Hardly WorkingHow Alberto Gonzales' incompetence became a defense for his wrongdoing.
Posted Tuesday, July 10, 2007, at 6:00 PM ET
A few months ago, just after Alberto Gonzales turned in about the most dismal performance in the history of Senate testimony, I observed that he might have—oddly enough—done just what his boss had expected of him. Musing over his lame defenses for the partisan firings of nine U.S. attorneys—defenses ranging from "I had no idea what my subordinates were doing" to "I can't recall my middle name" to "I didn't actually bestir myself to prepare for this hearing"—it occurred to me that Gonzales was the perfect attorney general for this administration. Way better, really, than John Ashcroft.
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StumbleUponViewed in that light, Gonzales' performances in the House and the Senate this past spring were in fact a tour de force. Why? Because if you accept as truth the great myth of the Untouchable Unitary Executive—and Gonzales surely does—it must also be true that the highest form of fealty to that Unitary Executive is to thwart congressional oversight any way you can. If you must behave like Beavis or Butthead in order to achieve that constitutional effect, so be it. Alberto Gonzales has it in him.
Which brings us to today's news. In April 2005, Gonzales testified before the Senate that "there has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse" as a consequence of expanded FBI powers under the Patriot Act. We now learn that at the time, he was in possession of at least six FBI reports detailing unlawful surveillance, searches, and improper use of national security letters. It's tempting to write off Gonzales' failure to admit to these numerous abuses as yet another punch line. "Ooopsy. Lied again." Heh heh. Shrug. But at least grant that Gonzales' buffoonery serves a larger Bush administration purpose. His dereliction of duty takes our minds off the real story: the extent of the damage he and Bush have done to the Justice Department in a few short years.
In the Washington Post report on the memos Gonzales should have seen before he testified in 2005, the DoJ offers two painful attempts to explain Gonzales' misleading testimony: DoJ spokesman Brian Roehrkasse first claims that at the time Gonzales testified, "he was speaking 'in the context' of reports by the department's inspector general before this year that found no misconduct or specific civil liberties abuses related to the Patriot Act." Somehow, prior inspector general reports of no wrongdoing rendered the FBI reports of wrongdoing invisible. Gonzales' lack of candor, then, is justified because "the statements from the attorney general are consistent with statements from other officials at the FBI and the department." It's not that Gonzales was lying. It's just that everyone was lying.
The more fantastic defense, however, comes from other Justice officials who "could not immediately determine whether Gonzales read any of the FBI reports in 2005 and 2006." That is to say, perhaps Gonzales did not perjure himself because he may not have bothered to read the reports in the first place, or to inform himself—prior to his congressional testimony about the impact of the Patriot Act on civil liberties—about the impact of the Patriot Act on civil liberties.
It's difficult to ascertain the precise moment in the Bush administration in which confessing not to have been doing one's job at all became the best defense against the claim that one did one's job badly. But given the choice between admitting to perjury or incompetence, you can bet that Gonzales will easily, indeed gleefully, cop to the latter. From the very beginning of the U.S. attorney scandal, he has admitted to being checked-out, hands-off, apathetic, and incurious. It's enough to have gotten him fired from a job at Dairy Queen, yet all part of a day's not-work, it seems, from the perspective of the White House.
Does it really serve this administration's interests to have a self-confessed incompetent leading its Justice Department? How so? That's the enduring mystery here. But more and more the theory seems to be that if Gonzales couldn't be bothered to do his job at all, he really cannot be faulted for the things that went horribly wrong. At the end of it all, the bargain the president seems always willing to accept is a tragic one: The lunatics are running the asylum, but at least the asylum is all his.
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Remarks from the Fray:
Are the Democrats not equally culpable for their willing compliance?
In response to the most recent Gonzales-related revelations, The Judicial Committee Chairs plan to "grill" him, or re-grill him, as he has been grilled several times. This will allow Alberto the opportunity to forget, not recall, or acknowledge that he had not been informed. Once again that will satisfy the Congress, that they have done their duty. To their credit, 23% of Americans actually agree that our representatives are doing a good job.
The Reps and Senators need to hear loudly and clearly that it is they who are derelict of duty. I have lost all hope that the Administration will ever again do the right thing. The Nation's only defense is the Congress whose feet must be held to the fire to respond appropriately. As long as co conspirator Pelosi keeps impeachment off the table, the Administration has license to do anything in its arrogance that it chooses to do.
--MastaLuigi
(To reply, click here.)
[According to Alberto Gonzalez,] "'there has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse' as a consequence of expanded FBI powers under the Patriot Act." Verified sounds like what he would say if he read some reports that were not vetted. Abuse - sounds like a term he would use if there were possible problems in the program, but they were probably 'good faith' mistakes.
I don't doubt the impression he gave to some may have been wrong and his responses 'Clintonesque,' but that doesn't make him a liar... that makes him a practicing attorney. I have noticed he minces words very much, but no different than most lawyers.
I agree that he, as well as many in the administration, are rather 'breezy' about mistakes that are important (Iraq, Some of Katrina...) and 'good faith' only goes so far, but I have little doubt his #1 priority after 9/11 was the protection of the American people at home. Even though we are the most "juicy" target to Al Qaeda et al, unless you are a 9/11 conspiracy believer, the Administration must have done something correct thus far.
--Textualist
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The approach of this administration is that a crime is only a crime if (1) there's evidence for it, (2) the executive has seen the evidence, (3) the executive remembers having seen the evidence, and (4) there's evidence of the executive having seen the evidence. Once this has been irrevocably established, there's of course the executive's pardon or commutation.
Of course, for the rest of us, evidence of there even having been a crime is not necessary for detention. Goodbye habeas corpus.
--TheDuke
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It occurs to me that a reasonable alternative hypothesis is that the Attorney General's aides have not briefed him properly. The truth is that every Administration witness gets briefed before testifying before Congress in regular oversight hearings, and much of the information comes from the briefing materials that are put together by underlings. The idea is to make sure that the witness knows the things he should know. In this case, of course, Gonzales didn't. This could come about in three ways:
First, the aides could be incompetent themselves, and not have prepared the briefing books properly before his appearances.
Second, they could be perfectly competent, but have decided that it was better if Gonzales didn't know certain things. This is not an uncommon strategy, and the idea often goes without saying. After all, it's not a lie if you don't know the truth.
Third, Gonzales could have instructed his aides not to prep him on certain things. Again, if you don't know the truth, it's not a lie.
All of this, of course, is consistent with the general Bush Administration approach of keeping as much information as possible under wraps. That makes me lean towards the second and third possibilities, but none of these options requires Gonzales to be incompetent. All he has to be is intentionally oblivious, and he's apparently pretty darned good at that.
--randy_khan
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Dahlia Lithwick asked how it might serve the administration's interests to have a self-confessed incompetent running the DOJ.
The Gonzalez show reappears every so often to grab headlines. What purpose do shows serve? They entertain, they distract, they draw attention, they divert. We should stop wondering how the Gonzalez show serves the administration, and start looking around for whatever it's diverting us from. Incompetence isn't better than much, but it is better than, say, criminal behavior.
Impeachment may be the only thing that scares George W. Bush these days, and smart money says a fear of impeachment is behind everything: the rejected subpoenas, the Gonzalez saga, the clashes with Congress. Impeachment is the ball still being juggled; Gonzalez is merely the ball being dropped, drawing all eyes that-a-way.
--Slor
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(7/13)