AMY GOODMAN: We return to my interview with investigative journalist Murray Waas. I asked him about two articles he wrote in theatlantic.com that relate to the attorney firings scandal called “The Case of the Gonzales Notes” and “What Did Bush Tell Gonzales?”
MURRAY WAAS: Myth, deception—Gonzales is still under investigation, or will be, by the acting US attorney in Connecticut as to whether he lied to Congress about the firings. And he’s currently under investigation for lying to Congress or perjury in regard to what he told Congress about their surveillance program.
But what the story in The Atlantic said was that Gonzales created a fictitious set of notes and created this funny set of notes, so that President Bush could reauthorize their surveillance program at a time the Department of Justice had concluded
it was outside the law or of dubious, you know, legality. And so, they needed a pretext. They needed some rationale. And so, Gonzales simply made up a set of notes that wasn’t inaccurate, but a total lie—an extraordinary act for an attorney general..................
AMY GOODMAN: And where are those notes?
MURRAY WAAS: Those notes—well, they’re highly classified. Ironically, the investigators had a hard time getting them. So they’re conducting a perjury investigation, but they claim the notes were originally too, you know, classified for the investigators to look at. Once they got a look at them, they found out
something extraordinary, which is the
Attorney General apparently created a set of notes recounting a meeting with members of Congress, eight congressional leaders, known as the Gang of Eight, and these eight congressional leaders, according to his notes, said that they wanted the President to continue on with their surveillance program, even though the Department of Justice refused to certify it as legal and was questioning its legality. And based on that, Gonzales and Bush signed the reauthorization of the program.
But the
members of Congress who were there say it’s a complete lie; they never said anything of this sort. So
Gonzales wrote a false account in these notes, so, in case they got in legal trouble or, you know, let’s say there was an—even impeachment was quite possible if this had become known, but also public relations. All of these things probably played a role in why Gonzales made up these notes. But he essentially fabricated a set of notes to authorize a surveillance program that, in its form at the time, the Department of Justice said was of dubious legality.
lots more at:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/1/justice_dept_appoints_special_prosecutor_after
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