Alberto R. Gonzales (born August 4, 1955) was the 80th
Attorney General of the
United States. Gonzales was appointed to the post in February 2005 by President
George W. Bush. While Bush was
Governor of Texas, Gonzales had served as his general counsel, and subsequently he served as
Secretary of State of Texas and then on the
Texas Supreme Court. From 2001 to 2005, Gonzales served in the
Bush Administration as
White House Counsel.
Amid several controversies and allegations of
perjury before Congress, on August 27, 2007 Gonzales announced his resignation as Attorney General, effective September 17, 2007. In August 2009, Gonzales began teaching a political science course at
Texas Tech University. He will also serve as the diversity recruiter for the
Texas Tech University System.
Personal background
Alberto Gonzales was born to a
Catholic family
in
San Antonio,
Texas, and raised in
Humble, a town outside of
Houston. Of
Mexican descent, he was the second of eight children born to Pablo and Maria Gonzales. His father, who died in 1982, was a
construction worker. According to Gonzales, no immigration documentation exists for three of his grandparents and thus they may have entered and resided in the United States
illegally from
Mexico.
An honors student at MacArthur High School in unincorporated Harris County, Gonzales enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1973, for a four year term of enlistment, serving two years at Fort Yukon, Alaska before released from active duty to be a cadet at the United States Air Force Academy. Prior to beginning his third year at the academy, which would have caused him to incur a further service obligation, he left the Academy and was released from the enlistment contract, then he transferred to Rice University in Houston, where he was a resident of Lovett College, and earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 1979. He then earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Harvard Law School in 1982.
Gonzales has been married twice: he and his first wife, Diane Clemens, divorced in 1985; he and his second wife, Rebecca Turner Gonzales, have three sons.
Early career
Gonzales was an
attorney in private practice from 1982 until 1994 with the Houston law firm
Vinson and Elkins, where he became a partner and where he worked primarily with corporate clients. In 1994, he was named general counsel to then-
Texas Governor George W. Bush, rising to become
Secretary of State of Texas in 1997 and finally to be named to the
Texas Supreme Court in 1999, both appointments made by Governor Bush.
Outside of his political and legal career, Gonzales was active in the community. He was a board director of the United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast from 1993 to 1994, and President of Leadership Houston during this same period. In 1994, Gonzales served as Chair of the Commission for District Decentralization of the Houston Independent School District, and as a member of the Committee on Undergraduate Admissions for Rice University. He was chosen as one of Five Outstanding Young Texans by the Texas Jaycees in 1994. He was a member of delegations sent by the American Council of Young Political Leaders to Mexico in 1996 and to the People's Republic of China in 1995. He received the Presidential Citation from the State Bar of Texas in 1997 for his dedication to addressing basic legal needs of the indigent. In 1999, he was named Latino Lawyer of the Year by the Hispanic National Bar Association.
As counsel to Governor Bush, Gonzales helped Bush to be excused from jury duty when he was called in a 1996 Travis County drunk driving case. The case led to controversy during Bush's 2000 presidential campaign because Bush's answers to the potential juror questionnaire did not disclose Bush's own 1976 misdemeanor drunk driving conviction. Gonzales's formal request for Bush to be excused from jury duty hinged upon the possibility that, as Governor of Texas, he might be called upon to pardon the accused in the case.
As Governor Bush's counsel in Texas, Gonzales also reviewed all clemency requests. A 2003 article in The Atlantic Monthly asserts that Gonzales gave insufficient counsel, and failed to second-guess convictions and failed appeals. Only one death sentence was over-turned by Governor Bush, and the state of Texas executed more prisoners during Gonzales's term than any other state.
War on Terror
The
Executive Order 13233, drafted by Gonzales and issued by George W. Bush on November 1, 2001, shortly after the
September 11, 2001 attacks, attempted to place limitations on the
Freedom of Information Act by restricting access to the records of former presidents.
Gonzales authored a controversial memo in January 2002 that explored whether Article III of the Geneva Convention applied to Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan and held in detention facilities around the world, including Camp X-Ray in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The memo made several arguments both for and against providing Article III protection to Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. He concluded that Article III was outdated and ill-suited for dealing with captured Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. He described as "quaint" the provisions that require providing captured Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters "commissary privileges, scrip, athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments," because "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. It is not the traditional clash between nations adhering to the laws of war that formed the backdrop for GPW. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians, and the need to try terrorists for war crimes such as wantonly killing civilians." He also argued that existing military regulations and instructions from the President were more than adequate to ensure that the principles of the Geneva Convention would be applied. He also argued that undefined language in the Geneva Convention, such as "outrages upon personal dignity" and "inhuman treatment", could make officials and military leaders subject to the War Crimes Act of 1996 if actions were deemed to constitute violations of the Act.
Shortly after September 26, 2002, a Gulfstream jet carrying David Addington, Gonzales, John Rizzo, William Haynes II, two Justice Department lawyers, Alice S. Fisher and Patrick F. Philbin, and the Office of Legal Counsel's Jack Goldsmith flew to Camp Delta to view Mohammed al-Kahtani, then to Charleston, South Carolina to view Jose Padilla, and finally to Norfolk, Virginia to view Yaser Esam Hamdi.
According to a New York Times report, despite a public legal opinion issued in December 2004 that declared torture "abhorrent," that shortly after Gonzales became Attorney General in February 2005 that the Justice Department issued another, secret opinion which for the first time provided CIA explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. Gonzales reportedly approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the outgoing deputy attorney general, who told colleagues at the Justice Department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it. According to The Times report, the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums.
Patrick Leahy and John Conyers, chairmen of the respective Senate and House Judiciary Committees, requested that the Justice Department turn over documents related to the secret February 2005 legal opinion to their committees for review.
Gonzales also authored the Presidential Order which authorized the use of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects. He fought with Congress to keep Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy task force documents from being reviewed. Gonzales was also an early advocate of the controversial USA PATRIOT Act.
On June 23, 2006, Gonzales, along with Deputy Director of the FBI John S. Pistole gave a high level press briefing involving the Miami bomb plot to attack the Sears Tower.
On November 14, 2006, invoking universal jurisdiction, legal proceedings were started in Germany for his alleged involvement under the command responsibility of prisoner abuse by writing the controversial legal opinions.
Gonzales was featured in the 2008 Academy Award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side.
Attorney general
George W. Bush announces his nomination of Gonzales to succeed Ashcroft as the next Attorney General during a press conference in the Roosevelt Room Wednesday, November 10, 2004.]]
Sandra Day O'Connor presents Gonzales to the audience after swearing him in as
Attorney General, as Mrs. Gonzales looks on.]]
Gonzales's name was sometimes floated as a possible nominee to the United States Supreme Court during Bush's first presidential term. On November 10, 2004, it was announced that he would be nominated to replace United States Attorney General John Ashcroft for Bush's second term. Gonzales was regarded as a moderate compared to Ashcroft because he did not oppose abortion or affirmative action.
The departure from the conservative viewpoint elicited strong opposition to Gonzales that started during his Senate confirmation proceedings at the beginning of President Bush's second term. The New York Times quoted anonymous Republican officials as saying that Gonzales's appointment to Attorney General was a way to "bolster Mr. Gonzales's credentials" en route to a later Supreme Court appointment.
The nomination was approved on February 3, 2005, with the confirming vote largely split along party lines 60–36 (54 Republicans and 6 Democrats in favor, and 36 Democrats against, along with 4 abstentions: 3 Democrat and 1 Republican).
He was sworn in on February 14, 2005.
Speculation over a Supreme Court nomination
Shortly before the July 1, 2005 retirement of
Associate Justice of the
Supreme Court of the United States Sandra Day O'Connor, rumors started circulating that a memo had leaked from the White House stating that upon the retirement of either O'Connor or
Chief Justice of the United States William Rehnquist, that Gonzales would be the first
nominee for a vacancy on the Court.
Quickly, conservative stalwarts such as National Review magazine and Focus on the Family, among other socially conservative groups, stated they would oppose a Gonzales nomination.
Much of their opposition to Gonzales was based on his perceived support of abortion rights as a result of his legal opinions and writings; typically, they cited his place in the majority opinions of various Texas Supreme Court rulings in a series of In re Jane Doe cases from 2000 that ordered lower courts to reconsider minor women's requests for a "judicial bypass" provided in a provision of Texas' parental notification law, and in one case (43 Tex. Sup. J. 910), granted the bypass that allowed the girl to obtain an abortion without notifying her parents. Gonzales wrote concurring opinions in two of these cases: In re Jane Doe 3 (43 Tex. Sup. J. 508) and In re Jane Doe 5 (43 Tex. Sup. J. 910). For In re Jane Doe 3 he concurred, on the legal grounds that the lower court had issued its ruling only one business day after the Texas Supreme Court had issued guidance on what the applicant for a judicial bypass must prove, with the differently reasoned majority opinion to remand the case to the lower courts.
For In re Jane Doe 5 his concurring opinion began with the sentence, "I fully join in the Court's judgment and opinion." He went on, though, to address the three dissenting opinions, primarily one by Nathan L. Hecht alleging that the court majority's members had disregarded legislative intent in favor of their personal ideologies. Gonzales's opinion dealt mostly with how to establish legislative intent. He wrote, "We take the words of the statute as the surest guide to legislative intent. Once we discern the Legislature's intent we must put it into effect, even if we ourselves might have made different policy choices." He added, "[T]o construe the Parental Notification Act so narrowly as to eliminate bypasses, or to create hurdles that simply are not to be found in the words of the statute, would be an unconscionable act of judicial activism" and "While the ramifications of such a law and the results of the Court's decision here may be personally troubling to me as a parent, it is my obligation as a judge to impartially apply the laws of this state without imposing my moral view on the decisions of the Legislature."
Political commentators had suggested that Bush forecast the selection of Gonzales with his comments defending the Attorney General made on July 6, 2005 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Bush stated, "I don't like it when a friend gets criticized. I'm loyal to my friends. All of a sudden this fellow, who is a good public servant and a really fine person, is under fire. And so, do I like it? No, I don't like it, at all." However, this speculation proved to be incorrect, as Bush nominated D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court.
After the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist on September 3, 2005, creating another vacancy, speculation resumed that President Bush might nominate Gonzales to the Court. This again proved to be incorrect, as Bush decided to nominate Roberts to the Chief Justice position, and on October 3, 2005, nominated Harriet Miers as Associate Justice, to replace Justice O'Connor. On October 27, 2005, Miers withdrew her nomination, again renewing speculation about a possible Gonzales nomination. This was laid to rest when Judge Samuel Alito received the nomination and subsequent confirmation.
On September 11, 2005 U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary chairman Arlen Specter was quoted as saying that it was "a little too soon" after Gonzales's appointment as Attorney General for him to be appointed to another position, and that such an appointment would require a new series of confirmation hearings.
Controversies
Under Gonzales's leadership, the
Justice Department and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation were accused of improperly, and perhaps illegally, using the
USA PATRIOT Act to uncover personal information about U.S. citizens.
His inability to explain his role and influence in the
dismissal of U.S. attorneys led several members of the
United States Congress from both major political parties to call for his resignation. Through his testimony before Congress on issues ranging from the Patriot Act to U.S. Attorney firings, he commonly admitted ignorance.
For example, in response to a
Washington Post article which stated that Gonzales was told about FBI violations involving the Patriot Act, Justice officials "could not immediately determine whether Gonzales read any of the FBI reports in 2005 and 2006."
Dismissal of U.S. attorneys
On December 7, 2006, seven
United States attorneys were notified by the United States
Department of Justice that they were being dismissed, after the
George W. Bush administration sought their resignation. One more,
Bud Cummins, who had been informed of his dismissal in June 2006, announced his resignation on December 15, 2006 effective December 20, 2006 upon being notified of
Tim Griffin's appointment as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
In the subsequent congressional hearings and press reports, it was disclosed that additional U.S. attorneys were dismissed without explanation to the dismissee in 2005 and 2006, and that at least 26 U.S. attorneys were at various times considered for dismissal.
Although U.S. attorneys can be dismissed at the discretion of the president, critics claimed that the dismissals were either motivated by desire to install attorneys more loyal to the Republican party ("loyal Bushies," in the words of Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’s former chief of staff) or as retribution for actions or inactions damaging to the Republican party. At least six of the eight had received positive performance reviews at the Department of Justice. There were various hearings and testimony offered in January through March. Criticism increased upon the release of emails by Gonzales's chief of staff Kyle Sampson, which showed extensive communication between Sampson and White House officials Harriet Miers. Sampson resigned, but the emails indicate that a number of statements from the Department of Justice, including those made by Gonzales himself, were inaccurate.
In a press conference on March 13, Gonzales suggested that "incomplete information, was communicated or may have been communicated to the Congress" and he accepted full responsibility. Nonetheless, Gonzales avowed that his knowledge of the process to fire and select new US attorneys was limited to how the US attorneys may have been classified as "strong performers, not-as-strong performers, and weak
performers." Gonzales also asserted that was all he knew of the process, saying that "[I] was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That's basically what I knew as the Attorney General." Despite insisting that he was not involved in the "deliberations" leading up to the firing of the attorneys, newly released emails also suggest that he had indeed been notified and that he had given ultimate approval.
In a testimony to Congress on April 19, 2007, Gonzales insisted that he was only indirectly involved and left the decisions to his staff. However, ABC News obtained an internal department email showing that Gonzales urged the ouster of Carol Lam, one of the fired attorneys, six months before she was asked to leave. During actual testimony on April 19, Gonzales stated at least 71 times that he couldn't recall events related to the controversy.
His response frustrated the Democrats on the committee, as well as several Republicans. In a meeting in November 2006, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, one of the most conservative members of the Senate, and a staunch ally of the Bush administration, expressed his frustration. The firings were purportedly discussed, but Gonzales did not remember such discussion. As reported by The Washington Post, the dialogue went as follows:
GONZALES: Well, Senator, putting aside the issue, of course, sometimes people's recollections are different, I have no reason to doubt Mr. Battle's testimony [about the November meeting].
SESSIONS: Well, I guess I'm concerned about your recollection, really, because it's not that long ago. It was an important issue. And that's troubling to me, I've got to tell you.
GONZALES: Senator, I went back and looked at my calendar for that week. I traveled to Mexico for the inauguration of the new president. We had National Meth Awareness Day. We were working on a very complicated issue relating to CFIUS.
GONZALES: And so there were a lot of other weighty issues and matters that I was dealing with that week.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who had been the first lawmaker to call for Gonzales's ouster, declined to ask his last round of questions. Instead, a visibly angry Schumer said there was no point to further questioning since Gonzales had stated "over a hundred times" that he didn't know or couldn't recall important details concerning the firings, and also didn't seem to know about the workings of his own department. Gonzales responded that the onus was on the committee to prove whether anything improper occurred. Schumer replied that Gonzales faced a higher standard, and that under this standard he had to give "a full, complete and convincing explanation" for why the eight attorneys were fired.
In August 2009, White House documents released showed that Rove raised concerns directly with Gonzales and that Domenici or an intermediary may have contacted the Justice Department as early as 2005 to complain. In contrast, Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2007: "I don't recall . . . Senator Domenici ever requesting that Mr. Iglesias be removed." In July 2010, Department of Justice prosecutors closed the two-year investigation without filing charges after determining that the firings were not criminal, saying "Evidence did not demonstrate that any prosecutable criminal offense was committed with regard to the removal of David Iglesias. The investigative team also determined that the evidence did not warrant expanding the scope of the investigation beyond the removal of Iglesias."
Controversy over the right to writ of habeas corpus in the U.S. Constitution
On January 18, 2007, Gonzales was invited to speak to the
Senate Judiciary Committee, where he shocked the committee's ranking member,
Arlen Specter of
Pennsylvania, with statements regarding the right of
habeas corpus in the
United States Constitution. An excerpt of the exchange follows:
GONZALES: The fact that the Constitution—again, there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away. But it’s never been the case, and I’m not a Supreme—
SPECTER: Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. The Constitution says you can’t take it away, except in the case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus, unless there is an invasion or rebellion?
Senator Specter was referring to which reads: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." This passage has been historically interpreted to mean that the right of habeas corpus is inherently established.
As Robert Parry writes in the Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel:
:
NSA Domestic eavesdropping program
In a December 2005 article in
The New York Times, it was revealed that the
National Security Agency (NSA) was eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without proper warrants. After the publication of the article, Gonzales publicly threatened the
Times with prosecution under the
Espionage Act of 1917. An investigation was also begun by the
Office of Professional Responsibility in the Justice Department. This investigation was shut down after the President denied investigators the security clearances necessary for their work. Some critics have alleged that the President did so in order to protect Gonzales from the internal probe.
According to May 15, 2007, testimony by the former deputy attorney general, James B. Comey to the Senate Judiciary Committee (as reported in the New York Times)
on the evening of March 10, 2004, Mr. Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr. (then Mr. Bush’s chief of staff) tried to bypass him by visiting Mr. Ashcroft. The purpose of this visit was to reauthorize the secret wiretapping program, which Comey (as acting AG) had refused to reauthorize. (Mr. Ashcroft was extremely ill and disoriented, Mr. Comey said, and his wife had forbidden any visitors.)
:}}
Comey’s testimony laid out that "contrary to Gonzales's assertion, there was significant dissent among top law enforcement officers over a program Comey would not specifically identify."
As he recalled it to me, Goldsmith received a call in the evening from his deputy, Philbin, telling him to go to the George Washington University Hospital immediately, since Gonzales and Card were on the way there. Goldsmith raced to the hospital, double-parked outside and walked into a dark room. Ashcroft lay with a bright light shining on him and tubes and wires coming out of his body.
Suddenly, Gonzales and Card came in the room and announced that they were there in connection with the classified program. “Ashcroft, who looked like he was near death, sort of puffed up his chest,” Goldsmith recalls. “All of a sudden, energy and color came into his face, and he said that he didn’t appreciate them coming to visit him under those circumstances, that he had concerns about the matter they were asking about and that, in any event, he wasn’t the attorney general at the moment; Jim Comey was. He actually gave a two-minute speech, and I was sure at the end of it he was going to die. It was the most amazing scene I’ve ever witnessed.”
After a bit of silence, Goldsmith told me, Gonzales thanked Ashcroft, and he and Card walked out of the room. “At that moment,” Goldsmith recalled, “Mrs. Ashcroft, who obviously couldn’t believe what she saw happening to her sick husband, looked at Gonzales and Card as they walked out of the room and stuck her tongue out at them. She had no idea what we were discussing, but this sweet-looking woman sticking out her tongue was the ultimate expression of disapproval. It captured the feeling in the room perfectly.”
On Tuesday, July 24, Gonzales testified for almost four hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He appeared to contradict the sworn account of James B. Comey regarding the March 10, 2004 hospital room meeting with John Ashcroft.
:
Gonzales was confronted by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) who told him "That is not what Mr. Comey says; that is not what the people in the room say."
On July 26, 2007, the Associated Press obtained a four-page memorandum from the office of former Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte dated May 17, 2006, which contradicted Gonzales's testimony the previous day regarding the subject of a March 10, 2004 emergency Congressional briefing which preceded his hospital room meeting with former Attorney General John Ashcroft, James B. Comey and former White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr..
On that same day, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert S. Mueller III also seemed to dispute the accuracy of Gonzales's Senate Judiciary Committee testimony of the previous day regarding the events of March 10, 2004 in his own sworn testimony on that subject before the House Judiciary Committee.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) asked Mueller "Did you have an opportunity to talk to General Ashcroft, or did he discuss what was discussed in the meeting with Attorney General Gonzales and the chief of staff?" He replied "I did have a brief discussion with Attorney General Ashcroft." Lee went on to ask "I guess we use [the phrase] TSP [Terrorist Surveillance Program], we use warrantless wiretapping. So would I be comfortable in saying that those were the items that were part of the discussion?" He responded "It was—the discussion was on a national—an NSA program that has been much discussed, yes." of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III regarding the Justice Department and White House deliberations of March, 2004 which included the March 10, 2004 hospital-room visit of Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr. on John Ashcroft in the presence of then-acting Attorney General James B. Comey. The notes list 26 meetings and phone conversations over three weeks—from March 1 to March 23—during a debate that reportedly almost led to mass resignations at the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
On July 26, 2007 a letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement, Senators Charles Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Russ Feingold and Sheldon Whitehouse urged that an independent counsel be appointed to investigate whether Gonzales had perjured himself in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the previous day. "We ask that you immediately appoint an independent special counsel from outside the Department of Justice to determine whether Attorney General Gonzales may have misled Congress or perjured himself in testimony before Congress," the letter read in part.
On Wednesday, June 27, 2007, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas to the United States Department of Justice, the White House, and Vice President Dick Cheney seeking internal documents regarding the program's legality and details of the NSA's cooperative agreements with private telecommunications corporations. In addition to the subpoenas, committee chairman Patrick Leahy sent Gonzales a letter about possible false statements made under oath by U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings before the committee the previous year.
In an August 17, 2007 reply letter to Leahy asking for an extension of the August 20 deadline
for compliance, White House counsel Fred Fielding argued that the subpoenas called for the production of "extraordinarily sensitive national security information," and he said much of the information—if not all—could be subject to a claim of executive privilege.
On August 20, 2007, Fielding wrote to Leahy that the White House needed yet more time to respond to the subpoenas, which prompted Leahy to reply that the Senate may consider a contempt of Congress citation when it returns from its August recess.
On July 27, 2007, both White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and White House spokeswoman Dana Perino defended Gonzales's Senate Judiciary Committee testimony regarding the events of March 10, 2004, saying that it did not contradict the sworn House Judiciary Committee account of FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, because Gonzales had been constrained in what he could say because there was a danger he would divulge classified material. Lee Casey, a former Justice Department lawyer during the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, told The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that it is likely that the apparent discrepancy can be traced to the fact that there are two separate Domestic Surveillance programs. "The program that was leaked in December 2005 is the Comey program. It is not the program that was discussed in the evening when they went to Attorney General Ashcroft's hospital room. That program we know almost nothing about. We can speculate about it. …The program about which he said there was no dispute is a program that was created after the original program died, when Mr. Comey refused to reauthorize it, in March 2004. Mr. Comey then essentially redid the program to suit his legal concerns. And about that program, there was no dispute. There was clearly a dispute about the earlier form or version of the program. The attorney general has not talked about that program. He refers to it as "other intelligence activities" because it is, in fact, still classified."
On Thursday, August 30, 2007, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine disclosed in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that as part of a previously ongoing investigation, his office is looking into whether Gonzales made statements to Congress that were “intentionally false, misleading, or inappropriate,” both about the firing of federal prosecutors and about the terrorist-surveillance program, as committee chairman Patrick Leahy had asked him to do in an August 16, 2007 letter. Fine's letter to Leahy said that his office “has ongoing investigations that relate to most of the subjects addressed by the attorney general’s testimony that you identified." Fine said that his office is conducting a particular review “relating to the terrorist-surveillance program, as well as a follow-up review of the use of national security letters,” which investigators use to obtain information on e-mail messages, telephone calls and other records from private companies without court approval.
It has been reported that a person involved in the incident of March 10, 2004 hospital room meeting with John Ashcroft has said that much of the confusion and conflicting testimony that occurred about intelligence activities was because certain programs were so classified that they were impossible to speak about clearly.
Texas Youth Commission
Alberto Gonzales, along with U.S. attorney
Johnny Sutton, has been accused of failing to act despite strong allegations that teachers, administrators and guards had sex with minor male inmates incarcerated in the
Texas Youth Commission program.
Objectivity
Gonzales has had a long relationship with former president George W. Bush. Gonzales served as a general counsel when Bush was the governor of Texas. Such relationship made critics question whether he would maintain independence in his administration of the U.S. Department of Justice. Gonzales has been called Bush's "
yes man." Critics claim that he gave only the legal advice Bush wanted and questioned Gonzales's ethics and professional conduct.
As a White House counsel, Gonzales signed a controversial memorandum in January 2002 to the president which argued that the
Geneva Convention proscriptions on torture do not apply to
Taliban and
Al-Qaeda prisoners, and that the limitations on the questioning of prisoners were "obsolete" when it deals with terrorism.
Resignation
Calls for resignation
A number of members of both houses of Congress publicly said Gonzales should resign, or be fired by Bush. Calls for his ousting intensified after his testimony on April 19, 2007.
On May 24, 2007, Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced the Democrats' proposed no-confidence resolution to vote on whether "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales no longer holds the confidence of the Senate and the American People."
(The vote would have had no legal effect, but was designed to persuade Gonzales to depart or President Bush to seek a new attorney general.) A similar resolution was introduced in the House by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
On June 11, 2007 a Senate vote on cloture to end debate on the resolution failed (60 votes are required for cloture). The vote was 53 to 38 with 7 not voting and 1 voting "present" (one senate seat was vacant). Seven Republicans, John E. Sununu, Chuck Hagel, Susan Collins, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, Gordon Smith and Norm Coleman voted to end debate; Independent Democrat Joseph Lieberman voted against ending debate. No Democrat voted against the motion. Not voting: Biden (D-DE), Brownback (R-KS), Coburn (R-OK), Dodd (D-CT), Johnson (D-SD), McCain (R-AZ), Obama (D-IL). Stevens (R-AK) voted "present."
University of Missouri law professor Frank Bowman has observed that Congress has the power to impeach Gonzales if he willfully lied or withheld information from Congress during his testimony about the dismissal of U.S. Attorneys.
Congress has impeached a sitting Cabinet member before; William W. Belknap, Ulysses S. Grant's Secretary of War, was impeached in a unanimous vote by the House in 1876 for bribery, but the Senate fell just short of the votes necessary to convict him. Belknap had resigned before the House vote, and several Senators who voted to acquit him said they did so only because they felt the Senate lacked jurisdiction.
On July 30, 2007, MSNBC reported that Rep. Jay Inslee announced that he would introduce a bill the following day that would require the House Judiciary Committee to begin an impeachment investigation against Gonzales.
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Partial list of Members of Congress calling for departure
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Democrats calling for departure:
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Majority Leader: "It's foolishness if (President Bush) hangs on to him"
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Vice-Chairman of Senate Democratic Conference, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee: "doesn't accept or doesn't understand that he is no longer just the president's lawyer," "carrying out the political wishes of the President" (first member of either chamber to call for ouster)
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee: "I don't think he can be effective"
Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), member of the Senate Judiciary Committee: "I think we'd be better off if he did (resign), but that's a judgment the president is going to have to make"
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA): "perplexed by the attorney general's testimony," "he has served as the president's lawyer, not our nation's"
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT): "egregious lapses in judgment"
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), member of the Senate Judiciary Committee: "I believe he should step down. ... the nation is not well served by this"
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), member of the Senate Judiciary Committee: "his resignation is long overdue"
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA): "there must be accountability from the top down"
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR): "serious breach between the Justice Department and Congress"
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL): "lost his credibility"
Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR): "when the Attorney General lies to a United States Senator … it's time for that Attorney General to go"
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), member of the Senate Judiciary Committee: "he had a hard sell to make to me, and he didn't make it"
Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO): "I believe it is in the best interest of our Nation for the Department of Justice to get a fresh start with a new Attorney General."
Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV): "shredded his credibility"
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR): ouster "would be helpful" had earlier described affair as "idiocy"
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ): "very disappointed in his performance", "it would be best for Gonzales to quit"
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), member of Senate Judiciary Committee: "If he and the President decide that he cannot be an effective leader moving forward, then he should resign."
Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN): "deeply concerned"
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), ranking Republican on Senate Judiciary Committee: called failure to step down "bad for the Justice Department"
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE): "lost the moral authority to lead"
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA): "the president should have an attorney general who is less a personal friend and more professional in his approach"
Rep. Paul Gillmor (R-OH): "lightning rod"
Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI): "he's hurt the President by what he's doing … he's damaged himself and the President"
Rep. Jon Porter (R-NV): "egregiously mishandled," "we need to restore confidence"
Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV): "it's become a distraction"
Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL), House Republican Conference Chairman, 1st top House Republican to call for ouster: "time for fresh leadership"
In addition, several Republicans were critical of Gonzales, without calling for his resignation or firing:
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), member of Senate Judiciary Committee: "the way this has been handled has been deplorable"
Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), chairman of National Republican Senatorial Committee: "incompetence," "they blew it"
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), member of Senate Judiciary Committee: "He has said some things that just don't add up"
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME): "I do not think he has served the president well"
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), member of House Judiciary Committee: "could die by a thousand cuts"
Republican Senators Trent Lott and Orrin Hatch expressed support for Gonzales, although Hatch conceded that Gonzales had "bungled."
Others
Those calling for Gonzales's resignation included Presidential contenders from both parties: Republican Senator McCain Democratic New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Senators Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, and Obama.
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Resignation announcement
and
Laura Bush at the
Prairie Chapel Ranch on August 26, 2007, the day that Gonzales's resignation was accepted.]]
Gonzales submitted his resignation as Attorney General effective September 17, 2007, by a letter addressed to President Bush on August 26, 2007. In a statement on August 27, Gonzales thanked the President for the opportunity to be of service to his country, giving no indication of either the reasons for his resignation or his future plans. Later that day, President Bush praised Gonzales for his service, reciting the numerous positions in Texas government, and later, the government of the United States, to which Bush had appointed Gonzales. Bush attributed the resignation to Gonzales's name having been "dragged through the mud" for "political reasons".
After resignation
Investigations
Soon after departure from the DOJ in September 2007, continuing inquiries by Congress and the Justice Department led Gonzales to hire a criminal-defense lawyer
George J. Terwilliger III, partner at
White & Case, and former deputy attorney general under former president
G.H.W. Bush. Terwiliger was on the Republican law team involved in Florida presidential election recount battle of 2000.
On October 19, 2007, John McKay, the former U.S. Attorney for Washington's Western District, told The (Spokane) Spokesman-Review that Inspector General Glenn A. Fine may recommend criminal charges against Gonzales.
On November 15, 2007, The Washington Post reported that supporters of Gonzales had created a trust fund to help pay for his legal expenses, which were mounting as the Justice Department Inspector General's office continued to investigate whether Gonzales committed perjury or improperly tampered with a congressional witness.
On September 2, 2008, the Inspector General found that Gonzales had stored classified documents in an insecure fashion, at his home and insufficiently secure safes at work. The Justice Department declined to press criminal charges. It was seen as extraordinary that a former U.S. Attorney General had not been welcomed into a firm, and law firm sources indicated that Gonzales's reputation had been diminished by his role in the dismissal of federal prosecutors, and by the open criticism he had received from Senators and Representatives while testifying about the dismissal of U.S. attorneys and the rights enumerated in the Constitution, and during his testimony about a secret eavesdropping program.
Ongoing investigations by the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Justice are not concluded at this date. His income since he left office on September 17, 2007, has come from speaking engagements. Schools such as Washington University in St. Louis, Ohio State University, The University of Tennessee at Martin, and the University of Florida, who have each paid him about $30,000 plus expenses for appearances; business groups are being charged a little more. He stated:
For some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.
The New York Daily News published an editorial in response to this quote, calling him "Gonzo the Clown" and "delusional and offensive ... in explaining why he believes he is held in such low regard these days." Additionally, at Texas Tech, he teaches a political science "special topics" course dealing with contemporary issues in the executive branch. He began the new job on August 1, 2009. After the announcement, a number of professors at Texas Tech signed a petition opposing the hiring.
Grand jury indictment
Gonzales was charged by a grand jury in Willacy County in Texas. He was accused of stopping an investigation into abuses at a federal detention center. Vice president
Dick Cheney and other elected officials were also indicted. All charges were dropped after further investigation.
International investigation
On March 28, 2009, a Spanish court, headed by
Baltasar Garzón, the judge who ordered the arrest of former Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet, announced it would begin an investigation into whether or not Gonzales, and five other former Bush Justice and Defense officials violated international law by providing the Bush Administration a legal framework and basis for the torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Garzón said that it was "highly probable" the matter would go to court and that arrest warrants would be issued. Also named in the Spanish court's investigation are
John Yoo,
Douglas Feith, and
David Addington.
Texas Supreme Court opinions
This is a list of opinions in which Alberto Gonzales wrote the majority court opinion, wrote a concurring opinion, or wrote a dissent. Cases in which he joined in an opinion written by another justice are not included. A justice "writes" an opinion if the justice has primary responsibility for the opinion. Justices are assisted by a
law clerk who may play an important role in the actual analysis of legal issues and drafting of the opinion. The Texas Supreme Court issued 84 opinions during Gonzales's tenure on the court, according to
LexisNexis.
Majority opinions
Fitzgerald v. Advanced Spine Fixation Systems, 996 S.W.2d 864 (Tex. 1999).
Texas Farmers Insurance Company v. Murphy, 996 S.W.2d 873 (Tex. 1999).
Mid-Century Insurance Company v. Kidd, 997 S.W.2d 265 (Tex. 1999).
General Motors Corporation v. Sanchez, 997 S.W.2d 584 (Tex. 1999).
In re Missouri Pac. R.R. Co., 998 S.W.2d 212 (Tex. 1999).
Mallios v. Baker, 11 S.W.3d 157 (Tex. 2000).
Gulf Insurance Company v. Burns Motors, 22 S.W.3d 417 (Tex. 2000).
Southwestern Refining Co. v. Bernal, 22 S.W.3d 425 (Tex. 2000).
Golden Eagle Archery, Inc. v. Jackson, 24 S.W.3d 362 (Tex. 2000).
City of Fort Worth v. Zimlich, 29 S.W.3d 62 (Tex. 2000).
Prudential Insurance Company of America v. Financial Review Services, Inc., 29 S.W.3d 74 (Tex. 2000).
Texas Department of Transportation v. Able, 35 S.W.3d 608 (Tex. 2000).
Pustejovsky v. Rapid-American Corp., 35 S.W.3d 643 (Tex. 2000).
John G. & Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation v. Dewhurst, 44 Tex. Sup. J. 268 (2000),
withdrawn.
Concurring opinions
In re Dallas Morning News, 10 S.W.3d 298 (Tex. 1999).
Osterberg v. Peca, 12 S.W.3d 31 (Tex. 2000).
In re Jane Doe 3, 19 S.W.3d 300 (Tex. 2000).
In re Doe, 19 S.W.3d 346 (Tex. 2000). (This case is popularly referred to as "In re Jane Doe 5".)
Grapevine Excavation, Inc. v. Maryland Lloyds, 35 S.W.3d 1 (Tex. 2000).
Partial dissent, partial concurrence
Lopez v. Munoz, Hockema, & Reed, 22 S.W.3d 857 (Tex. 2000)
See also
George W. Bush Supreme Court candidates
References
External links
Official biography from whitehouse.gov
Announcement of his nomination on CNN
A second biography from ABC News
"Death in Texas" by Sister Helen Prejean in The New York Review of Books
"A Poor Choice"—Human Rights Watch
Letter to 9/11 Commission from FindLaw
The Geneva Convention is "obsolete" memo in PDF from Washington in Depth, AP
Bush Admin. policy memos re: torture, interrogations, and POW status from FindLaw
Kennedy urges Senate to deny Gonzales nomination over torture policies from Senator Edward M. Kennedy, February 1, 2005.
"Torture and Gonzales: An Exchange" from The New York Review of Books
Gonzales Grilled Over Drowning Torture
Support of Torture Not Gonzales's Greatest Sin
Transcript of Gonzales's Press Conference, March 13, 2007, relating to the Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy.
Bush defends Gonzales's role in US Attorney firings , Breaking Legal news, April 1, 2007
Dangerous precedents, The Standard, Thursday, April 19, 2007
McArthur High School Yearbook 1968
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![Senator Kennedy talking to sailors aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt, February 1987. Influenced by his personal difficulties and family concerns, and content with remaining in the Senate,[82][116] in December 1985 Kennedy publicly cut short any talk that he might run in the 1988 presidential election.](http://web.archive.org./web/20110616015238im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/78/97/9174b2c53d08add1de445befb389_grande.jpg "Senator Kennedy talking to sailors aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt, February 1987. Influenced by his personal difficulties and family concerns, and content with remaining in the Senate,[82][116] in December 1985 Kennedy publicly cut short any talk that he might run in the 1988 presidential election.")
![Senator Kennedy talking to sailors aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt, February 1987. Influenced by his personal difficulties and family concerns, and content with remaining in the Senate,[82][116] in December 1985 Kennedy publicly cut short any talk that he might run in the 1988 presidential election.](http://web.archive.org./web/20110616015238im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/78/97/9174b2c53d08add1de445befb389_thumb.jpg "Senator Kennedy talking to sailors aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt, February 1987. Influenced by his personal difficulties and family concerns, and content with remaining in the Senate,[82][116] in December 1985 Kennedy publicly cut short any talk that he might run in the 1988 presidential election.")
