Alberto Gonzales Won't Be Charged Over Eavesdropping Testimony

[kpete]

Source: New York Magazine

Alberto Gonzales Won't Be Charged Over Eavesdropping Testimony
By: Murray Waas

Alberto Gonzales, pilloried for allegedly misleading Congress about the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program, has been exonerated — sort of. According to public records and interviews with federal law-enforcement officials, the Justice Department has concluded that there’s insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against the former attorney general. His critics might groan, but they have some solace: The Justice Department’s inspector general, who conducted the investigation, concluded that his testimony before Congress about the eavesdropping program was “confusing,” “incomplete,” and had the “effect of misleading” both Congress and the public. Surely Jon Stewart can do something with that.

Gonzales also remains under investigation by the Justice Department for matters connected to the wiretaps and the firings, thought to be politically motivated, of nine U.S. attorneys — scandal aplenty. But it’s been allegations about his eavesdropping testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee that put him in the greatest legal jeopardy by far. A major reason he escaped criminal charges, according to people close to the investigation, was that he finally admitted what he never would have before, when he seemed the most loyal of George W. Bush’s servants: that many of his most controversial decisions (first as White House counsel, and later, as attorney general) in authorizing, overseeing, and concealing the eavesdropping program were done at the specific direction of the former president. In other instances, Gonzales and his attorneys argued that his actions were done in furtherance of the Bush administration’s policies — meaning, for what it’s worth, that he did not act with personal intent to do wrong.

“He was willing to be a lightning rod in the past for the president,” said one legal source close to the investigation. “He has done that during the entire course of his career. But it was pressed upon him that that was not going to work in this instance — and he did what he had to do.”

Ironically, in finally talking to investigators about the president, Gonzales might actually have been protecting his old boss, as well as himself. A senior Bush-administration official familiar with the matter told me that Fred Fielding, the White House counsel in the closing days of the Bush presidency, feared that the Justice Department’s probe of Gonzales’s misleading testimony might morph into a special prosecutor’s investigation not only of Gonzales, but also of the conduct of others in the Bush White House — including perhaps Bush himself. (The Justice Department can refer an investigation to the attorney general for a criminal or special prosecutor to take over.) Fielding quietly counseled Gonzales’s cooperation, and Gonzales’s legal team, headed by George J. Terwilliger III, a deputy attorney general during the presidency of the first President Bush, made an early decision to fully cooperate with the inspector general.

Read more: Alberto Gonzales Won't Be Charged Over Eavesdropping Testimony -- Daily Intel http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/11/alberto_gonzales_q...


Read more: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/11/alberto_gonzales_q...

[fascisthunter]

1. see... no accountability

the enemies of the state run the show...

[icee2]

2. "Change We Can Believe In?"

Okay, his last name begins with an "O", not a "B".

[Altoid_Cyclist]

3. “confusing,” “incomplete,” and had the “effect of misleading” both Congress and the public.

That pretty much describes what * and his handlers did to the world during the 8 years that the Idiot Son was in office.
The worst part is that those are three of the least damaging ways to describe what went on.
Will there ever be any real justice for any of the criminals connected to the bush II cabal?
I'm not going to hold my breath in anticipation.

[Festivito]

4. Oh! If we get a John Stewart joke out of it, why look for evidence!

Because, maybe, just maybe, our country, our Constitution is not a joke?

eh!

Guess all those silly forefathers who fought and died are just jokes along with the rest of US who fight and die.

Ha-ha-ha.

[Amonester]

24. Well, the Constitution is quaint.

Since the previous decider has decided the Constitution is just an old piece of paper, there is now a 'precedent'.

Really, the pols can do what ever they want now. They R free.

See?


Why ain't there any smiley for :cynism: or :tragedy: ?

[DrDan]

27. it must be true - the current administration is continuing the same path

[dmosh42]

5. Just another 'continuation' of the Bush Admin! n/t

[Steerpike]

6. You see,

we have to be generous to the Republicans in order to avoid the appearance of partisanship. We must also be extra hard on liberals and Democrats so we are not perceived to be biased.

We really are riding the Big Shit Train to Hell.

[gratuitous]

7. So, if I commit a criminal act

As long as someone of unimpeachable authority told me to do it, or because it furthers the policies of that unimpeachable authority's administration - of which I am a part - then it's A-OK.

You know, I hadn't read anything about Murray Waas getting kicked in the head by a horse. There must be some other reason for him to write something that asinine without tearing it into little pieces.

[L. Coyote]

8. So, did he give testimony implicating George W. Bush in illegal conduct?

That's the real question in this story!

[RufusTFirefly]

9. I guess he was Too Big To Fail. n/t

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

10. Perjury - Not A Crime

[Steerpike]

11. Holy Toledo!

Good thing he didn't have oral sex. We might have had to appoint a Special Prosecutor!

[dixiegrrrrl]

21. contempt of Congress...also not a crime.

[Ignis]

22. Yep, I plan to practice it in every courtroom I enter.

After all, if the highest attorney in the land can't be held to this standard, why should I?

[Solly Mack]

12. damn

[Doctor_J]

13. Obama is either in fear of his life or complicit

you choose.

[mullard12ax7]

14. Only a corrupt criminal country would do such a thing

Oops, just caused severe cognitive dissonance for all the "I got mine, we won" political hacks.

[tom_paine]

19. Yes, we a corrupted, evermore Third World-ish country.

Any hope we ever had of being something else likely died in Dallas 45 years ago, almost certainly murdered by Bush-CIA bullets.

Kennedy made the mistake of taking that Constitution thingy seriously, and he paid for it with his life, as usual, like Rabin, King and so many others who threatened NWO, killed by a "lone gunman".

(at the laughable idea of all those "lone gunmen" coincidentally wiping out every threat to Inverted Totalitarianism, which is what form of government our nation is under now and perhaps forevermore)

[Vidar]

15. Holder is now as complicit as Gonazales.

[avaistheone1]

23. Indeed.

[bobthedrummer]

16. No one is above the law in a democracy...change you can't believe in is here

[Iowa]

17. Another in an endless string of Obama adminstration failures...

Reading the news about Obama's administration produces the same puking response that reading about the Bush administration used to provide. Obama is shaping up to be the worst Democratic president in history (by far). He stands as living proof that the once great Democratic party of FDR is dead and gone.

It's third party for me from here on out.

[tom_paine]

18. Another prediction come true, though it was obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain years ago

Whoever the hell is actually running this country, and it sure ain't Obama, long ago decreed that the Bush Criminalities, being in complete concert with whatever horrific future they have cooked up for us in the Age of Peak Everything, shall NOT be touched, not one hair on any of their scarbrous, monstrously criminal heads.

And the laughable dog-and-pony show that is the United States of Ameriga rolled ever onward topwards that horrific future, which will most assuredly closely resemble in socio-political structure as our medeval past.

Just a matter of when, people, and they are going to need all the ruthless, murderous, amoral criminals masquearding as lawmen - like Alberto Gonzales - to keep the peasantry in line if their social engineering fails in any way and the peasants start aiming their guns at something other than their NWO-designated scapegoats.

[RedCloud]

20. Off with his head.

[47of74]

25. Why can't we have this...

"Regulations are quite harsh, but they're also quite clear, Captain. If you do not act, you will be considered equally guilty."

Why can't we have something similar with our government?

[DrDan]

26. why are we wasting our time on investigating anyone from the prior administration

the current one has absolutely no interest in pursuing charges.

Why waste the time and money when there is a perfectly good war where our money is better spent.

[fasttense]

28. Just like in Pinochet's Chile.

It may take 10 years to bring the bushes to justice.

It's kind of like Obama gave all the crooks special immunity.

[Joe Bacon]

29. Once again, Republicans are above the law.

Wow, who would have guessed it?