Dogpile on Fredo!
By Sean Aqui | Related entries in General Politics, Law, News, Partisan HacksI’ve got a general roundup on Gonzales over at Midtopia. But the thing I want to highlight here is the big item of the day: a third possible Gonzales scandal.
The National Journal, citing government records and anonymous officials, says Gonzales advised Bush to shut down a Justice Department probe into the NSA eavesdropping program — even after learning that he would likely be a subject of the inquiry (here’s what I wrote about it back in May, when the probe was killed).
The tactic used to block the probe — denying security clearances to the investigators involved — was unusual to begin with. Now add in the spectre of Gonzales the AG urging Bush to derail an inquiry that would have looked into the actions of Gonzales the White House counsel.
The National Journal notes the no-win nature of this problem:
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.
Either way, Gonzales is screwed. If he didn’t tell Bush, he’s toast. If he did tell Bush, he’s still toast, because he’ll be thrown overboard to protect the president.
The only path that saves him is if he can claim, without being contradicted, that he did not advise Bush about the probe. That path remains open for now: the National Journal relies on anonymous sources to make the advisory claim, and that hardly constitutes proof.
But even if he avoids that trap, the timing of the decision to end the probe was interesting. The Journal — again citing anonymous sources — says the decision came after investigators had notified the administration of their investigative strategy, which involved questioning some senior Justice Department lawyers who had clashed with Gonzales over the NSA program when he was White House counsel. The Journal describes worries among political appointees that investigators might conclude the administration had deliberately sidestepped the law.
Then there’s this gem:
In a March 21, 2006, memo citing his inability to obtain security clearances, Jarrett, the head of OPR, wrote to Paul McNulty, the deputy attorney general, complaining that OPR was being “precluded from performing its duties.”
In contrast, Jarrett noted, the administration promptly approved “the Criminal Division’s request for the same security clearances for a large team of attorneys and FBI agents that was investigating who initially leaked details of the NSA eavesdropping program to The New York Times.”
Security clearances for investigations the White House likes? No problem. Security clearances for investigations it doesn’t like? Forget it.
In response to the National Journal story, the House Judiciary Committee is demanding answers from Gonzales.
The dogs smell blood.
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 and is filed under General Politics, Law, News, Partisan Hacks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 15th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
As I vaguely recall, in the Nixon fall, it started with either Mitchell or Agnew. then to John Dean (WH Counsel to Nixon), to Haldeman & Erlichman (top WH aides, Chief of Staff?), & eventually to Nixon.
This time it starts with the VP Chief of Staff, to lower levels of the DoJ, to what appears to be the Pres.’s Chief of Staff & the AG (the former WH Attorney.). Of course, this all depends on the accuracy of the info that is so far not public.
Could history be repeating itself? Part of me looks forward to such an outcome & another part dreads it. If history does repeat itself, I hope pardons do not happen. I believe the country would have been better served to prosecute Nixon, go where the evidence led, & let the pieces fall where they may. Many of todays players in the current administration would not be part of the problem.
March 15th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
I honestly hope it doesn’t go that far. Mad as I am at Bush/Cheney for the cavalier way they have treated civil liberties, the extreme politicization of everything and the incompetent distraction in Iraq, I find them to be more bumbling and conniving than evil. Even though with Clinton the Republicans lowered the bar for impeachment far enough to make it thinkable now, I don’t want to go there. The bar needs to be raised back up, and we should simply not want to impeach two presidents back to back.
I’ll be content with the resignation or neutering of the worst offenders and the political isolation of the White House. Both goals are well on their way to being realized.
A side benefit might be an increasingly independent and moderate Republican party, as they try to shed associations with Bush, the war and neoconnery in general. A possible scenario for 2008 is the Republicans start shedding their extremist influences just as Democrats start succumbing to theirs, in which case I will be voting Republican more than usual in that election. But I think the reality will be even more salutory to moderates: Republicans head for the center to get away from the neocons, and the Blue Dog Dems keep the Democrats from straying too far left.
March 15th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
You know, if Nixon had been prosecuted that would have been a fair warning to Presidents in the future. As it stands now, Nixon getting pardoned from any wrongdoing has been a way for Presidents to feel they can get away with nearly anything.
Sean points out a trajectory towards a more moderate Republican party. Well, maybe they’ll go back to traditional conservative roots. That would be a welcome change, instead of aligning themselves with the culture of life crowd. That was a marriage made of political convenience, as was evidenced by Reagan’s embrace and then subsequent letting go of the Moral Majority during his tenure.
In any event, 2008 is gonna be a hell of a year.
March 16th, 2007 at 9:02 am
Its such a beautiful sight to see these assholes falling off there high horses. Nixon should not have been pardoned, there has to be accountability, otherwise revolution will boil up, no one is above the law. No one. Where is the accountability with politicians nowadays? There is none. When did we get to this idea that the “royal” class of politicians can do whatever they want and not have to answer to anyone? I’ve seen it time and time again and it angers me to no avail. Why don’t we reinstall a monarchy where the “royal” class / family is above the law because that’s what is currently happening in our political landscape. It is extrememly dangerous. Its dangerous to do nothing about it also. As far as the Clinton comparison, lying about a blowjob because you didn’t want you wife to know isn’t even comparable to lying about a war that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. We shouldn’t impeach Bush because it is bad to do it in back to back presidents? What the hell kind of logic is this? What should be important is the reasons for wanting to impeach not the fact that it will be done back to back.
March 16th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
I think we need to impeach Cheney and Bush before they start bombing Iran.
March 16th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Guys,
Remember, all this light is being shed by the new Democratic Congress and the power of the committee chairmen to bring these issues out in the spotlight. We gave them that power in the last election, and we can as easily take it away in the next. If the Dems go too far with their indictments of the W.H. improprieties and spend all of their time playing the blame game, it may work against them in the end.
March 17th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Actually the real issue, Ben, is the fact that the Republicans have been covering up all this crap for years, while gunning full out for the Democrats. All we’re seeing now is things coming to light that have been hidden behind a shield of cronyism for years.
And I predict what we’ve seen so far is only the tip of the iceberg…the Republicans thought they had secured power indefinitely through their control of the media and massively corrupt K street funding…so they paid only lip service to such trivial things as legality and constitutionality.