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This Guy's Still Here?Gonzales cringes some more before the Senate.

By Emily BazelonPosted Tuesday, July 24, 2007, at 6:01 PM ET

Attorney General Alberto GonzalesCongress hasn't brought itself to censure or impeach Alberto Gonzales, but it sure does relish pummeling him. Maybe that's the problem: Beating up on the attorney general makes for such a good time that the senators just can't give him up.

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Even after all these months of tacking and backtracking, Gonzales' lack of command of the details is something to behold. He doesn't know the total number of U.S. attorneys who were fired. He doesn't recall his participation in reversing former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton's decision about whether to seek the death penalty in a case where all the evidence was circumstantial. He doesn't know why DoJ's new guide to prosecuting voter fraud removed or watered down key directives against pursuing cases in a way that could interfere with the outcome of an election. He doesn't know why the Justice Department's guidelines restricting communications with the White House now suddenly include a blanket exception for contact between the attorney general and the vice president and his counsel. And, of course, he doesn't know who put the names of the U.S. attorneys on the list he approved for firing.

Gonzales' biggest problem today isn't the senators, who can shake their heads and raise their voice at his nonanswers, but can't change them or get rid of him without the drama of impeachment. His problem is Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who has twice shown up before Congress to achieve an impossible feat: make his former boss look worse than Gonzales' own self-immolating performances. First, Comey vouched for the U.S. attorneys Gonzales fired, making it clear that he couldn't imagine any good reason why they lost their jobs. Next, he told the creepy story of Gonzales' race to the hospital bed of John Ashcroft, when Gonzales was White House counsel, Ashcroft was critically ill, and Gonzales was determined to get him to sign off anyway on a surveillance program that Comey and the director of the FBI had decided was illegal.

Specter quotes one of Comey's best lines twice: "I thought I had just witnessed an attempt to take advantage of a very sick man." What, Specter wants to know, is Gonzales' side of the story? (That is, if Specter's question, which began, "What credibility is left for you?" can be considered an open inquiry.)

Gonzales says that his visit to Ashcroft's hospital bed in spring 2004 was triggered by a meeting earlier that day of the bipartisan Gang of Eight, the congressional leadership briefed on some of the administration's anti-terror doings. He wanted to tell Ashcroft that "Comey didn't approve vital anti-terrorism activities despite continued approvals" over the previous two years, and that by "consensus," the Gang of Eight—including the four Democrats—had agreed that the administration should keep these activities going anyway.

Specter cuts him off. "How can you get approval from Ashcroft for this program if he's no longer the attorney general?" he asks.

"We would not have sought nor did we intend to get any approval from Ashcroft if he was not competent," Gonzales answers. "But there are not rules. He could always reclaim—"

"While under sedation?" Specter retorts.

Later, when Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, gives Gonzales a chance to finish his thought, he says that during his visit to the hospital (with Andrew Card, then-White House chief of staff), "Ashcroft did most of the talking" and was "as lucid as he is at the White House." In other words, he can't imagine why Jim Comey and Ashcroft's wife felt like they needed to stand by Ashcroft's side, or why FBI Director Robert Mueller didn't want Ashcroft left alone with Gonzales and Card. Various senators make sure to note that they don't believe this.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., also thinks he has caught Gonzales in a lie. When Comey testified, it was clear that he was talking about the "terrorist surveillance program" run by the National Security Agency, which was secretly authorized by the president after 9/11 and announced to the public in 2005 (after the New York Times reported on it). Now Gonzales says, "The reason for my visit to the hospital was other surveillance activities. It was not about the program the president had announced." But at a June press conference, Gonzales referred to a "highly classified program which the president confirmed to the American people some time ago" in discussing Comey's testimony. Why would Gonzales be motivated to change his story now? Because before Comey went public about the argument over the terrorist surveillance program, Schumer asked Gonzales whether there had been any "dissent within the administration" about it, and Gonzales said no.

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Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor.

Photograph of Alberto Gonzales by Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

Alberto Gonzales is still here, still sitting at the Attorney General's Table. It is just a reminder of one more failure of the Democratic run Congress. It is getting or should I say, it is downright embarrassing for the Democrats. They promised so much while asking us for our votes and confidence in them, so far, they haven't delivered on one of them.

The Democrats are sleep walking through their first few months. There is not one item on their agenda, they focus on. They gave half hearted attempts to bring the Troops home. They could have stopped the Funding for the war and chose not to. They talked of Impeaching Bush but, chose to take it off the table. Recently Senator Finegold put a Censure Bill for Bush, Harry Reid is not interested, there's to much to do, whatever that means.

Both party's are mirror images of each other, cloned from the same egg. I can think of a few choice words to call what they did but, I'll keep it "G" rated by saying, they Betrayed us. They thought it more important to look after their jobs then service the Country and its people, which is their jobs.

--Geyser

(To reply, click here.)

What the hell is going on? The Congress is pulling the AG into countless inquiries over what? Tapping the lines of terrorists calling their comrades here in the states? I say tap away, listen and tape and do whatever you want. They are terrorists!

Thanks to the NY Times we all now know the U.S. authorities have high tech computers to sift through countless phones call algorithms in an effort to tap the ones that count. And the Libs in Congress are up in arms. This is chicken feed compared what FDR, JFK and RFK did in their day. The FISA court? Did that court bring any contempt charges? Did they object? No.

Who cares if they didn't seek approval afterwards, it was a done deal anyway. You want to fight terrorists or court battles?

Stop with the boring "Bush is shredding the constitution and is targeting us all. bla bla bla". The only "victims" have been manufactured in college libraries by Left wingers. As if the Left gives a damn about the U.S. Constitution with the constant attacks on the first and second amendments and insistence that the constitution is a "flexible" document.

--Mayfray88

(To reply, click here.)

Richard Nixon seems downright honorable and decent by the standards being set by this administration. At least his pathetic "I am not a crook!" statement seemed to show an awareness, a sort of public acknowledgement, that this issue was actually on the minds of Americans and needed to be addressed, however unconvincingly. Nixon at least seemed human at the depth of his plight.

In contrast, the Bushies more resemble something like an infestation of termites or lice. You just know that no appeal to reason, decency or historical precedent could possibly get rid of them. No public spectacle of bumbling ineptitude or sweaty evasiveness can shame them. This is not mere corruption; it's pestilence of the highest order.

These are alien creatures who resemble and act like human beings during the daytime. At night, they gather in humid, overheated chambers beneath the National Archives building—sort of like the egg chamber in Aliens—to sap the lifeblood of the Constitution with highly specialized sucking mouthparts. It's a terrible fear I have to find myself locked in the Smithsonian at night, with my handheld Alien detector going "beep, beep, beep" as Alberto Gonzales makes his way towards me through the ventilation duct.

--fingerpuppet

(To reply, click here.)

(7/27)

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