Razzle Dazzle: Bush Stands By His Enabler

Razzle Dazzle
Bush Stands By His Enabler


There was a stunned quality to some of the news stories last week about President Bush standing by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales despite his bumbling performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee when testifying about the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys.

An April 24 front-page story in The New York Times began by noting that Mr. Gonzales's testimony was "roundly panned by members of both parties" but that Mr. Bush said it "increased my confidence in his ability to do the job."

The disconnect between the President and even his Republican allies in the Senate is not a sign that Mr. Bush has lost touch with political reality. Those Republican Senators likely believe that Mr. Gonzales has become such an embarrassment that he threatens the GOP's chances in the 2008 elections. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, is more concerned with the here-and-now and fighting off any attempt to weaken him further by forcing him to dismiss an aide who has done his bidding since his first term as Texas Governor 13 years ago.

If You Can't Say Anything True ...

Mr. Bush's assessment of the impact of Mr. Gonzales's testimony on public perception seemed to reflect a conclusion that the Attorney General couldn't have said anything truthful that would help the President's cause, and so Mr. Gonzales's evasions and memory lapses at least did not dig him a bigger hole. It is the same principle that leads gangsters to celebrate their soldiers for being unresponsive to police interrogations: being thought a fool or a jerk is preferable to implicating yourself or, worse yet, your bosses.

CREDIBILITY NOT AN ISSUE: Although U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (left) was criticized by Senators of both parties for giving evasive answers and claiming numerous memory lapses in testifying about the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys, President Bush, who used false information about weapons of mass destruction to make the case for invading Iraq, expressed continued confidence in his longtime aide. Mr. Bush has elevated Mr. Gonzales from humble beginnings to become the nation's highest law-enforcement officer as a reward for his unstinting loyalty. In return, Mr. Gonzales has been the President's enabler, providing him legal cover for the torture of suspected terrorists and the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, and for firing U.S. Attorneys who believed their oath to uphold the Constitution took priority over the political needs of Mr. Bush and the Republican Party.

There is a certain uneasy parallel between the purge of those eight prosecutors and the Watergate scandal. Watergate grew out of an effort by President Richard Nixon and his aides to essentially fix the 1972 campaign and thus corrupt our electoral system. The firing of the eight U.S. Attorneys, either because they were pursuing corruption cases against Republican officials or decided not to investigate alleged voter fraud perpetrated by Democrats, appears motivated primarily by a desire to use their offices in a partisan political way to influence elections. And it went far beyond the eight who were fired: their discharge sent a message to every one of the 93 U.S. Attorneys across the country.

The beginning of the end for Mr. Nixon came in October 1973 when he ordered his Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, to fire the special Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox, for demanding that the President turn over all taped conversations recorded in the Oval Office, and Mr. Richardson refused and resigned his job. Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus also refused the order, prompting Mr. Nixon to fire him; U.S. Solicitor General Robert Bork became Acting Attorney General and did the President's dirty work for him.

The 'I'm Not a Crook' Defense

Congress responded by drafting several bills seeking to impeach Mr. Nixon, leading him to give a nationally televised speech in which he denied obstructing justice and insisted, "I'm not a crook." By the following summer, he was also not the President, having resigned in disgrace as it became increasingly clear that he had authorized the Watergate break-in and all the Republican chicanery that helped assure him of an easy re-election victory.

Unlike Mr. Nixon, Mr. Bush has had the comfort of knowing that he will never be undercut by an Attorney General who refuses an order out of principle. Loyalty rather than a brilliant legal mind has brought Mr. Gonzales this far, and he has reciprocated by blowing smoke at the Senate panel trying to establish who was behind the decision to fire the eight U.S. Attorneys and what the motives were.

Those prosecutors, like the rest of the nationwide contingent, were all appointees of Mr. Bush; upon coming to office he had gotten rid of all those who served under President Clinton, just as Mr. Clinton had cashiered those who served under George Bush the Elder and President Reagan had jettisoned all those appointed by President Carter. In that sense, they are political appointees. Once in office, however, they are supposed to, as Mr. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee, decide whether or not to prosecute cases "based on the evidence and not based upon if the target is a Republican or Democrat."

That was not, however, the standard adhered to in evaluating the U.S. Attorneys and deciding which ones should be fired. At the start of Mr. Bush's second term, his then-White House Counsel, Harriet Miers - whose nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by the President was quickly withdrawn amid a storm of protest by otherwise staunchly supportive Republicans who believed he had made an embarrassingly bad choice - proposed firing all 93 U.S. Attorneys.

Bush Relayed Complaints

Mr. Gonzales's then-Chief of Staff, Kyle Sampson, rejected the idea as impractical but then began compiling a potential hit list that included among its criteria whether prosecutors had taken actions indicating that they were not "loyal Bushies."

Last October, Mr. Bush told Mr. Gonzales that several Republican officials, including New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, had complained that several prosecutors were not pursuing cases of possible voter fraud. Such cases rarely are substantiated, and that kind of charge has increasingly been viewed as a justification for actions that wind up denying some citizens, particularly minorities, their right to vote in key states.

The Attorney General whose district covered New Mexico, David Iglesias, had actually received strong evaluations under Mr. Sampson's rating criteria, but Senator Domenici's complaint was apparently enough to get him added to the list of seven U.S. Attorneys who were fired early last December (the eighth departed just prior to that).

Mr. Gonzales has denied that he chose any of the prosecutors for the chopping block, seeming to lay the blame at the feet of his recently departed Chief of Staff. He also said, both prior to and during his appearance before the Senate panel, that he couldn't recall a meeting last Nov. 27 at which the dismissals were discussed - exactly a week before they were effected.

'Everyone in the Loop'

That claim was contradicted, however, by the former head of the Justice Department's U.S. Attorney Liaison Office, who according to The Times told Congressional staffers that Mr. Gonzales was present. And another Bush aide, Sheldon Bradshaw, a close friend of Mr. Sampson's who is Chief Counsel at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, told the Washington Post, "Everyone was in the loop."

Enough of a consensus had emerged on this score that when Mr. Gonzales during his Senate testimony stated more than 50 times that he did not recall details about which there was either e-mail evidence or the testimony of others, six Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee reacted with greater anger than Democratic members.

Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma became the first Republican to demand Mr. Gonzales's resignation, stating, "The reputation of the Attorney General's Office has been tarnished and brought into question ... I believe you ought to suffer the consequences ..."

Chuck Grassley, a GOP Senator from Iowa, told Mr. Gonzales that "we just don't have a straight story on what transpired and whether the motivations for what happened were pure."

Mr. Gonzales denied intentionally misleading Congress or the public about his role in the dismissals. He acknowledged having talked to Senator Domenici about U.S. Attorney Iglesias, and said that Mr. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, had spoken to him about Mr. Iglesias and two other prosecutors in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Democratic Sen. Benjamin Cardin of Maryland pointed out that five of the seven prosecutors who were removed last December at the time were investigating possible corruption involving Republican officials.

'Sending a Message'

"Don't you see that this might have been interpreted as trying to send a message to U.S. Attorneys around the country to stay away from sensitive political corruption cases?" the Senator asked.

That was when Mr. Gonzales said such concerns were groundless because U.S. Attorneys were expected to "follow the evidence," regardless of party affiliation.

The ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, told Fox News last week that Mr. Gonzales's testimony was "very, very damaging to his own credibility," and that it would be "bad for the Department of Justice" for him to continue as Attorney General.

Mr. Bush, on the other hand, said Mr. Gonzales's testimony showed that he "broke no law, did no wrongdoing. This is an honest, honorable man, in whom I have confidence."

Of course, the President was setting the bar a mite low by suggesting that the country's top lawyer deserved to continue in office because he hadn't actually violated the law. But rallying to Mr. Gonzales's defense should hardly have been a surprise from a man known for standing by those whose actions have long left them discredited, and particularly so in this case because there is good reason to believe that the Attorney General was merely acting as Mr. Bush would have wanted him to, whether the President explicitly gave the purge order or not. The involvement of Mr. Rove and Ms. Miers certainly lends weight to that belief.

Laws Don't Bind Him

From the time that his supporters helped strong-arm his way into the White House amid accusations of voter disenfranchisement in parts of Florida - and while ballots were being recounted there - Mr. Bush has shown at best a casual interest in laws that stand in the way of his sense of entitlement. Mr. Gonzales hatched the legal justification for ignoring the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of prisoners of war, has defended the long-term incarceration of suspected terrorists without presenting charges against them, and approved the wiretapping of Americans on suspicion of possible terrorist connections without getting prior approval from Congress.

The Bush Administration was able to get away with all these things because Republicans controlled Congress and were not inclined to take on a President seemingly hell-bent on changing the system of checks and balances that the Constitution created for the Federal Government.

This unabated power until Democrats took control of Congress because of last November's elections also bred sloppiness. One of the prime examples of Mr. Gonzales's failures in this regard was the emergence of Bernie Kerik as Mr. Bush's nominee for U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security 29 months ago.

Ethics Raised Doubts

The Washington Post earlier this month reported that White House officials became aware soon after Rudy Giuliani prodded the President to appoint Mr. Kerik that the former city Correction and Police Commissioner had a past history of ethical problems, including his friendship with Lawrence Ray, who had been indicted by Federal prosecutors in a stock-fraud scheme that involved alleged members of organized crime. Mr. Ray had cooperated with the Feds and informed them that Mr. Kerik had $165,000 worth of home renovations paid for by two brothers who were said to be associates of the Gambino Crime Family.

The Post reported that several of the White House aides questioned the wisdom of nominating Mr. Kerik, but that Mr. Gonzales took charge of the vetting process, asked him questions about the allegations, and was sufficiently satisfied with the answers to sign off on his nomination.

Just a week after it was disclosed, however, Mr. Kerik asked that his nomination be withdrawn, and suddenly the long list of transgressions began spilling out. He pleaded guilty in Bronx Supreme Court 10 months ago to improperly accepting the renovation money from the brothers with the crime family link at a time when they were seeking business from the Giuliani administration, but avoided jail time.

It appears increasingly likely, however, that Mr. Kerik will be indicted on Federal charges that could include avoiding paying taxes on the costs of the renovation work done on his behalf and illegally wiretapping the husband of former Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro so she could determine whether he was having an affair.

A Matter of Faith

If such an indictment occurs, it would be a further embarrassment to Mr. Giuliani as he pursues the Republican nomination for President, but it also would not reflect well on Mr. Bush and Mr. Gonzales. Despite those political realities, there is an expectation that if the facts support such charges, they will be brought by U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia.

It is that faith that allows us to discount questions raised in some quarters when, three weeks before last November's elections, AFL-CIO New York City Central Labor Council President Brian McLaughlin, who was also a Democratic Assemblyman, was indicted for allegedly using both those positions to steal more than $2 million from taxpayers and union members. It prompts us to believe that because the charges are serious enough, with indications that there is solid evidence to support them, it is foolish to wonder whether there was a political motive to the timing of the indictment.

Politicizing Justice

Firing prosecutors because they won't do the bidding of the White House takes a claw-hammer to that faith, in no small measure because it forces us to wonder whether decisions on whether to bring criminal charges, and when, are being made for political reasons. It also raises suspicions that, just as capable prosecutors could lose their jobs because their best judgment clashed with the needs of elected officials, incompetent prosecutors might be able to protect their jobs by doing those officials' bidding.

If such suspicions grow too deep, it undermines our belief in the fundamental fairness of the judicial system, just as surely as a judge making payoffs to get his job or taking payoffs to fix a case does.

And the problem with officials like Mr. Gonzales and the man he serves is that they don't seem to place the value on such faith that they should.

 

Editor's "Razzle Dazzle" Column RSS feed