What Gonzales Really Told
Us
    By William Rivers
Pitt
    t r u t h o u t | Columnist

    Friday 20 April 2007

    The testimony given Thursday by Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee during a
hearing to investigate the firing of eight United States attorneys
deserves a place of high honor in the Gibberish Hall of Fame. It was
astonishing in its vapidity, almost to a point beyond description. The
emptiness of Gonzales's answers, after several hours, became the political
version of a Zen koan. They simply stopped my mind.

    It was, in the main, an unspeakably gruesome
performance. The aspect most commentators immediately seized on was the
amazing number of questions Mr. Gonzales answered with either "I don't
recall," or some permutation thereof. Estimates put the final count
somewhere between 74 and 100 "dunno" replies, an amount truly Reaganesqe
in stature.

    There was no bristling give-and-take during
this hearing, no fiery debate, no "Have you no sense of decency" moment
when the rogue official is brought snarling to bay. Indeed, the only time
tempers flared was when exasperated senators became fed up with Gonzales's
inability to answer virtually any of the questions put to him. The annoyed
senators, Republican and Democratic alike, at several points rained
condescendingly rhetorical questions upon him in extremis, expecting no
answers because they knew none were ever going to come.

    Judiciary Committee member Tom Coburn, a
conservative Republican senator from Oklahoma, dropped one of the more
devastating bricks of the day after slogging through Gonzales's feeble
display. "It was handled incompetently," said Coburn of the firings that
inspired this hearing, if not of the testimony he'd just endured. "The
communication was atrocious, it was inconsistent. It's generous to say
that there were misstatements; that's a generous statement. And I believe
you ought to suffer the consequences that these others have suffered. And
I believe the best way to put this behind us is your resignation."

    The sentiment was repeated in the waning
moments of the hearing by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who said:
"Mr. Attorney General, at the beginning of the hearing, we laid out the
burden of proof for you to meet, to answer questions directly and fully,
to show that you were truly in charge of the Justice Department, and most
of all, to convincingly explain who, when and why the eight US attorneys
were fired. You've answered 'I don't know' or 'I can't
recall' to close to a hundred questions."

    "You're not familiar with much of the workings
of your own department," continued Schumer. "And we still don't have
convincing explanations of the who, when and why in regard to the firing
of the majority of the eight US attorneys. Thus, you haven't met any of
these three tests. I don't see any point in another round of questions.
And I urge you to re-examine your performance and, for the good of the
department and the good of the country, step down."

    Dana Bash of CNN reported comments made by
appalled Republicans during breaks in the hearing. "Loyal Republican after
loyal Republican in this hearing room," said Bash, "and more specifically
in private to CNN today, have made it clear that they are frankly
flabbergasted by how poorly they think the attorney general has done in
this hearing. During the lunch break, in private, several very loyal
Republicans made it clear to CNN that they were really dripping with
disappointment."

    Another CNN reporter, Suzanne Malveaux, offered
other Republican statements of dismay. "Two senior White House aides
here," reported Malveaux, "described the situation, Gonzales's testimony,
as 'going down in flames.' That he was 'not doing himself any favors.' One
prominent Republican described watching his testimony as 'clubbing a baby
seal.'"

    Ouch.

    So what is to be made of this? As attorney
general, Gonzales is the top official in the Department of Justice. The
list of DOJ-related agencies that Gonzales is expected to oversee is
nearly 60 items long. Among these are the FBI, the ATF, the DEA, the Civil
Rights division, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the US Marshals Service,
the Office of the Solicitor General and, of course, all the US attorneys
spread across the 50 states. The DOJ's own web site explains that, "Since
the 1870 Act that established the Department of Justice as an executive
department of the government of the United States, the attorney general
has guided the world's largest law office and the central agency for
enforcement of federal laws."

    Is it possible that the man charged with such
awesome responsibilities is, in fact, a blithering idiot? Nothing in
Thursday's hearing served to disabuse anyone of this notion, and in the
final analysis that may be the whole point of the exercise ... and the tip
of a very dangerous iceberg.

    Allegations have been raised that the
Bush administration sought to use the US attorneys' offices within key
battleground states, along with political appointees within the DOJ's
Civil Rights division, as a hammer to break apart voting protections for
minorities. "For six years," reported Greg Gordon in the Baltimore Sun,
"the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political
appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter
turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political
candidates, according to former department lawyers and a review of written
records. The administration intensified its efforts last year as
President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a
midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won."

    "Questions about the administration's
campaign against alleged voter fraud," continued Gordon, "have helped fuel
the political tempest over the firings last year of eight US attorneys,
several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter
fraud cases important to Republican politicians.... On virtually every
significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the
division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans,
notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington, and other states
where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins."

    Beyond that is the specific case of California
US Attorney Carol Lam, who prosecuted and convicted Representative Randy
"Duke" Cunningham in a massive Congressional bribery scandal. Lam was
later fired from her position, supposedly because she was failing to
effectively prosecute immigration cases, or something to that effect. (Mr.
Gonzales could not actually recall exactly why Lam was sacked, to nobody's
great surprise.)

    However, allegations have been raised that she
was actually removed because her investigations into Cunningham were
leading her closer to the centers of Republican power. Back in March, none
other than Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania raised the
issue on the Senate floor. Specter openly questioned whether Lam had been
removed because she was "about to investigate other people who were
politically powerful."

    On the surface, yesterday's hearing and the
galaxy of un-recollections offered by Gonzales may seem to have been a
waste of time. In fact, this was a revelatory moment of grave import.
Decisions to disrupt elections and voting rights, decisions to derail
investigations into Republicans, are made for political reasons by
political people. In this administration, the political people all work in
the White House.

    There can be little doubt, after yesterday,
that Alberto Gonzales was elevated to his position by Bush to affect a
political takeover of the Justice Department. The muscular legal arm of
federal power became just another tool to establish Karl Rove's dream of a
permanent Republican majority in government by disrupting the vote and by
obscuring GOP corruption. Thus, it doesn't matter if the attorney
general is a pudding, because there were other chefs in the kitchen at
Justice.

    It can be easily argued that Gonzales couldn't
answer simple questions, not because he is especially dumb, but because he
truly didn't know how. He wasn't there to run the place, but to open doors
for, and get out of the way of, Bush's political hatchetmen. Any
appointees who weren't going along with the program, including those fired
US attorneys, were swept aside.

    It can just as easily be argued that he was
able to answer those questions, but avoided doing so for tactical reasons.
The New York Times's editorial on Friday raised this line of
thinking by stating: "At the end of the day, we were left wondering why
the nation's chief law-enforcement officer would paint himself as a
bumbling fool. Perhaps it's because the alternative is that he is not
telling the truth. There is strong evidence that this purge was directed
from the White House, and that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political
adviser, and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, were deeply
involved."

    Either way, subpoenas need to be delivered to
the hatchetman-in-chief, Karl Rove, as well as to members of his crew, to
gather their sworn public testimony on the matter. It was made
clear Thursday that Gonzales wasn't in charge at Justice, and Rove appears
likely to have been the man who stood in his stead. Why? That's why we ask
questions.

    For the record,
decisions to disrupt elections and voting rights, and decisions to derail
investigations into Republicans, are flatly illegal. The first is fraud,
the second is obstruction of justice, and both are felony crimes. The
exposure of Gonzales on Thursday represents a long step towards pinning
legal accountability to the door of a certain Pennsylvania Avenue house,
and to the lapels of those persons within who are, at last, running out of
excuses.

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