Senators Renew Call for Gonzales' Ouster

By Laurie Kellman
The Associated Press

Wednesday 16 May 2007

Washington - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales came under renewed pressure Wednesday, as two more Republican senators came out against him and Democrats challenged his truthfulness about President Bush's no-warrant eavesdropping program.

The developments revived a debate over Gonzales' fitness to head the Justice Department a day after a former deputy attorney general recounted a dramatic hospital bedside confrontation between Gonzales and his predecessor, John Ashcroft.

Bush continued to stand by his longtime friend and adviser. "The president still has full confidence in Alberto Gonzales," said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

However, the attorney general's newly regained political footing in an appearance last week before a House committee seemed in doubt again.

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that Gonzales in March 2004 - when he was Bush's White House counsel - had tried to undermine the department he now heads by attempting to get Ashcroft to sign off on the warrantless wiretaps.

At the time, Comey - in Ashcroft's absence - had refused to certify the legality of Bush's eavesdropping program. Gonzales tried to go over Comey's head by appealing directly to Ashcroft, who lay in an intensive care unit recovering from gall bladder surgery, Comey said. Ashcroft rebuffed Gonzales, Comey said.

Democrats said his testimony appeared to contradict Gonzales' account in February 2006, when he told two congressional panels that there had "not been any serious disagreement about the program."

"In light of Mr. Comey's testimony yesterday, do you stand by your 2006 Senate and House testimony, or do you wish to revise it?" Democratic Sens. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, Chuck Schumer of New York, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Dick Durbin of Illinois asked Gonzales in a letter Wednesday.

Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman said Gonzales' testimony "was and remains accurate."

"While the attorney general provided this testimony in an unclassified setting, it is important to consider that the fact and nature of such disagreements have been briefed to the intelligence committees," Boyd said.

Citing Comey's testimony, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, who's considering a presidential candidacy, became the fourth Republican senator to call for Gonzales' resignation.

"The American people deserve an attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer of our country, whose honesty and capability are beyond question," Hagel said in a statement. "Attorney General Gonzales can no longer meet this standard. He has failed this country. He has lost the moral authority to lead."

Asked about Hagel's comment about Gonzales' moral authority, Snow replied: "We disagree, and the president supports the attorney general."

Unhappy with Gonzales, most Republicans have nonetheless refrained from calling outright for his resignation. Republicans who have urged his ouster include Sens. John Sununu of New Hampshire, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John McCain of Arizona, and House GOP Conference Chairman Adam Putnam, R-Fla.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who was chairman of the Intelligence Committee during the period Comey described, said Wednesday that Gonzales should consider stepping down. Gonzales has been the target of similar barbs by Repulican Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Gordon Smith of Oregon.

"When you have to spend more time up here on Capitol Hill instead of running the Justice Department, maybe you ought to think about it," Roberts told The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, congressional committees raised the pressure on Gonzales. The House Judiciary Committee announced that Monica Goodling, Gonzales' White House liason who played a major role in the prosecutor firings, would testify May 23 under a grant of immunity.

Across the Capitol Wednesday Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy threatened to issue more subpoenas if the White House does not cooperate with his probe of whether Bush's White House aides, including political adviser Karl Rove, sought to improperly influence federal investigation and prosecutions.

In response to an earlier subpoena from Leahy, the Justice Department on Wednesday released nine pages of e-mails that included Rove among the recipients. The e-mails were sent Feb. 28, and included a McClatchy newspapers story about David Iglesias, the fired U.S. attorney in New Mexico.

Rove was using an e-mail address with the Internet domain name "georgewbush.com" to receive messages about the fired prosecutors, the documents show. Rove was only on the receiving end of the e-mails, which were also sent to former Justice Department chief of staff Kyle Sampson, White House counsel Fred Fielding, White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino and other administration staffers.

They were sent from J. Scott Jennings, the White House's deputy political director. In the e-mails, Jennings reported receiving an urgent phone call from an aide to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., to alert the White House of an announcement Iglesias was planning to make that morning.

In one e-mail, Jennings said Iglesias planned to announce that he had been contacted by two lawmakers and "urged to deliver indictments" in an election-year corruption case. The lawmakers were later disclosed as Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., and the case involved Democrats in New Mexico. Democrats have cited Iglesias' recounting of the calls to claim that his firing and the dismissal of other U.S. attorneys were politically motivated.

But it was Gonzales' role in the scene at Ashcroft's bedside that prompted new suggestions that he step down.

Gonzales himself addressed the matter during a February 2006 appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, just a few months after Bush publicly confirmed the eavesdropping program.

In his testimony, he issued carefully worded responses to questions about the program.

"It has been reported by multiple news outlets that ... Jim Comey expressed grave reservations about the NSA program and at least once refused to give it his blessing. Is that true?" Schumer asked him.

"There has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed," Gonzales replied. "There have been disagreements about other matters regarding operations, which I cannot get into."

Gonzales continued: "None of the reservations dealt with the program that we are talking about today. They dealt with operational capabilities that we are not talking about today."

By then, Bush had relented to Justice's objections and ordered changes to the eavesdropping program.

Looking back, Schumer stopped short of saying Gonzales lied in his testimony.

"His answer was not forthright," Schumer told reporters Wednesday. "If you read the answer, you'd think there was general agreement about this."

---------

Associated Press writer Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.

---

Go to Original

Former Classmates Criticize Gonzales
By Kevin Zhou
The Harvard Crimson

Wednesday 16 May 2007

'82 School alums publish open letter in Washington Post.

Fifty-six members of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' graduating class at Harvard Law School signed a quarter-page open letter in yesterday's Washington Post excoriating their former classmate for his "cavalier handling of our freedoms."

The letter stops short of calling for Gonzales's resignation, even as the attorney general comes under rising heat on Capitol Hill. But it is a stinging rebuke to Gonzales, just two weeks after the Law School Class of 1982's 25th reunion.

"Your country and your President are in dire need of an attorney who will do the tough job of providing independent counsel," the letter says. It calls on Gonzales to "relent from this reckless path, and begin to restore respect for the rule of law we all learned to love many years ago."

The decision to write the letter was made a few days after the reunion. One of the signatories, Barbara C. Moses of New York, said that the attorney general's appearance - which drew a small group of protesters, including one who donned an orange jumpsuit and black hood - motivated some of her classmates to go public with their criticism of Gonzales.

"It grew directly out of our re-meeting him, and thinking about what our responsibilities were to speak out," Moses said.

Marshall Winn of Greenville, S.C., added that the attorney general's appearance caused many of his classmates to consider whether it was time to issue a public rebuke against the Bush Administration's policies.

"I think the fact that he came to the reunion made us think that its really time for us to make a statement on what's been going on in this administration," he said.

The classmates debated whether their criticism of Gonzalez should be made publicly. About 15 to 20 individuals declined to sign out of courtesy or because "their job prevented them from joining," according to David M. Abromowitz of Boston, who helped write the letter.

However, Abromowitz said that the decision was made to run the open letter because the organizers wanted to encourage other individuals to express their opinions publicly.

"We thought it was important to speak up on these issues even if, on a personal level, it might cause discomfort," Abromowitz said. "We hope that it encourages others in the private sector who are concerned about their civil liberties."

Abromowitz added that none of those who declined to sign the letter did so because they disagreed with its content.

"There were differing views on the method of presenting them, but there was no disagreement over the importance of the civil liberties issues that it raised," he said. Nancy R. London, who also signed the letter, said that a copy was delivered in advance to Gonzales' office in Washington, D.C., as a courtesy.

"The public-private dichotomy is an interesting thing to reflect upon," she said. "But I think that we made that distinction pretty clear." Though the letter criticized the attorney general's views towards domestic wire-tapping and torture, the signatories insisted that it was not intended to be a personal attack against Gonzales.

"I'm sure he is a very fine fellow, but it's really troubling what he is standing for and what the administration of George W. Bush is standing for," Winn said. "We couldn't stand by this any longer."