Gonzalez...sheesh!

May 6, 2007

Editorial

A Scandal That Keeps Growing

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declared recently, while batting down bipartisan calls for him to resign, that he had many things to do and “can’t just be focused on the U.S. attorneys situation.” It’s not surprising that Mr. Gonzales wants to change the subject. At best, the firing of eight United States attorneys, most of them highly respected, is an example of such profound incompetence that it should cost Mr. Gonzales his job. At worst, it was a political purge followed by a cover-up. In either case, the scandal is only getting bigger and more disturbing.

New reports of possible malfeasance keep coming fast and furious. They all seem to make it more likely than ever that the firings were part of an attempt to turn the Justice Department into a partisan political operation. There is, to start, the very strong appearance that United States attorneys were fired because they were investigating powerful Republicans or refused to bring baseless charges against Democrats. There is reason to believe that Carol Lam of San Diego, who put Randy Cunningham, the former Republican congressman, in jail, and Paul Charlton of Arizona, who was investigating Representative Rick Renzi, among others, were fired simply for their nonpartisan pursuit of justice.

The Justice Department opened an internal investigation last week into whether Monica Goodling, a former senior adviser to Mr. Gonzales, applied a political screen to applicants for assistant United States attorney positions. That kind of political test would violate department policy, and possibly the law. Ms. Goodling, who has invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, was also a key player in the United States attorney firings.

The National Journal brought to light an “internal order” in which Mr. Gonzales gave Ms. Goodling and his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, the power to hire and fire many of the department’s top officials. His willingness to hand this authority off to two young, highly political staff members is further evidence that partisanship and not professionalism was the driving force in hiring and firing.

More testimony has also emerged that undermines the department’s weak claim that the prosecutors were dismissed for poor performance. James Comey, who was deputy attorney general from 2003 to 2005, told a House committee last week that all but one of the prosecutors were worthy of remaining in office. He called Ms. Lam “a fine U.S. attorney” and Mr. Charlton “one of the best.”

Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Sampson and the others have given so many conflicting, barely credible stories for the firings that it is impossible not to suspect a cover-up. Some of the fired prosecutors strengthened that impression last week in written statements to Congress, in which they described being pressured by Michael Elston, an aide to the deputy attorney general, not to talk about their dismissals. John McKay, of Seattle, said his impression was that “Mr. Elston’s tone was sinister” and that he was “prepared to threaten me further if he concluded I did not intend to continue to remain silent about my dismissal.”

In her statement, Ms. Lam said that she was given just weeks to pack up, and that Justice Department officials told her that her dismissal came “from the very highest levels of the government.”

It is long past time for President Bush to fire Mr. Gonzales. But Congress, especially the Republicans who have dared confront the White House on this issue, should not be satisfied with that. There are strong indications that the purge was ordered out of the White House, involving at the very least the former counsel, Harriet Miers, and Karl Rove.

It is the duty of Congress to compel them and other officials to finally tell the truth to the American people.

From: The New York Times.

Letters to the Editor of The New York Times

May 3, 2007

The War Bill: Lines in the Sand (9 Letters)

To the Editor:

Re “Bush Vetoes Bill Tying Iraq Funds to Exit Schedule” (front page, May 2):

The most responsible action we could take in the Iraq war is to end it immediately. There is no prescription or timetable for victory. It is not clear why the nation needs a victory other than the one we have achieved already, which is to have gotten rid of a dangerous dictator. We don’t often do that in any case, much less fight a war for it.

We need to get on with a domestic energy policy, use the money we will otherwise waste in Iraq to further energy technology at home, and bring the troops home immediately.

Congress should not pass any spending bill, should undercut the ability of the troops to remain, and bring them home to safety now. That would perfectly express the will of the voters.

Eugene Gordon
Dover, N.J., May 2, 2007

•

To the Editor:

An alternative and more accurate description of the Democrats’ vetoed bill is that it forces the elected Iraqi government to prepare for a United States withdrawal on a timetable that we, not they, determine.

If, as many believe, the Iraqis’ maintenance of the infrastructure we built and the adequacy of Iraqi troops we are trying to train and mobilize is dilatory, notice of our withdrawal timetable would not be a signal to enemy terrorists but to Iraqi officials.

David L. Oshin
Scottsdale, Ariz., May 2, 2007

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To the Editor:

As President Bush signed his second veto, you note another seven “Names of the Dead,” for a total of 3,344. How many more brave men and women must die before the president and his Congressional allies finally realize that having no exit strategy and no firm benchmarks is the real “prescription for chaos and confusion” in Iraq that marks the ultimate failure of the administration?

The president’s continued insistence on a blank check for financing the war after four years is itself completely “irresponsible” and totally unacceptable.

Paul M. Wortman
Setauket, N.Y., May 2, 2007

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To the Editor:

The president complains that Congress is trying to do his job as military commander in chief for him. If this upsets him, he should do his job himself, and offer well-defined goals for Iraq with specific target dates.

Setting a timeline with clear goals is not “artificial.” It is leadership.

Paul Cantrell
Minneapolis, May 2, 2007

•

To the Editor:

So the president signs his order using a pen given to him by the father of a fallen marine. How facile this vainglorious White House is, putting evocative symbols before the public, trading on Americans’ politeness and compassion — and how utterly shameless and hypocritical.

Whether it’s posing next to a disabled veteran, a widowed spouse, a disaster victim, a ghetto child, a senior or the bereft parents of a soldier killed in his still-inexplicable failing vanity war in Iraq, President Bush puts form over substance every time. He has served none of the victims with whom he purports to grieve and pray. His obliviousness is the stuff of deposed kings.

Mark Miller
Los Angeles, May 2, 2007

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To the Editor:

President Bush defended his veto of the Iraq war spending bill on Tuesday by stating that commanders in Iraq should not be taking “fighting directions from politicians 6,000 miles away in Washington, D.C.”

Has the president forgotten that as commander in chief of the armed forces, he is also a politician in Washington, D.C., giving fighting directions to commanders in Iraq 6,000 miles away?

Civilian control of our military is one of the most firmly embedded traditions of our democratic system. And civilian control has always meant control by politicians in Washington, in most cases far from the front lines.

The problem with President Bush’s current position is that he is shirking his responsibilities as commander in chief. Whether President Bush likes it or not, the decision of whether our country should continue the current campaign in Iraq is not and should not be with the commanders in Iraq. That decision rests quite properly with politicians in Washington.

Jorge L. Baron
Seattle, May 2, 2007

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To the Editor:

Re “The Hail Mary Pass” (column, May 2):

I enjoyed Thomas L. Friedman’s fantasy of a speech that President Bush should give to the regional conference in Egypt, an apology for his failed policies in Iraq with a productive and cooperative look forward.

In the final analysis, though, it will always be a wish and not a reality because all the president has left is his unshakable resolve, itself locked and lost in fantasy.

Bonnie Hyken
Morristown, N.J., May 2, 2007

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To the Editor:

The speech that Thomas L. Friedman would write for President Bush would, sadly, fall upon deaf ears in the Arab world and in much of Europe, China and Russia for the simple reason that the Bush administration has arrogantly or ineptly bungled and bounced from one failure to another.

Whether it be the period before the invasion or the execution of the war, international relations and global politics, or domestic disaster relief, few observers could place much confidence or trust in this administration.

Any meaningful change in the dynamic of the Middle East must begin with Republican members of Congress who fear not only their party’s fate, but also for the security of the country on the Bush watch.

It is time for them to come off the fence to solve the problems the president has created.

D. C. Montague
Chattanooga, Tenn., May 2, 2007

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To the Editor:

Re Thomas L. Friedman’s May 2 column:

If only. Thanks at least for letting us imagine for a moment that we have a president who can admit his mistakes, take responsibility for them, appeal to people’s better instincts, and ask for the help he needs.

Wouldn’t that be something?

David Shack
New York, May 2, 2007

More on Gonzalez: Impeachment?

May 3, 2007

Op-Ed Contributor

He’s Impeachable, You Know

By FRANK BOWMAN

Columbia, Mo.

IF Alberto Gonzales will not resign, Congress should impeach him. Article II of the Constitution grants Congress the power to impeach “the president, the vice president and all civil officers of the United States.” The phrase “civil officers” includes the members of the cabinet (one of whom, Secretary of War William Belknap, was impeached in 1876).

Impeachment is in bad odor in these post-Clinton days. It needn’t be. Though provoked by individual misconduct, the power to impeach is at bottom a tool granted Congress to defend the constitutional order. Mr. Gonzales’s behavior in the United States attorney affair is of a piece with his role as facilitator of this administration’s claims of unreviewable executive power.

A cabinet officer, like a judge or a president, may be impeached only for commission of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But as the Nixon and Clinton impeachment debates reminded us, that constitutional phrase embraces not only indictable crimes but “conduct ... grossly incompatible with the office held and subversive of that office and of our constitutional system of government.”

United States attorneys, though subject to confirmation by the Senate, serve at the pleasure of the president. As a constitutional matter, the president is at perfect liberty to fire all or some of them whenever it suits him. He can fire them for mismanagement, for failing to pursue administration priorities with sufficient vigor, or even because he would prefer to replace an incumbent with a political crony. Indeed, a president could, without exceeding his constitutional authority and (probably) without violating any statute, fire a United States attorney for pursuing officeholders of the president’s party too aggressively or for failing to prosecute officeholders of the other party aggressively enough.

That the president has the constitutional power to do these things does not mean he has the right to do them without explanation. Congress has the right to demand explanations for the president’s managerial choices, both to exercise its own oversight function and to inform the voters its members represent.

The right of Congress to demand explanations imposes on the president, and on inferior executive officers who speak for him, the obligation to be truthful. An attorney general called before Congress to discuss the workings of the Justice Department can claim the protection of “executive privilege” and, if challenged, can defend the (doubtful) legitimacy of such a claim in the courts. But having elected to testify, he has no right to lie, either by affirmatively misrepresenting facts or by falsely claiming not to remember events. Lying to Congress is a felony — actually three felonies: perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice.

A false claim not to remember is just as much a lie as a conscious misrepresentation of a fact one remembers well. Instances of phony forgetfulness seem to abound throughout Mr. Gonzales’s testimony, but his claim to have no memory of the November Justice department meeting at which he authorized the attorney firings left even Republican stalwarts like Jeff Sessions of Alabama gaping in incredulity. The truth is almost surely that Mr. Gonzales’s forgetfulness is feigned — a calculated ploy to block legitimate Congressional inquiry into questionable decisions made by the Department of Justice, White House officials and, quite possibly, the president himself.

Even if perjury were not a felony, lying to Congress has always been understood to be an impeachable offense. As James Iredell, later a Supreme Court justice, said in 1788 during the debate over the impeachment clause, “The president must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate.” The same is true of the president’s appointees.

The president may yet yield and send Mr. Gonzales packing. If not, Democrats may decide that to impeach Alberto Gonzales would be politically unwise. But before dismissing the possibility of impeachment, Congress should recognize that the issue here goes deeper than the misbehavior of one man. The real question is whether Republicans and Democrats are prepared to defend the constitutional authority of Congress against the implicit claim of an administration that it can do what it pleases and, when called to account, send an attorney general of the United States to Capitol Hill to commit amnesia on its behalf.

Frank Bowman is a law professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

From The New York Times.