TPMmuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Waas: Gonzales, A Likely Target, Helped Block Wiretapping Probe

Waas: Gonzales, A Likely Target, Helped Block Wiretapping Probe

By Paul Kiel - March 15, 2007, 11:48AM

Murray Waas, over at National Journal, adds to Alberto Gonzales' woes. It's another one of those complicated simple stories, and the gist is this: Gonzales knew that an internal Justice Department investigation would likely end up focusing on him, nevertheless, he went to Bush and got him to shut it down.

From National Journal:

Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.
Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.

It is unclear whether the president knew at the time of his decision that the Justice inquiry -- to be conducted by the department's internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility -- would almost certainly examine the conduct of his attorney general....

Current and former Justice Department officials, as well as experts in legal ethics, question the propriety of Gonzales's continuing to advise Bush about the investigation after learning that it might examine his own actions. The attorney general, they say, was remiss if he did not disclose that information to the president. But if Gonzales did inform Bush about the possibility and the president responded by stymieing the probe, that would raise even more-serious questions as to whether Bush acted to protect Gonzales, they said.

Update: Here's some background on how baseless and brazen Bush's removal of security clearances for the investigators was.

Comments (35)

Helene R. wrote on March 15, 2007 11:57 AM:

could someone please tell us what happened to Senator Feinstein's plan to bring the amendment to the patriot act relative to the replacement of US attorneys yesterday, Wednesday, March 14. Was it done? What be blocked by a Republican senator, as was feared it would be?

dqueue wrote on March 15, 2007 11:58 AM:

Now may we reboot the entire Cheney administration?

Dr Poshek wrote on March 15, 2007 12:14 PM:

The Gonzalez epic is starting to sound like the end of the opera, Dialogue of the Carmelites, where we here the guiolltine going, chop, chop, chop... unlike in the opera where the nuns are victims, Gonzalez deserves the dullest guiolltine blade available... let the SOB suffer a little like he's made the rest of us suffer! Perhaps they can try out the blade on Cheney first... just to make sure it isn't too sharp for Gonzalez.

kyrocky wrote on March 15, 2007 12:16 PM:

Please, IF Gonzales does not resign and chooses to face Congress again, under oath, please, please grill him on every aspect of this.

ShorelineCT wrote on March 15, 2007 12:19 PM:

Here is the new Repug talking point on this change from supporting the repeal, to opposition to it.

From the March 14th NewHour transcript

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june07/gonzales_03-14.html

Noel Francisco (R)
Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General during Bush's 1st term

Michael Greenberger(D)
Principal deputy associate attorney general in the Clinton administration.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Greenberger, do you attach any significance at all to the timing of this, that the interim law had just gone into effect which allowed them to appoint replacements for these U.S. attorneys without congressional, Senate approval?

MICHAEL GREENBERGER: Oh, there's no doubt that's the case. The e-mails that were revealed yesterday -- Attorney General Gonzales' chief of staff pointed to the law and said, "We've got the law. If we don't use it now, what good is having the law?"

And not only that, but he laid out a plan for sort of slow-rolling the senators so that there would never be a confirmation process in the remainder of the Bush term; that is to say, keeping these new appointees, the ones who've replaced the existing Bush appointees, in office, without ever putting them up for confirmation before the Senate.

GWEN IFILL: Should that law be rolled back?

MICHAEL GREENBERGER: I think it will be rolled back. There's a great deal of concern about this. The Republican senator from Nevada yesterday was very upset about his U.S. attorney being sent away when he thought that man was doing an outstanding job.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Francisco?

NOEL FRANCISCO: I think it would be a terrible mistake to roll that law back, and having nothing to do with the situation that we're in right now. Prior to the amendment to the law, judges were the ones who appointed interim U.S. attorneys.

I think there's a real problem when we have federal judges making political appointments into the executive branch. It violates our core notion of separation of powers, and it also presents a practical problem.

How would you feel if you were a criminal defendant being prosecuted by a U.S. attorney before a judge who picked the U.S. attorney? It smacks of fundamental unfairness, and that's exactly what separation of powers is intended to prevent.

Mrs Panstreppon wrote on March 15, 2007 12:24 PM:

Holy guacamole! There were some good guys in the Bush administration.

"...Over time, however, he [Jack Goldsmith]became "the central figure in a secret but intense rebellion of a small coterie of Bush administration lawyers" against the White House's legal claims that the president should have "virtually unlimited powers in the war in terror."...

"Comey showed us that he was a guy who wouldn't be kept on a leash," said a former White House official, "in an administration that likes to keep everybody on a short leash."..."

EasyRider wrote on March 15, 2007 12:30 PM:

This is from others:

The following notes were culled from comments of mine and others at firedoglake and from a post here at TPM and relate to questions posed in this post. Great list of questions Senator Schumer!

It was the right-wing operative who was put on Specter’s staff as a condition of his becoming Chair of the Judiciary. Remember when Specter got mouthy just after his 2004 reelection and said some things about anti-abortion judges that caused some Republicans to demand that he be denied the Judiciary Chair? He agreed to accept this staffer as a price of getting the job, to keep an eye on him from inside the Committee.

From: http://salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/02/09/united_states_attorneys/print.html

The staffer who reportedly performed this bit of dirty work is Michael O’Neill, a law professor at George Mason University and former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. As the Washington Times explained when O’Neill was appointed as the Senate Judiciary Committee’s chief counsel, many observers believed that Specter had hired him to reassure conservatives of his loyalty to the Bush White House. Right-wing distrust had almost ousted the Pennsylvania moderate from the Judiciary chairmanship, and appointing O’Neill was apparently the price for keeping that post.

_____Also on O'neill from washington times http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050905-114119-3586r.htm

On the USAG’s chief of staff who “ran amok” and made up the list of USA’s to be dismissed without telling Abu G.:

D. Kyle Sampson has served at the Department of Justice as a Counselor to the Attorney General since 2003, and he currently serves as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. Prior to joining the Department, Sampson served in the White House as Associate Counsel to the President and as Special Assistant to the President and Associate Director for Presidential Personnel. From 1999 to 2001, Sampson served as Counsel to Senator Orrin G. Hatch on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he taught as an Adjunct Professor at George Mason University Law School during the 2000-2001 school year. [USDOJ website]

Both O’Neill and Sampson taught at George Mason, you’ll note.

a commenter @ TPM 2/6/7

How did this actually happen? Brett Tolman was counsel for crime and terrorism for the Senate Judicial Committee under Hatch and then under Specter. The Deseret News says Tolman “helped the two senators gain support for the renewal of the Patriot Act.” Tolman was then nominated for the position of US attorney of Utah by Hatch, supported in his nomination by Specter, Frist, DeWine, and McConnell. But the White House opposed this, pushing for Kyle Sampson, Alberto Gonzales’ chief of staff for the position.

Tolman was nominated and appointed and this language somehow got in this bill.

Posted by: Eureka Springs, AR
Date: March 14, 2007 07:19 PM

'-----------------------------------

Question is:

You have to wonder if Specter was blackmailed! Is that a crime waiting to be found? If Eureka Springs is right this may be a very serious crime. It would rise to level of the subversion of the Constitution. That is a very serious crime. If the White House or AG, or RNC had anything to do with advance planning to black mail Specter; get Michael O'Neil - Senator Specter's Chief Counsel added to Specter's staff; and then to stick that little know change into the Patriotic Act Reauthorization, jsut so they could shut down all the investigations into GOP criminal activities.

That would be very serious indeed, perhaps Treason by all that were (are) involved.

mbbsdphil wrote on March 15, 2007 12:32 PM:

It is now time for the Texas State Bar to investigate Mr. Gonzales. We already knew he had no idea what's in the Constitution. If, as seems likely, he lied to Congress and/or the President, and intentionally spiked an investigation into his own illegal conduct, then even a friendly Texas State Bar disciplinary committee would be hard pressed not to conclude that his license to practice law should be revoked.

It would be a pity, but just, that his unquestioning loyalty to faulty masters, which allowed him to climb so high from such humble roots, should cause him to fall so low.

This president and this party prey on such individuals. In a corrupt parody of Mr. Bush's rise to prominence with such little talent, it raises to prominence those with more loyalty and youth than talent or experience - Kyle Sampson, Brett Kavanaugh, Tim Griffin, then uses them as human shields when their corruptness comes to light. To what level would Dante assign these men?

dqueue wrote on March 15, 2007 12:34 PM:

Ooh, the spectre of blackmail! It remains one of the unsubstantiated crimes to-date during the bush (err, cheney) administration... We have leaks, perjury, obstruction, bribery, theft, various corruptions, but we've yet to see any actual allegations of blackmail.

Please, oh please, let it be.

mbbsdphil wrote on March 15, 2007 12:45 PM:

There is not the slightest Constitutinal problem in having federal judges make interim appointments of US Attorneys.

The Constitution EXPLICITLY contemplates it, in the provision that allows the Senate's power to confirm the appointment of certain "inferior officers" to be delegated instead to the president or his nominee. That's the provision Mr. Bush used to justify his change to the Patriot Act!

The law that the Patriot Act II jettisoned allowed federal courts to appoint an interim US Attorney in the rare circumstance where a sitting attorney has been replaced and had not been confirmed by the Senate within 120 days. That court-appointed interim attorney held office only until a permanent replacement was named and confirmed.

That placed the monkey where it belonged - on the backs of the executive and legislative branches. Only where they failed to do that was the third branch, the federal courts, allowed to step in and keep the wheels of justice rolling. That is precisely what the checks and balances built into this Constitution are meant to do.

This administration and its enablers are intentionally misstating the law and its aims.

spartacus wrote on March 15, 2007 12:46 PM:

Yes, I understand that impeachment is analogous to radical surgery and is not to be done preciptiously, but we may owe it to future generations to take this step or at least begin the process so as to force resignations.
Beyond question, this is the most corrupt admin in our history both in the form and scope of the corruption.
What else have they done or are doing now that we haven't uncovered?
What have these MF's done to my beloved country and how do we stop them?

Ron Byers wrote on March 15, 2007 1:06 PM:

Noel Francisco has a small but undecisive point. The reason for letting a sitting judge appoint an interim if a replacement US Attorney can't be confirmed within 120 days is to encourage home state senators and the administration to work hard to find a consensus replacement US Attorney.

The existing system worked well for many, many years. It forced compromise. People keep repeating "United States Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President" mantra as if that were the beginning and end of the story. The old system was designed to give home state senators a real say in the selection of US Attorneys. That is important to the members of the Senate. I don't think Republican Senators are going to want to surrender the power to influence the selection of local US Attorneys. That is why either the staffers really didn't tell Arlen Specter about the change or he is afraid to admit he knew about it. There are 99 senators who would probably never talk to him again if he were to admit he knew. Better to be thought of as incompetent than as a Judas.

Ohnonotanotherscandal wrote on March 15, 2007 1:07 PM:

Ok, folks.

"Obstruction of Justice"
+"Lying to Congress"
+"Conspiracy"
----------------------------
"high crimes and misdemeanors"

What the hell is anybody waiting for, and invitation?!!!!!!!

Anonymous wrote on March 15, 2007 1:09 PM:

To our friends who are Members in good standing of the Texas Bar Association:

You have an ethical duty to inform the Bar when one of your Members has committed an act imputing to him dishonesy and/or unfitness to practice law. The time is now.

Nell wrote on March 15, 2007 1:09 PM:

@Shoreline CT: Thanks for that transcript and link. I wondered why nobody responded to the right winger, but discovered that he'd slipped the point in at the end of the segment.

Here's the response that should have been given:

"That system worked just fine for fifty years. If there were any real separation of powers issues, we'd have heard about them before now.

Also, if it were such an important issue, why wasn't it made part of the bill that went through the committee and floor votes in both houses of Congress, rather than being slipped in during the reconciliation process, supposedly without the knowledge of any Senator or Representative?

This is just one more in a long line of highly suspect Republican abuses of the conference committee process, which is supposed to take care of differences between House and Senate versions, not be an opportunity to slip in legislation that has not been debated in either house."

But he managed to get the talking point in at the end of the segment, so there was no response.

When you see this recur in comment sections, slap it down:
- There were no separation of powers complaints for the last fifty years that this system for appointing US Attorneys has been in place.

- If such concerns actually exist, the place to deal with them is in the open, in the version of the Patriot Act reauthorization that was debated and voted on in the House and Senate.

- Slipping new legislation in during the conference process is part of a pattern of Republican abuse of that process, which is intended only to reconcile differences between versions of bills passed by the House and Senate before they get their final vote of approval and are sent to the White House.

Mr. Bob wrote on March 15, 2007 1:20 PM:

Whaattt??? Blackmail in Pennsylvania!!!! Does anyone remember a few years back an article about a Pennsylvania law enforcement agency computer being breached. It was traced back to Israel, but the story died when the hacker was described as being a minor. Wonder who/what file was being looked at.

ohiomeister wrote on March 15, 2007 1:30 PM:

Can the Dems in Congress order the probe to start and provide security clearances?

windrider wrote on March 15, 2007 2:56 PM:

This by no means will be the last incident of obstructing justice we'll hear about. I think we have some good honest ethical people working in government who've had to zip their lips for so long even when they knew about these kinds of outrages were happening because they knew the lapdog Congress would bury them and the truth. It's almost like there's a race on, especially in the Justice Department, to expose the extent to which this administration has manipulated and betrayed any sense of justice, much less law and order.

Anonymous wrote on March 15, 2007 2:58 PM:

"How would you feel if you were a criminal defendant being prosecuted by a U.S. attorney before a judge who picked the U.S. attorney? "

A hell of a lot better than I would going before one picked by Karl Rove, that's for damn sure.

cal1942 wrote on March 15, 2007 4:50 PM:

Because of the way this happened, why wouldn't Bush be a party to the obstruction?

Books Alive wrote on March 16, 2007 12:10 AM:

Helene R,
If no one has replied, let me try. I saw S 214 listed as up for a vote on Monday. C-Span's posting. Thomas.gov is no help, nor the Judiciary Committee homepage.

However, the new tool, OpenCongress.org has this confusing and contradictory statement:

>> Mar 12, 2007: Motion to proceed to consideration of measure withdrawn in Senate. <<

All I can think is that it's been reinstated and there will be a vote Monday.

Anonymous wrote on March 16, 2007 12:48 AM:

you people are all liberal traitors. lets hope you dont destroy the republic. as incompetent as the bush administration is, Id rather have them then you dishonest crackpots. Bush at least knows whens hes being dishonest, you guys are so narcicistic you never can admit to yourselves that you're being hypocritical. thank god tha supreme court is stacked for the next 20 years

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