, Gonzales proved incapable of insulating himself or his department from those charges.
The firings of nine U.S. attorneys and the Democratic takeover of Congress combined to provide the ingredients for Gonzales's undoing. Under fire, the attorney general was not able to offer explanations that satisfied lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
The revelation of Gonzales's role as White House counsel in trying to pressure an ailing John D. Ashcroft to sign off from his hospital bed on aspects of a controversial warrantless surveillance program -- and his tortured explanation of those events -- further undermined his standing.
The resignation may have been meant to quell the partisan warfare that has raged for months, but early reactions suggested that it may not be a political circuit breaker.
The search for Gonzales's replacement begins with a standoff between congressional Democrats' demands for a nonpartisan, non-controversial nominee and Bush's determination to not allow Democrats to become the de facto personnel directors for his administration.
The path of least resistance for the president would be to find someone with dependable Republican credentials who can win confirmation with Democratic support. The confirmation process will demonstrate the extent to which both sides can move beyond the Gonzales controversy, but in the current environment, prospects for a compromise seem uncertain at best.
What is not in doubt is the president's fierce commitment to those he selects to serve him.
Abramowitz reported from Bellevue, Wash.
NYT : Embattled Attorney General Resigns
Monday, August 27, 2007
Embattled Attorney General Resigns
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and PHILIP SHENON | August 27, 2007
WACO, Tex., Aug. 27 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, announced his resignation in Washington today, declaring that he had “lived the American dream” by being able to lead the Justice Department.
Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation for months, submitted it to President Bush by telephone on Friday, a senior administration official said. There had been rumblings over the weekend that Mr. Gonzales’s departure was imminent, although the White House sought to quell the rumors.
Mr. Gonzales appeared cheerful and composed when he announced that he was stepping down effective Sept. 17. His very worst days on the job were “better than my father’s best days,” he said, alluding to his family’s hardscrabble past.
“Thank you, and God bless America,” Mr. Gonzales said, exiting without responding to questions.
In Waco, President Bush said he had accepted the resignation reluctantly. He praised his old friend as “a man of integrity, decency and principle” and complained of the “months of unfair treatment” that preceded the resignation.
“It’s sad,” Mr. Bush said, asserting that Mr. Gonzales’s name had been “dragged through the mud for political reasons.”
The president said the solicitor general, Paul D. Clement, would serve as acting attorney general until a permanent replacement was chosen.
Mr. Bush has not yet chosen a replacement but will not leave the position open long, the senior administration official said early this morning. Among those being mentioned as a possible successor were Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security who is a former federal prosecutor, assistant attorney general and federal judge; Christopher Cox, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission; and Larry D. Thompson, a former deputy attorney general who is now senior vice president and general counsel of PepsiCo Inc.
Mr. Bush repeatedly stood by Mr. Gonzales, an old friend and colleague from Texas, even as Mr. Gonzales faced increasing scrutiny for his leadership of the Justice Department over issues including his role in the dismissals of nine United States attorneys late last year and whether he testified truthfully about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.
Earlier this month, at a news conference, Mr. Bush dismissed accusations that Mr. Gonzales had stonewalled or misled a Congressional inquiry. “We’re watching a political exercise,” Mr. Bush said. “I mean, this is a man who has testified, he’s sent thousands of papers up there. There’s no proof of wrong.”
But Democrats cheered Mr. Gonzales’s departure. “Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. “He lacked independence, he lacked judgment, and he lacked the spine to say ‘no’ to Karl Rove.”
Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who sits on the Judiciary Committee and has been calling for Mr. Gonzales’s resignation for months, said this morning: “It has been a long and difficult struggle, but at last the attorney general has done the right thing and stepped down. For the previous six months, the Justice Department has been virtually nonfunctional, and desperately needs new leadership.”
Senator Schumer said that “Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations.”
Another Democrat on the Judiciary Committee who has been highly critical of Mr. Gonzales, Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, said the next attorney general must be a person whose first loyalty is “to the law, not the president.”
But a Republican senator who has known Mr. Gonzales for years, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, paid tribute to the Harvard-educated Mr. Gonzales, the first attorney general of Hispanic heritage. “He has served in difficult times and I believe is a good, honest man who has worked hard in public service all his life,” the senator said in a statement.
Mr. Gonzales’s resignation is the latest in a series of high-level departures that has reshaped the end of Mr. Bush’s second term. Mr. Rove, the political adviser who is another of Mr. Bush’s close circle of aides from Texas, stepped down two weeks ago.
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.
A senior administration official said today that Mr. Gonzales, who was in Washington, had called the president in Crawford, Tex., on Friday to offer his resignation. The president rebuffed the offer, but said the two should talk face to face on Sunday.
Mr. Gonzales and his wife flew to Texas, and over lunch on Sunday the president accepted the resignation with regret, 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.
White House spokesmen also insisted on Sunday that they did not believe that Mr. Gonzales was planning to resign. Aides to senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said over the weekend that they had received no suggestion from the administration that Mr. Gonzales intended to resign.
As late as Sunday afternoon, Mr. Gonzales himself was denying through his spokesman that he was quitting. The spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, said Sunday that he telephoned the attorney general about the reports of his imminent resignation “and he said it wasn’t true — so I don’t know what more I can say.”
Steven Lee Myers reported from Waco, Texas, and Philip Shenon reported from Washington.
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and PHILIP SHENON | August 27, 2007
WACO, Tex., Aug. 27 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, announced his resignation in Washington today, declaring that he had “lived the American dream” by being able to lead the Justice Department.
Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation for months, submitted it to President Bush by telephone on Friday, a senior administration official said. There had been rumblings over the weekend that Mr. Gonzales’s departure was imminent, although the White House sought to quell the rumors.
Mr. Gonzales appeared cheerful and composed when he announced that he was stepping down effective Sept. 17. His very worst days on the job were “better than my father’s best days,” he said, alluding to his family’s hardscrabble past.
“Thank you, and God bless America,” Mr. Gonzales said, exiting without responding to questions.
In Waco, President Bush said he had accepted the resignation reluctantly. He praised his old friend as “a man of integrity, decency and principle” and complained of the “months of unfair treatment” that preceded the resignation.
“It’s sad,” Mr. Bush said, asserting that Mr. Gonzales’s name had been “dragged through the mud for political reasons.”
The president said the solicitor general, Paul D. Clement, would serve as acting attorney general until a permanent replacement was chosen.
Mr. Bush has not yet chosen a replacement but will not leave the position open long, the senior administration official said early this morning. Among those being mentioned as a possible successor were Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security who is a former federal prosecutor, assistant attorney general and federal judge; Christopher Cox, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission; and Larry D. Thompson, a former deputy attorney general who is now senior vice president and general counsel of PepsiCo Inc.
Mr. Bush repeatedly stood by Mr. Gonzales, an old friend and colleague from Texas, even as Mr. Gonzales faced increasing scrutiny for his leadership of the Justice Department over issues including his role in the dismissals of nine United States attorneys late last year and whether he testified truthfully about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.
Earlier this month, at a news conference, Mr. Bush dismissed accusations that Mr. Gonzales had stonewalled or misled a Congressional inquiry. “We’re watching a political exercise,” Mr. Bush said. “I mean, this is a man who has testified, he’s sent thousands of papers up there. There’s no proof of wrong.”
But Democrats cheered Mr. Gonzales’s departure. “Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. “He lacked independence, he lacked judgment, and he lacked the spine to say ‘no’ to Karl Rove.”
Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who sits on the Judiciary Committee and has been calling for Mr. Gonzales’s resignation for months, said this morning: “It has been a long and difficult struggle, but at last the attorney general has done the right thing and stepped down. For the previous six months, the Justice Department has been virtually nonfunctional, and desperately needs new leadership.”
Senator Schumer said that “Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations.”
Another Democrat on the Judiciary Committee who has been highly critical of Mr. Gonzales, Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, said the next attorney general must be a person whose first loyalty is “to the law, not the president.”
But a Republican senator who has known Mr. Gonzales for years, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, paid tribute to the Harvard-educated Mr. Gonzales, the first attorney general of Hispanic heritage. “He has served in difficult times and I believe is a good, honest man who has worked hard in public service all his life,” the senator said in a statement.
Mr. Gonzales’s resignation is the latest in a series of high-level departures that has reshaped the end of Mr. Bush’s second term. Mr. Rove, the political adviser who is another of Mr. Bush’s close circle of aides from Texas, stepped down two weeks ago.
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.
A senior administration official said today that Mr. Gonzales, who was in Washington, had called the president in Crawford, Tex., on Friday to offer his resignation. The president rebuffed the offer, but said the two should talk face to face on Sunday.
Mr. Gonzales and his wife flew to Texas, and over lunch on Sunday the president accepted the resignation with regret, 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.
White House spokesmen also insisted on Sunday that they did not believe that Mr. Gonzales was planning to resign. Aides to senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said over the weekend that they had received no suggestion from the administration that Mr. Gonzales intended to resign.
As late as Sunday afternoon, Mr. Gonzales himself was denying through his spokesman that he was quitting. The spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, said Sunday that he telephoned the attorney general about the reports of his imminent resignation “and he said it wasn’t true — so I don’t know what more I can say.”
Steven Lee Myers reported from Waco, Texas, and Philip Shenon reported from Washington.
IHT : U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigns
Monday, August 27, 2007
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigns
By Steven Lee Myers and Philip Shenon | August 27, 2007
WACO, Texas: Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. He is expected to announce the decision to reporters at 10:30 Eastern time this morning in Washington.
Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation for months, submitted his to President George W. Bush by telephone on Friday, a senior administration official said.
Bush has not yet chosen a replacement but will not leave the position open long, the official said early this morning, speaking on condition of anonymity because the resignation had not yet been made public.
Bush repeatedly stood by Gonzales, an old friend and colleague from Texas, even as Gonzales faced increasing scrutiny for his leadership of the Justice Department, over issues including his role in the dismissals of nine United States attorneys late last year and whether he testified truthfully about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs.
Earlier this month, at a news conference, Bush dismissed accusations that Gonzales had stonewalled or misled a congressional inquiry. "We're watching a political exercise," Bush said. "I mean, this is a man who has testified, he's sent thousands of papers up there. There's no proof of wrong."
Gonzales's resignation is the latest in a series of high-level departures that has reshaped the end of Bush's second term. Karl Rove, another of Bush's close circle of aides from Texas, stepped down two weeks ago.
The official who disclosed the resignation Monday that the turmoil over Gonzales had made his continuing as attorney general difficult. "The unfair treatment that he's been on the receiving end of has been a distraction for the department," the official said.
A senior administration official said Monday that Gonzales, who was in Washington, had called the president in Crawford, Texas, on Friday to offer his resignation. The president rebuffed the offer, but said the two should talk face to face on Sunday.
Gonzales and his wife flew to Texas, and over lunch on Sunday the president accepted the resignation with regret, the official said.
On Saturday night, Gonzales was contacted by his press spokesman to ask how the department should respond to inquiries from reporters about rumors of his resignation, and Gonzales told the spokesman to deny the reports.
White House spokesmen also insisted on Sunday that they did not believe that Gonzales was planning to resign. Aides to senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said over the weekend that they had received no suggestion from the administration that Gonzales intended to resign.
Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat who sits on the committee and has been calling for Gonzales's resignation for months, said this morning: "It has been a long and difficult struggle, but at last the attorney general has done the right thing and stepped down. For the previous six months, the Justice Department has been virtually nonfunctional, and desperately needs new leadership."
Senator Schumer said that "Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations."
Steven Lee Myers reported from Waco, Texas, and Philip Shenon reported from Washington.
By Steven Lee Myers and Philip Shenon | August 27, 2007
WACO, Texas: Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. He is expected to announce the decision to reporters at 10:30 Eastern time this morning in Washington.
Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation for months, submitted his to President George W. Bush by telephone on Friday, a senior administration official said.
Bush has not yet chosen a replacement but will not leave the position open long, the official said early this morning, speaking on condition of anonymity because the resignation had not yet been made public.
Bush repeatedly stood by Gonzales, an old friend and colleague from Texas, even as Gonzales faced increasing scrutiny for his leadership of the Justice Department, over issues including his role in the dismissals of nine United States attorneys late last year and whether he testified truthfully about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs.
Earlier this month, at a news conference, Bush dismissed accusations that Gonzales had stonewalled or misled a congressional inquiry. "We're watching a political exercise," Bush said. "I mean, this is a man who has testified, he's sent thousands of papers up there. There's no proof of wrong."
Gonzales's resignation is the latest in a series of high-level departures that has reshaped the end of Bush's second term. Karl Rove, another of Bush's close circle of aides from Texas, stepped down two weeks ago.
The official who disclosed the resignation Monday that the turmoil over Gonzales had made his continuing as attorney general difficult. "The unfair treatment that he's been on the receiving end of has been a distraction for the department," the official said.
A senior administration official said Monday that Gonzales, who was in Washington, had called the president in Crawford, Texas, on Friday to offer his resignation. The president rebuffed the offer, but said the two should talk face to face on Sunday.
Gonzales and his wife flew to Texas, and over lunch on Sunday the president accepted the resignation with regret, the official said.
On Saturday night, Gonzales was contacted by his press spokesman to ask how the department should respond to inquiries from reporters about rumors of his resignation, and Gonzales told the spokesman to deny the reports.
White House spokesmen also insisted on Sunday that they did not believe that Gonzales was planning to resign. Aides to senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said over the weekend that they had received no suggestion from the administration that Gonzales intended to resign.
Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat who sits on the committee and has been calling for Gonzales's resignation for months, said this morning: "It has been a long and difficult struggle, but at last the attorney general has done the right thing and stepped down. For the previous six months, the Justice Department has been virtually nonfunctional, and desperately needs new leadership."
Senator Schumer said that "Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations."
Steven Lee Myers reported from Waco, Texas, and Philip Shenon reported from Washington.
Newsweek : Looking For a Leaker
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Looking For a Leaker
Michael Isikoff | Newsweek | Aug. 13, 2007 issue
The controversy over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program took another surprise turn last week when a team of FBI agents, armed with a classified search warrant, raided the suburban Washington home of a former Justice Department lawyer.
The lawyer, Thomas M. Tamm, previously worked in Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)—the supersecret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets. The agents seized Tamm's desktop computer, two of his children's laptops and a cache of personal files.
Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI. But two legal sources who asked not to be identified talking about an ongoing case told NEWSWEEK the raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media.
The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants. (At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the leak: "This is really hurting national security; this has really hurt our country.")
A veteran federal prosecutor who left DOJ last year, Tamm worked at OIPR during a critical period in 2004 when senior Justice officials first strongly objected to the surveillance program. Those protests led to a crisis that March when, according to recent Senate testimony, then A.G. John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and others threatened to resign, prompting Bush to scale the program back. Tamm, said one of the legal sources, had shared concerns about he program's legality, but it was unclear whether he actively participated in the internal DOJ protest.
The FBI raid on Tamm's home comes when Gonzales himself is facing criticism for allegedly misleading Congress by denying there had been "serious disagreement" within Justice about the surveillance program. The A.G. last week apologized for "creating confusion," but Senate Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Patrick Leahy said he is weighing asking Justice's inspector general to review Gonzales's testimony.
The raid also came while the White House and Congress were battling over expanding NSA wiretapping authority in order to plug purported "surveillance gaps." James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology said the raid was "amazing" and shows the administration's misplaced priorities: using FBI agents to track down leakers instead of processing intel warrants to close the gaps. A Justice spokesman declined to comment.
Michael Isikoff | Newsweek | Aug. 13, 2007 issue
The controversy over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program took another surprise turn last week when a team of FBI agents, armed with a classified search warrant, raided the suburban Washington home of a former Justice Department lawyer.
The lawyer, Thomas M. Tamm, previously worked in Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)—the supersecret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets. The agents seized Tamm's desktop computer, two of his children's laptops and a cache of personal files.
Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI. But two legal sources who asked not to be identified talking about an ongoing case told NEWSWEEK the raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media.
The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants. (At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the leak: "This is really hurting national security; this has really hurt our country.")
A veteran federal prosecutor who left DOJ last year, Tamm worked at OIPR during a critical period in 2004 when senior Justice officials first strongly objected to the surveillance program. Those protests led to a crisis that March when, according to recent Senate testimony, then A.G. John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and others threatened to resign, prompting Bush to scale the program back. Tamm, said one of the legal sources, had shared concerns about he program's legality, but it was unclear whether he actively participated in the internal DOJ protest.
The FBI raid on Tamm's home comes when Gonzales himself is facing criticism for allegedly misleading Congress by denying there had been "serious disagreement" within Justice about the surveillance program. The A.G. last week apologized for "creating confusion," but Senate Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Patrick Leahy said he is weighing asking Justice's inspector general to review Gonzales's testimony.
The raid also came while the White House and Congress were battling over expanding NSA wiretapping authority in order to plug purported "surveillance gaps." James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology said the raid was "amazing" and shows the administration's misplaced priorities: using FBI agents to track down leakers instead of processing intel warrants to close the gaps. A Justice spokesman declined to comment.
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NYT : F.B.I. Chief Challenges Gonzales’s Testimony
Friday, July 27, 2007
F.B.I. Chief Challenges Gonzales’s Testimony
By DAVID STOUT | Published: July 26, 2007
WASHINGTON, July 26 — The dispute over the truthfulness of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales reached a new intensity today as the F.B.I. Director, Robert S. Mueller 3rd, contradicted Mr. Gonzales’s sworn testimony before a Senate committee.
Mr. Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee that the Bush administration’s secret eavesdropping program was the main topic at an encounter in the hospital room of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on March 10, 2004, contrary to what Mr. Gonzales told a Senate panel on Tuesday.
At the time, Mr. Gonzales was the White House counsel, and Mr. Ashcroft was recovering from gall bladder surgery. That March night, Mr. Gonzales went to the hospital room with Andrew H. Card Jr., then White House chief of staff.
In his testimony before the Senate panel on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales said the subject in the hospital room was “intelligence activities” under debate in the administration, but not the secret eavesdropping program.
But Mr. Mueller contradicted that version of events today, several hours after four Senate Democrats called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Gonzales perjured himself before Congress.
Mr. Mueller was testifying at an F.B.I. oversight hearing when he was questioned by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas.
“Did you have an understanding that the conversation was on T.S.P.?” the Congresswoman asked, using the shorthand for terrorist surveillance program.
“I had an understanding the discussion was on an N.S.A. program, yes,” Mr. Mueller replied, using the abbreviation for the National Security Agency. A moment later, he added that the discussion was on the warrantless eavesdropping program “that has been much discussed, yes.”
The conflict in accounts could be significant, because Mr. Gonzales’s critics have accused him of trying to convey the false impression that the N.S.A. program had spawned no serious dissension within the Bush administration.
But former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey has testified that Justice Department lawyers were balking at recertifying the program early in 2004 and that he thought Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card rushed to the hospital to persuade Mr. Ashcroft, who was not at full capacity, to overlook his own objections to the program.
Mr. Mueller said that after receiving a call from Mr. Comey he went to the hospital, arriving shortly after Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card left, and that after he spoke with Mr. Ashcroft he understood that the N.S.A. program was indeed the focus of the dramatic bedside encounter.
There have been repeated instances in which lawmakers have questioned Mr. Gonzales’s competence and his recollection of events. But today’s developments seemed to mark a shift toward suggestions that he actually committed crimes in testifying before Congress.
The four senators who sought a special counsel are all members of the Judiciary Committee. They urged Solicitor General Paul D. Clement in a letter to name an independent counsel from outside the Justice Department. “It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements,” the senators wrote.
While the four were asking for a special counsel, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, announced that a subpoena was being issued to Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political adviser, to provide information on the firings last year of nine federal prosecutors. The White House has asserted executive privilege in resisting Congressional demands for testimony by present and former presidential aides.
The request that the solicitor general name a special counsel to investigate Mr. Gonzales marked a new stage in the long-running controversy over his stewardship of the Justice Department. Mr. Gonzales’s most outspoken critics suggested today that the attorney general might have committed crimes, including perjury and obstruction of justice, when he testified about President Bush’s domestic-surveillance program and the dismissal of the nine United States attorneys.
The four senators — Charles E. Schumer of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island — zeroed in today on Mr. Gonzales’s testimony that there had been no internal dissent over the president’s warrantless eavesdropping program and that an emergency meeting at the White House in March 2004 concerned subjects other than the secret eavesdropping operation.
“Both of those statements appear to be false,” Mr. Schumer said today. “We know from senators who were there, and we know from a letter from John Negroponte,” he went on, referring to the former director of national intelligence. “It’s in black and white.”
The letter from the four senators was addressed to the solicitor general because Mr. Gonzales has recused himself, as has the outgoing deputy attorney general, Paul J. McNulty.
A Justice Department spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, said on Wednesday that Mr. Gonzales stood by his testimony. And the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said today that Mr. Bush still stood by Mr. Gonzales.
After Mr. Gonzales’s most recent testimony on Tuesday, Justice Department aides acknowledged in a background briefing for reporters that the attorney general had caused confusion by his “linguistic parsing.” A special counsel, if one is named, would presumably try to determine if any of Mr. Gonzales’s ambiguous statements were outright lies.
Senator Feinstein said today that Mr. Gonzales has often given “misleading and often untrue statements to Congress,” and that she had never seen “an attorney general so contemptuous of Congress and his role as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.”
A spokesman for the Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, told The Associated Press that Mr. Reid supported the request for a special counsel.
Senator Leahy said he was subpoenaing Mr. Rove because “the accumulated evidence shows that political considerations factored into the unprecedented firing” of the federal prosecutors last year. A subpoena is also being issued for J. Scott Jennings, a White House political aide, Mr. Leahy said.
United States attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and the people in those posts typically change when administrations change. But once installed, United States attorneys have traditionally been free of explicit political interference. Democrats have asserted that the nine who were let go last year may have been victims of cynical political calculations.
Mr. Leahy has said explicitly that he simply does not trust Mr. Gonzales. Today, Mr. Leahy sent a letter to Mr. Gonzales inviting him to change his testimony to cleanse himself of any possible perjury charges, and to do so by the end of next week.
Aboard Air Force One on the way to Philadelphia today, the White House spokesman, Mr. Snow, said that, contrary to the Democrats’ assertions, Mr. Gonzales has been consistent and that “the president supports him.” Mr. Snow suggested that what some see as deliberate inconsistencies in Mr. Gonzales’s accounts may be a reflection of the complexity of the issues being discussed.
President Bush was accompanied on his visit to Philadelphia by Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Specter has been as critical of Mr. Gonzales as have the Democrats, and he told reporters that he might talk to the president today about his concerns, The Associated Press reported.
Later, after returning to Washington, Mr. Specter declined to discuss what he and the president had talked about. Asked whether he supported the call for a special counsel, which was led by Senator Schumer, Mr. Specter said he did not.
Regarding Mr. Gonzales’s testimony, Mr. Specter said: “There are very complex questions that have to be answered on looking at the record. But Senator Schumer’s not interested in looking at the record. He’s interested in throwing down the gauntlet and making a story in tomorrow’s newspapers.”
Mr. Specter pointed out that Senator Leahy had not signed the letter to the solicitor general.
By DAVID STOUT | Published: July 26, 2007
WASHINGTON, July 26 — The dispute over the truthfulness of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales reached a new intensity today as the F.B.I. Director, Robert S. Mueller 3rd, contradicted Mr. Gonzales’s sworn testimony before a Senate committee.
Mr. Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee that the Bush administration’s secret eavesdropping program was the main topic at an encounter in the hospital room of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on March 10, 2004, contrary to what Mr. Gonzales told a Senate panel on Tuesday.
At the time, Mr. Gonzales was the White House counsel, and Mr. Ashcroft was recovering from gall bladder surgery. That March night, Mr. Gonzales went to the hospital room with Andrew H. Card Jr., then White House chief of staff.
In his testimony before the Senate panel on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales said the subject in the hospital room was “intelligence activities” under debate in the administration, but not the secret eavesdropping program.
But Mr. Mueller contradicted that version of events today, several hours after four Senate Democrats called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Gonzales perjured himself before Congress.
Mr. Mueller was testifying at an F.B.I. oversight hearing when he was questioned by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas.
“Did you have an understanding that the conversation was on T.S.P.?” the Congresswoman asked, using the shorthand for terrorist surveillance program.
“I had an understanding the discussion was on an N.S.A. program, yes,” Mr. Mueller replied, using the abbreviation for the National Security Agency. A moment later, he added that the discussion was on the warrantless eavesdropping program “that has been much discussed, yes.”
The conflict in accounts could be significant, because Mr. Gonzales’s critics have accused him of trying to convey the false impression that the N.S.A. program had spawned no serious dissension within the Bush administration.
But former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey has testified that Justice Department lawyers were balking at recertifying the program early in 2004 and that he thought Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card rushed to the hospital to persuade Mr. Ashcroft, who was not at full capacity, to overlook his own objections to the program.
Mr. Mueller said that after receiving a call from Mr. Comey he went to the hospital, arriving shortly after Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card left, and that after he spoke with Mr. Ashcroft he understood that the N.S.A. program was indeed the focus of the dramatic bedside encounter.
There have been repeated instances in which lawmakers have questioned Mr. Gonzales’s competence and his recollection of events. But today’s developments seemed to mark a shift toward suggestions that he actually committed crimes in testifying before Congress.
The four senators who sought a special counsel are all members of the Judiciary Committee. They urged Solicitor General Paul D. Clement in a letter to name an independent counsel from outside the Justice Department. “It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements,” the senators wrote.
While the four were asking for a special counsel, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, announced that a subpoena was being issued to Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political adviser, to provide information on the firings last year of nine federal prosecutors. The White House has asserted executive privilege in resisting Congressional demands for testimony by present and former presidential aides.
The request that the solicitor general name a special counsel to investigate Mr. Gonzales marked a new stage in the long-running controversy over his stewardship of the Justice Department. Mr. Gonzales’s most outspoken critics suggested today that the attorney general might have committed crimes, including perjury and obstruction of justice, when he testified about President Bush’s domestic-surveillance program and the dismissal of the nine United States attorneys.
The four senators — Charles E. Schumer of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island — zeroed in today on Mr. Gonzales’s testimony that there had been no internal dissent over the president’s warrantless eavesdropping program and that an emergency meeting at the White House in March 2004 concerned subjects other than the secret eavesdropping operation.
“Both of those statements appear to be false,” Mr. Schumer said today. “We know from senators who were there, and we know from a letter from John Negroponte,” he went on, referring to the former director of national intelligence. “It’s in black and white.”
The letter from the four senators was addressed to the solicitor general because Mr. Gonzales has recused himself, as has the outgoing deputy attorney general, Paul J. McNulty.
A Justice Department spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, said on Wednesday that Mr. Gonzales stood by his testimony. And the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said today that Mr. Bush still stood by Mr. Gonzales.
After Mr. Gonzales’s most recent testimony on Tuesday, Justice Department aides acknowledged in a background briefing for reporters that the attorney general had caused confusion by his “linguistic parsing.” A special counsel, if one is named, would presumably try to determine if any of Mr. Gonzales’s ambiguous statements were outright lies.
Senator Feinstein said today that Mr. Gonzales has often given “misleading and often untrue statements to Congress,” and that she had never seen “an attorney general so contemptuous of Congress and his role as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.”
A spokesman for the Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, told The Associated Press that Mr. Reid supported the request for a special counsel.
Senator Leahy said he was subpoenaing Mr. Rove because “the accumulated evidence shows that political considerations factored into the unprecedented firing” of the federal prosecutors last year. A subpoena is also being issued for J. Scott Jennings, a White House political aide, Mr. Leahy said.
United States attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and the people in those posts typically change when administrations change. But once installed, United States attorneys have traditionally been free of explicit political interference. Democrats have asserted that the nine who were let go last year may have been victims of cynical political calculations.
Mr. Leahy has said explicitly that he simply does not trust Mr. Gonzales. Today, Mr. Leahy sent a letter to Mr. Gonzales inviting him to change his testimony to cleanse himself of any possible perjury charges, and to do so by the end of next week.
Aboard Air Force One on the way to Philadelphia today, the White House spokesman, Mr. Snow, said that, contrary to the Democrats’ assertions, Mr. Gonzales has been consistent and that “the president supports him.” Mr. Snow suggested that what some see as deliberate inconsistencies in Mr. Gonzales’s accounts may be a reflection of the complexity of the issues being discussed.
President Bush was accompanied on his visit to Philadelphia by Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Specter has been as critical of Mr. Gonzales as have the Democrats, and he told reporters that he might talk to the president today about his concerns, The Associated Press reported.
Later, after returning to Washington, Mr. Specter declined to discuss what he and the president had talked about. Asked whether he supported the call for a special counsel, which was led by Senator Schumer, Mr. Specter said he did not.
Regarding Mr. Gonzales’s testimony, Mr. Specter said: “There are very complex questions that have to be answered on looking at the record. But Senator Schumer’s not interested in looking at the record. He’s interested in throwing down the gauntlet and making a story in tomorrow’s newspapers.”
Mr. Specter pointed out that Senator Leahy had not signed the letter to the solicitor general.
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NYT : F.B.I. Chief Gives Account at Odds With Gonzales’s
Friday, July 27, 2007
F.B.I. Chief Gives Account at Odds With Gonzales’s
By DAVID JOHNSTON and SCOTT SHANE | July 27, 2007
WASHINGTON, July 26 — The director of the F.B.I. offered testimony Thursday that sharply conflicted with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s sworn statements about a 2004 confrontation in which top Justice Department officials threatened to resign over a secret intelligence operation.
The director, Robert S. Mueller III, told the House Judiciary Committee that the confrontation was about the National Security Agency’s counterterrorist eavesdropping program, describing it as “an N.S.A. program that has been much discussed.” His testimony was a serious blow to Mr. Gonzales, who insisted at a Senate hearing on Tuesday that there were no disagreements inside the Bush administration about the program at the time of those discussions or at any other time.
The director’s remarks were especially significant because Mr. Mueller is the Justice Department’s chief law enforcement official. He also played a crucial role in the 2004 dispute over the program, intervening with President Bush to help deal with the threat of mass resignations that grew out of a day of emergency meetings at the White House and at the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general.
In a separate development, Senate Democrats, who were unaware of Mr. Mueller’s comments, demanded the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Gonzales committed perjury in his testimony on Tuesday about the intelligence dispute. The Senate Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, issued a subpoena to Karl Rove, the White House senior political adviser, and another presidential aide, J. Scott Jennings, for testimony about the dismissal of federal prosecutors, another issue that has dogged Mr. Gonzales.
White House officials said the Democrats had engaged in political gamesmanship.
“What we are witnessing is an out-of-control Congress which spends time calling for special prosecutors, starting investigations, issuing subpoenas and generally just trying to settle scores,” said Scott M. Stanzel, a White House spokesman. “All the while they fail to pass appropriations bills and important issues like immigration reform, energy and other problems go unanswered.”
The conflict underscored how Mr. Gonzales’s troubles have expanded beyond accusations of improper political influence in the dismissal of United States attorneys to the handling of the eavesdropping program, in which Mr. Gonzales was significantly involved in his previous post as White House counsel.
“I had an understanding that the discussion was on a N.S.A. program,” Mr. Mueller said in answer to a question from Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, in a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.
Asked whether he was referring to the Terrorist Surveillance Program, or T.S.P., he replied, “The discussion was on a national N.S.A. program that has been much discussed, yes.”
Mr. Mueller said he had taken notes of some of his conversations about the issue, and after the hearing the committee asked him to produce them.
An F.B.I. spokesman declined Thursday night to elaborate on Mr. Mueller’s testimony.
In a four-hour appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales denied that the dispute arose over the Terrorist Surveillance Program, whose existence was confirmed by President Bush in December 2005 after it had been disclosed by The New York Times. Mr. Gonzales said it centered on “other intelligence activities.”
Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said Thursday night that Mr. Gonzales had testified truthfully, saying “confusion is inevitable when complicated classified activities are discussed in a public forum where the greatest care must be used not to compromise sensitive intelligence operations.”
The spokesman said that when Mr. Gonzales had said there had been no controversy about the eavesdropping operation, he was referring only to the program to intercept international communications that Mr. Bush publicly confirmed.
“The disagreement that occurred in March 2004 concerned the legal basis for intelligence activities that have not been publicly disclosed and that remain highly classified,” Mr. Roehrkasse said.
The four senators seeking an inquiry into Mr. Gonzales’s testimony sent a letter to the Justice Department saying “it is apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements.”
The senators asked for the appointment of a special counsel. While the Justice Department is not obliged to act on their request, the letter reflected the chasm of distrust that has opened between lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee and Mr. Gonzales.
The senators who signed the letter were Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Dianne Feinstein of California, Charles E. Schumer of New York and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. Ms. Feinstein, Mr. Feingold and Mr. Whitehouse are members of the Intelligence Committee and have been briefed on the intelligence programs at issue.
The senators’ letter was sent to Paul D. Clement, the solicitor general, because Mr. Gonzales is recused from investigations of his own conduct. In addition to his statements to Congress about the intelligence controversy, the letter raised the possibility that Mr. Gonzales had lied about the prosecutor firings.
In what amounted to a warning to the attorney general, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, sent Mr. Gonzales the transcript of Tuesday’s hearing, asking him to “mark any changes you wish to make to correct, clarify or supplement your answers so that, consistent with your oath, they are the whole truth.”
Similar requests are routinely sent to witnesses after hearings, but Mr. Leahy’s pointed language underscored his view of the seriousness of the dispute over Mr. Gonzales’s veracity.
Still, neither Mr. Leahy nor Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the committee’s top Republican and a tough critic of Mr. Gonzales, joined in the call for a perjury investigation.
“I don’t think you rush off precipitously and ask for appointment of special counsel to run that kind of an investigation,” Mr. Specter said.
Doubts about Mr. Gonzales’s version of events in March 2004 grew after James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general, testified in May that he and other Justice Department officials were prepared to resign over legal objections to an intelligence program that appeared to be the N.S.A. program.
Mr. Gonzales’s testimony Tuesday was his first since Mr. Comey’s account drew national attention. He stuck to his account, repeatedly saying that the dispute involved a different intelligence activity.
Mr. Gonzales described an emergency meeting with Congressional leaders at the White House on March 10, 2004, to discuss the dispute. That evening, he and the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., went to the hospital bedside of Mr. Ashcroft in an unsuccessful effort to get his reauthorization for the secret program.
Lawmakers present at the afternoon meeting have given various accounts, but several have said that only one program, the Terrorist Surveillance Program, was discussed.
In addition, in testimony last year, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who was the N.S.A. director when the program started and now heads the Central Intelligence Agency, said the March 2004 meeting involved the Terrorist Surveillance Program.
By DAVID JOHNSTON and SCOTT SHANE | July 27, 2007
WASHINGTON, July 26 — The director of the F.B.I. offered testimony Thursday that sharply conflicted with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s sworn statements about a 2004 confrontation in which top Justice Department officials threatened to resign over a secret intelligence operation.
The director, Robert S. Mueller III, told the House Judiciary Committee that the confrontation was about the National Security Agency’s counterterrorist eavesdropping program, describing it as “an N.S.A. program that has been much discussed.” His testimony was a serious blow to Mr. Gonzales, who insisted at a Senate hearing on Tuesday that there were no disagreements inside the Bush administration about the program at the time of those discussions or at any other time.
The director’s remarks were especially significant because Mr. Mueller is the Justice Department’s chief law enforcement official. He also played a crucial role in the 2004 dispute over the program, intervening with President Bush to help deal with the threat of mass resignations that grew out of a day of emergency meetings at the White House and at the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general.
In a separate development, Senate Democrats, who were unaware of Mr. Mueller’s comments, demanded the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Gonzales committed perjury in his testimony on Tuesday about the intelligence dispute. The Senate Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, issued a subpoena to Karl Rove, the White House senior political adviser, and another presidential aide, J. Scott Jennings, for testimony about the dismissal of federal prosecutors, another issue that has dogged Mr. Gonzales.
White House officials said the Democrats had engaged in political gamesmanship.
“What we are witnessing is an out-of-control Congress which spends time calling for special prosecutors, starting investigations, issuing subpoenas and generally just trying to settle scores,” said Scott M. Stanzel, a White House spokesman. “All the while they fail to pass appropriations bills and important issues like immigration reform, energy and other problems go unanswered.”
The conflict underscored how Mr. Gonzales’s troubles have expanded beyond accusations of improper political influence in the dismissal of United States attorneys to the handling of the eavesdropping program, in which Mr. Gonzales was significantly involved in his previous post as White House counsel.
“I had an understanding that the discussion was on a N.S.A. program,” Mr. Mueller said in answer to a question from Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, in a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.
Asked whether he was referring to the Terrorist Surveillance Program, or T.S.P., he replied, “The discussion was on a national N.S.A. program that has been much discussed, yes.”
Mr. Mueller said he had taken notes of some of his conversations about the issue, and after the hearing the committee asked him to produce them.
An F.B.I. spokesman declined Thursday night to elaborate on Mr. Mueller’s testimony.
In a four-hour appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales denied that the dispute arose over the Terrorist Surveillance Program, whose existence was confirmed by President Bush in December 2005 after it had been disclosed by The New York Times. Mr. Gonzales said it centered on “other intelligence activities.”
Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said Thursday night that Mr. Gonzales had testified truthfully, saying “confusion is inevitable when complicated classified activities are discussed in a public forum where the greatest care must be used not to compromise sensitive intelligence operations.”
The spokesman said that when Mr. Gonzales had said there had been no controversy about the eavesdropping operation, he was referring only to the program to intercept international communications that Mr. Bush publicly confirmed.
“The disagreement that occurred in March 2004 concerned the legal basis for intelligence activities that have not been publicly disclosed and that remain highly classified,” Mr. Roehrkasse said.
The four senators seeking an inquiry into Mr. Gonzales’s testimony sent a letter to the Justice Department saying “it is apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements.”
The senators asked for the appointment of a special counsel. While the Justice Department is not obliged to act on their request, the letter reflected the chasm of distrust that has opened between lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee and Mr. Gonzales.
The senators who signed the letter were Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Dianne Feinstein of California, Charles E. Schumer of New York and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. Ms. Feinstein, Mr. Feingold and Mr. Whitehouse are members of the Intelligence Committee and have been briefed on the intelligence programs at issue.
The senators’ letter was sent to Paul D. Clement, the solicitor general, because Mr. Gonzales is recused from investigations of his own conduct. In addition to his statements to Congress about the intelligence controversy, the letter raised the possibility that Mr. Gonzales had lied about the prosecutor firings.
In what amounted to a warning to the attorney general, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, sent Mr. Gonzales the transcript of Tuesday’s hearing, asking him to “mark any changes you wish to make to correct, clarify or supplement your answers so that, consistent with your oath, they are the whole truth.”
Similar requests are routinely sent to witnesses after hearings, but Mr. Leahy’s pointed language underscored his view of the seriousness of the dispute over Mr. Gonzales’s veracity.
Still, neither Mr. Leahy nor Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the committee’s top Republican and a tough critic of Mr. Gonzales, joined in the call for a perjury investigation.
“I don’t think you rush off precipitously and ask for appointment of special counsel to run that kind of an investigation,” Mr. Specter said.
Doubts about Mr. Gonzales’s version of events in March 2004 grew after James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general, testified in May that he and other Justice Department officials were prepared to resign over legal objections to an intelligence program that appeared to be the N.S.A. program.
Mr. Gonzales’s testimony Tuesday was his first since Mr. Comey’s account drew national attention. He stuck to his account, repeatedly saying that the dispute involved a different intelligence activity.
Mr. Gonzales described an emergency meeting with Congressional leaders at the White House on March 10, 2004, to discuss the dispute. That evening, he and the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., went to the hospital bedside of Mr. Ashcroft in an unsuccessful effort to get his reauthorization for the secret program.
Lawmakers present at the afternoon meeting have given various accounts, but several have said that only one program, the Terrorist Surveillance Program, was discussed.
In addition, in testimony last year, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who was the N.S.A. director when the program started and now heads the Central Intelligence Agency, said the March 2004 meeting involved the Terrorist Surveillance Program.
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Guardian : FBI Director Contradicts Gonzales
Friday, July 27, 2007
FBI Director Contradicts Gonzales
By LAURIE KELLMAN and LARA JAKES JORDAN | Associated Press Writers | July 26, 2007
WASHINGTON (AP) - FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said Thursday the government's terrorist surveillance program was the topic of a 2004 hospital room dispute between top Bush administration officials, contradicting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' sworn Senate testimony.
Mueller was not in the hospital room at the time of the dramatic March 10, 2004, confrontation between then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and presidential advisers Andy Card and Gonzales, who was then serving as White House counsel. Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee he arrived shortly after they left, and spoke with the ailing Ashcroft.
``Did you have an understanding that that the conversation was on TSP?'' asked Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas. TSP stands for terrorist surveillance program.
``I had an understanding the discussion was on a NSA program, yes,'' Mueller answered.
Jackson asked again: ``We use 'TSP,' we use 'warrantless wiretapping,' so would I be comfortable in saying that those were the items that were part of the discussion?''
``The discussion was on a national NSA program that has been much discussed, yes,'' Mueller responded.
The NSA, or National Security Agency, runs the program that eavesdropped on terror suspects in the United States, without court approval, until last January, when the program was put under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
On Tuesday, Gonzales repeatedly and emphatically denied that the dispute was about the terrorist surveillance program.
Mueller also affirmed, under lawmakers' pointed questioning, that Ashcroft sided against the two White House officials and with then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey, who believed the eavesdropping program was illegal.
Mueller's testimony cast fresh doubt on Gonzales' credibility. Hours earlier, Senate Democrats called for a perjury investigation against Gonzales and subpoenaed top presidential aide Karl Rove in a deepening political and legal clash with the Bush administration.
``It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements,'' four Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote in a letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement.
They dispatched the letter shortly before Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced the subpoena of Rove, the president's top political strategist, in remarks on the Senate floor. The White House has claimed executive privilege to block congressional demands for documents or testimony by some current and former presidential aides. President Bush, meanwhile, has continued to support Gonzales.
Democrats issued a list of examples of what one called Gonzales' ``lying'' before Congress.
``We have now reached a point where the accumulated evidence shows that political considerations factored into the unprecedented firing of at least nine United States attorneys last year,'' said Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In response, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said, ``Every day congressional Democrats prove that they're more interested in headlines than doing the business Americans want them to do.''
The call for a perjury probe focuses on conflicts between testimony Gonzales gave the Judiciary Committee in two appearances, one last year and the other this week. That issue revolves around whether there was internal administration dissent over the president's warrantless wiretapping program.
Also at issue, Democrats say, is a conflict between Gonzales' testimony that he had not spoken with other witnesses about the firings and his former White House liaison's account of an ``uncomfortable'' conversation in which the attorney general reviewed his recollection of the events and asked her opinion.
``There's no wiggle room,'' said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., one of the four lawmakers to sign the letter. ``It's not misleading. Those are deceiving. Those are lying.''
And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters, ``I'm convinced that he's not telling the truth,'' based on conversations with Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.
As for the firing of the prosecutors, e-mails released by the Justice Department show Gonzales' aides conferred with Rove on the matter.
Leahy also said he was issuing a subpoena for J. Scott Jennings, a White House political aide. The deadline for compliance by Rove and him was set for Aug. 2.
``For over four months, I have exhausted every avenue seeking the voluntary cooperation of Karl Rove and J. Scott Jennings, but to no avail,'' the Vermont lawmaker said. ``They and the White House have stonewalled every request. Indeed, the White House is choosing to withhold documents and is instructing witnesses who are former officials to refuse to answer questions and provide relevant information and documents.''
The call for a perjury investigation marked yet another complication for Gonzales, whose fitness to serve has been criticized by Republicans and Democrats alike.
In a separate letter Thursday to Gonzales, Leahy said he would give the attorney general eight days to correct, clarify or otherwise change his testimony ``so that, consistent with your oath, they are the whole truth.''
In their letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement, the four senators wrote that Gonzales' testimony last year that there had been no internal dissent over the president's wiretapping program conflicted with Comey's testimony and with Gonzales' own statements this week before the Judiciary Committee.
They also said Gonzales falsely told the panel that he had not talked about the firings with other Justice Department officials. His former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, told the House Judiciary Committee under a grant of immunity that she had an ``uncomfortable'' conversation with Gonzales in which he outlined his recollection of what happened and asked her for her reaction.
Clement would decide whether to appoint a special prosecutor because Gonzales and outgoing Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty have recused themselves from the investigation that involves them. The Justice Department's No. 3 official, Associate Attorney General William Mercer, is serving only in an acting capacity and therefore does not have the authority.
At issue is what was discussed at a March 10, 2004, congressional briefing. A letter from then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte said the briefing concerned the administration's terrorist surveillance program on the eve of its expiration.
Gonzales, at Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, testified that the issue at hand was not about the terrorist surveillance program. Instead, he said, the emergency meetings on March 10, 2004, had focused on an intelligence program that he would not describe. He said the meeting prompted him to go to Ashcroft's bedside to recertify the surveillance program, but he denied pressuring Ashcroft to do so. Ashcroft, recovering from gall bladder surgery, refused.
Associated Press Writer Jennifer Loven contributed to this story.
By LAURIE KELLMAN and LARA JAKES JORDAN | Associated Press Writers | July 26, 2007
WASHINGTON (AP) - FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said Thursday the government's terrorist surveillance program was the topic of a 2004 hospital room dispute between top Bush administration officials, contradicting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' sworn Senate testimony.
Mueller was not in the hospital room at the time of the dramatic March 10, 2004, confrontation between then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and presidential advisers Andy Card and Gonzales, who was then serving as White House counsel. Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee he arrived shortly after they left, and spoke with the ailing Ashcroft.
``Did you have an understanding that that the conversation was on TSP?'' asked Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas. TSP stands for terrorist surveillance program.
``I had an understanding the discussion was on a NSA program, yes,'' Mueller answered.
Jackson asked again: ``We use 'TSP,' we use 'warrantless wiretapping,' so would I be comfortable in saying that those were the items that were part of the discussion?''
``The discussion was on a national NSA program that has been much discussed, yes,'' Mueller responded.
The NSA, or National Security Agency, runs the program that eavesdropped on terror suspects in the United States, without court approval, until last January, when the program was put under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
On Tuesday, Gonzales repeatedly and emphatically denied that the dispute was about the terrorist surveillance program.
Mueller also affirmed, under lawmakers' pointed questioning, that Ashcroft sided against the two White House officials and with then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey, who believed the eavesdropping program was illegal.
Mueller's testimony cast fresh doubt on Gonzales' credibility. Hours earlier, Senate Democrats called for a perjury investigation against Gonzales and subpoenaed top presidential aide Karl Rove in a deepening political and legal clash with the Bush administration.
``It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements,'' four Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote in a letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement.
They dispatched the letter shortly before Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced the subpoena of Rove, the president's top political strategist, in remarks on the Senate floor. The White House has claimed executive privilege to block congressional demands for documents or testimony by some current and former presidential aides. President Bush, meanwhile, has continued to support Gonzales.
Democrats issued a list of examples of what one called Gonzales' ``lying'' before Congress.
``We have now reached a point where the accumulated evidence shows that political considerations factored into the unprecedented firing of at least nine United States attorneys last year,'' said Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In response, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said, ``Every day congressional Democrats prove that they're more interested in headlines than doing the business Americans want them to do.''
The call for a perjury probe focuses on conflicts between testimony Gonzales gave the Judiciary Committee in two appearances, one last year and the other this week. That issue revolves around whether there was internal administration dissent over the president's warrantless wiretapping program.
Also at issue, Democrats say, is a conflict between Gonzales' testimony that he had not spoken with other witnesses about the firings and his former White House liaison's account of an ``uncomfortable'' conversation in which the attorney general reviewed his recollection of the events and asked her opinion.
``There's no wiggle room,'' said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., one of the four lawmakers to sign the letter. ``It's not misleading. Those are deceiving. Those are lying.''
And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters, ``I'm convinced that he's not telling the truth,'' based on conversations with Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.
As for the firing of the prosecutors, e-mails released by the Justice Department show Gonzales' aides conferred with Rove on the matter.
Leahy also said he was issuing a subpoena for J. Scott Jennings, a White House political aide. The deadline for compliance by Rove and him was set for Aug. 2.
``For over four months, I have exhausted every avenue seeking the voluntary cooperation of Karl Rove and J. Scott Jennings, but to no avail,'' the Vermont lawmaker said. ``They and the White House have stonewalled every request. Indeed, the White House is choosing to withhold documents and is instructing witnesses who are former officials to refuse to answer questions and provide relevant information and documents.''
The call for a perjury investigation marked yet another complication for Gonzales, whose fitness to serve has been criticized by Republicans and Democrats alike.
In a separate letter Thursday to Gonzales, Leahy said he would give the attorney general eight days to correct, clarify or otherwise change his testimony ``so that, consistent with your oath, they are the whole truth.''
In their letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement, the four senators wrote that Gonzales' testimony last year that there had been no internal dissent over the president's wiretapping program conflicted with Comey's testimony and with Gonzales' own statements this week before the Judiciary Committee.
They also said Gonzales falsely told the panel that he had not talked about the firings with other Justice Department officials. His former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, told the House Judiciary Committee under a grant of immunity that she had an ``uncomfortable'' conversation with Gonzales in which he outlined his recollection of what happened and asked her for her reaction.
Clement would decide whether to appoint a special prosecutor because Gonzales and outgoing Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty have recused themselves from the investigation that involves them. The Justice Department's No. 3 official, Associate Attorney General William Mercer, is serving only in an acting capacity and therefore does not have the authority.
At issue is what was discussed at a March 10, 2004, congressional briefing. A letter from then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte said the briefing concerned the administration's terrorist surveillance program on the eve of its expiration.
Gonzales, at Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, testified that the issue at hand was not about the terrorist surveillance program. Instead, he said, the emergency meetings on March 10, 2004, had focused on an intelligence program that he would not describe. He said the meeting prompted him to go to Ashcroft's bedside to recertify the surveillance program, but he denied pressuring Ashcroft to do so. Ashcroft, recovering from gall bladder surgery, refused.
Associated Press Writer Jennifer Loven contributed to this story.
Filed under
Alberto Gonzales,
Robert Mueller,
UK
by Winter Patriot
on Friday, July 27, 2007
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