I’m posting this to provide background for you to inspire you to write your senators about opposing the Gonzales confirmation for US Attorney General.
Here’s
part one of two of these clips.
In this clip, Gonzales confirms that he believes that President Bush can take it upon himself to not to follow the Geneva Convention, the War Crimes Act, or any other law, if he feels it is unconstitutional, as long as he thinks about it a lot first.
Gonzales manages to reduce this very specific question about what’s going now in the current world (re: Bush and Gonzales’ advice that geneva conventions don’t need to be followed) to a hypothetical about whether it’s theoretically possible for “a president” to not adhere to a law if he felt it was unconstitutional. (Which of course it is.)
But this isn’t about anything hypothetical at all. This is about some real legal advice that Gonzales gave to President Bush in August of 2002 while he was his legal counsel. We’re talking about a specific, deliberate legal justification for why a specific, really important law, the Geneva Conventions, doesn’t necessarily have to be adhered to, and under what specific scenario it might be legal to do so.
Then Gonzales either lies (if he is aware of the facts) or makes a mistake (if is is ill informed of the facts, which I highly doubt), when he states that the courts have decided both ways as to whether or not it is OK for a President to knowingly break a law on the grounds that it is unconstitutional. Truman tried to do this fifty-two years ago, and the Supreme Court decided he was wrong in doing so. The Supreme Court has never sided with a president on this issue. So again — Gonzales is either lying or misinformed. Neither is appropriate for a U.S. Attorney General. He needs to be both honest and well informed as to the legal status of such important questions.

Video of Gonzales Questioned By Dick Durbin (Part Two of Two)
(Small – 13 MB)

Audio of Gonzales Questioned By Dick Durbin (Part Two of Two)
(MP3 – 8 MB)

Senator Durbin:
“But you believe he has that authority. He could ignore a law passed by this Congress, signed by this President or another one, and decide that it is unconstitutional and refuse to comply with that law?”
Alberto Gonzales:
“Senator, again, your asking me, hypothetically, does that authority exist? I guess I would have to say that, hypothetically, that authority may exist. But let me also just say that we certainly understand and recognize the role of the courts in our system of government. We have to deal with some very difficult issues here. Very, very complicated. Sometimes the answers are not so clear. The President’s position on this is, ultimately the judges, courts, will make the decision as to whether or not we’ve drawn the right balance here. And, and, in certain circumstances, the courts have agreed with the Administrations position, and, in certain circumstances, the courts have disagreed, and we will respect those decisions.”
Senator Durbin:
“Fifty-two years ago, a president named Harry Truman decided to test that premise. Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co Et. Al vs. Sawyer in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said, as you know, “President Truman, you’re wrong. You don’t have the authority to decide whats constitutional – what laws you like and don’t like. I’m troubled that you would think, as our incoming Attorney General, that a president can pick and choose the laws that he thinks are constitutional, and ultimately wait for that test in court to decide whether or not he’s going to comply with the law.”

Video of Gonzales Questioned By Dick Durbin (Parts One And Two)
(Small – 27 MB)

Audio of Gonzales Questioned By Dick Durbin (Parts One And Two)
(MP3 – 16 MB)

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This story is from January 8, 2005. I’m posting it to provide background for you to inspire you to write your senators about opposing the Gonzales confirmation for US Attorney General.

Tortured Answers
An Editorial By The St. Petersburg Times.

After seven hours of testimony and pointed questions, it seemed clear that he doesn’t understand the difference at all. Gonzales’ time before the Senate Judiciary Committee was spent refusing to answer direct questions, being evasive, conveniently losing his memory regarding key events, averting responsibility for controversial legal judgments that he had sought and supported, and generally failing to demonstrate any independence from the White House.
If confirmed as attorney general, which he no doubt will be, Gonzales will bear close watching. He may not be as ideologically driven as John Ashcroft, but his lapdog loyalty to the president offers little reason to believe he will disturb business as usual in this administration. That means the government will continue to hold foreign prisoners without due process, distort the reading of the Geneva Conventions, and justify the use of abusive (but ostensibly not torturous) interrogation methods – all actions that already have eroded this country’s moral authority and put our own soldiers’ safety at risk.
Both Republican and Democratic senators seemed frustrated at Gonzales’ lack of candor and cooperation. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., bluntly told Gonzales: “We’re looking for you, when we ask you questions, to give us an answer, which you haven’t done yet.”
Citing faulty memory, Gonzales refused to lay out the events that led to the development of a 2002 Justice Department memorandum interpreting a federal statute barring torture. The memorandum was the centerpiece of the hearing. Reports are that it had been solicited by Gonzales after the CIA sought a legal analysis on whether their agents faced criminal liability for utilizing abusive interrogation techniques. The memorandum, which was repudiated by the administration on the eve of Gonzales’ hearing, said that the president could approve of torture and override any law or treaty as part of his warmaking powers. It also defined torture very narrowly and said there could be a necessity defense for its use…
The Republican leadership in Congress, and particularly the judiciary committee chairmen, should recommit themselves to asserting oversight over the policy direction and operations of the Justice Department. Gonzales is someone who will need to be watched, not trusted.
Gonzales, like Ashcroft, seems willing to advance any position preferred by the White House – an impulse that has helped undermine the rule of law and the separation of powers. This country deserves better in its chief law enforcement officer.

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This story is from January 7, 2005. I’m posting it to provide background for you to inspire you to write your senators about opposing the Gonzales confirmation for US Attorney General.

Mr. Gonzales’s Testimony
A Washington Post Editorial.

The message Mr. Gonzales left with senators was unmistakable: As attorney general, he will seek no change in practices that have led to the torture and killing of scores of detainees and to the blackening of U.S. moral authority around the world. Instead, the Bush administration will continue to issue public declarations such as those Mr. Gonzales repeated yesterday – “that torture and abuse will not be tolerated by this administration” – while in practice sanctioning procedures that the International Red Cross and many lawyers inside the government consider to be illegal and improper…
Alberto R. Gonzales missed an important opportunity yesterday to rectify his position, and that of President Bush, on the imprisonment and interrogation of foreign detainees. At the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on his nomination to be attorney general, Mr. Gonzales repeatedly was offered the chance to repudiate a legal judgment that the president is empowered to order torture in violation of U.S. law and immunize torturers from punishment. He declined to do so. He was invited to reject a 2002 ruling made under his direction that the infliction of pain short of serious physical injury, organ failure or death did not constitute torture. He answered: “I don’t have a disagreement with the conclusions then reached.” Nor did he condemn torture techniques, such as simulated drowning, that were discussed and approved during meetings in his office. “It is not my job,” he said, to decide if they were proper. He was prompted to reflect on whether departing from the Geneva Conventions had been a mistake, in light of the shocking human rights abuses that have since been reported in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Guant

This footage is from January 6, 2005. I’m posting this to provide background for you to inspire you to write your senators about opposing the Gonzales confirmation for US Attorney General.
Here’s a link to part 2 of 2.
In this first of two clips of Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) questioning Gonzales, Durbin asks if Gonzales feels it’s permissible to torture prisoners, second guess the Geneva Convention under certain circumstances, or knowingly violate the War Crimes Act under certain circumstances.
Although Gonzales states for the record that “our policy is that we do not engage in torture,” he skirts the War Crimes Act question completely and continues to deny that his memo had any part in helping to create a “permissive environment” at Abu Ghraib.
I’ve also included a link to the complete clip that this smaller clip was taken from, for your reference below.

Video of Gonzales Questioned By Dick Durbin (Part One of Two)
(Small – 14 MB)

Audio of Gonzales Questioned By Dick Durbin (Part One of Two)
(MP3 – 9 MB)

Senator Durbin:
“Do you believe that there are circumstances where other legal restrictions, like the War Crimes Act, would not apply to U.S. personnel?”
Alberto Gonzales:
(7 second pause)
“Sir, I don’t believe that that would be the case, but I would like the opportunity to, I don’t, I want to be very candid with you, and obviously thorough in my response to that question. Uh. It is sort of a legal conclusion and I would like to have the opportunity to get back to you on that.”
Senator Durbin:
“I’ll give you that chance.”

Video of Gonzales Questioned By Dick Durbin (Parts One And Two)
(Small – 27 MB)

Audio of Gonzales Questioned By Dick Durbin (Parts One And Two)
(MP3 – 16 MB)

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This story is from January 7, 2005. I’m posting it to provide background for you to inspire you to write your senators about opposing the Gonzales confirmation for US Attorney General.


By Dan Eggen and R. Jeffrey Smith for The Washington Post.

Attorney general nominee Alberto R. Gonzales strongly defended his tenure as White House counsel yesterday, including his conclusion that the protections of the Geneva Conventions do not apply to alleged terrorists, and he suggested that the United States should consider renegotiating the international treaties to better wage its war on terrorism…
But under often tough questioning from Democrats and some Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said he could not recall key details of his involvement in the production of an August 2002 memo that narrowly defined the tactics that constitute torture. He also declined repeated invitations to repudiate a past administration assertion that the president has the authority to ignore anti-torture statutes on national security grounds…
Gonzales said he could not remember who had requested the legal guidance on permissible interrogation tactics – many officials have said it was the CIA – but he acknowledged under questioning that high-pressure interrogation techniques were discussed in White House meetings at which he was present. Others have said the tactics included mock burials and simulated drownings…
But many Democrats and at least one Republican argued that Gonzales had participated in formulating policy that laid the foundation for the abuse scandals in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba, which have generated global outrage. Gonzales declined to answer many questions and said he could not recall details in relation to many others, prompting complaints from some Democrats on the committee.
“We’re looking for you, when we ask you questions, to give us an answer, which you haven’t done yet,” Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) told Gonzales. “I love you, but you’re not very candid so far.”
Gonzales said “it is appropriate to revisit” the Geneva Conventions, which provide an international standard of conduct for handling detainees during military conflicts. Gonzales disclosed that White House officials, including some lawyers, had held “some very preliminary discussion” about the idea, but he said “it’s not been a systematic project or effort.”…
Four different senators tried to pin down Gonzales on the August 2002 memo’s controversial assertion that a president had the power to authorize torture in unusual circumstances, but Gonzales deflected that, saying it was a “hypothetical question.” A new memo issued by the Justice Department last month also avoided the question of presidential power.
At the same time, Gonzales did not rule out reaching such a conclusion in the future. “I would have to know what . . . is the national interest that the president may have to consider,” he told Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.).

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This story is from January 6, 2005. I’m posting it to provide background for you to inspire you to write your senators about opposing the Gonzales confirmation for US Attorney General.

White House Won’t Release Gonzales Papers
By Mark Sherman for the Associated Press.

The White House refused Thursday to provide senators additional documents on attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzales’ role in the decision to allow aggressive interrogations of terrorism detainees. The top Democrat at Gonzales’ Senate confirmation hearing said that questioning was “tantamount to torture.”…
“The road you traveled….all the way to the White House is a tribute to you and your family,” Leahy said.
Nevertheless, the Vermont Democrat had harsh criticism for administration officials, including Gonzales’ predecessor, John Ashcroft.
“Senior officials in the Bush White House, the Ashcroft Justice Department, the Rumsfeld Pentagon set in motion a systematic effort to minimize, distort and even ignore our laws, our policies and international agreements on torture and treatment of prisoners,” he said…
Senate Democrats say the White House has refused to give them all of the memos and documents they need to trace how that decision was made so they can review Gonzales’ role and how it would affect him as the nation’s top law enforcement official.
“It appears that legal positions that you have supported have been used by the administration, the military and the CIA to justify torture and Geneva Convention violations by military and civilian personnel,” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., in a statement prepared for the hearing.
“Memos you solicited, endorsed, approved or acquiesced in undermined longstanding traditions in our military and weakened important protections for our own troops serving abroad by violating the military’s golden rule: that we treat captured enemy forces as we would want our own prisoners of war to be treated,” Kennedy’s statement said.

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The senate put Gonzales’ confirmation on hold last Wednesday. That means we have two more days to get the word out to our senators that we oppose his confirmation.
This article is just a little thing, so I’ve republished the whole thing below.

Democrats put hold on Gonzales vote
By the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Attorney General designate Alberto Gonzales will have to wait at least another week before getting a Senate committee vote on his nomination to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee decided Wednesday to ask for a one-week hold on Gonzales’ nomination.
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said the committee should not vote on Gonzales yet because the nominee has not yet answered all of the Democrats’ questions. Democrats have complained that Gonzales has been evasive with his answers to their questions about White House policies on the war on terror.
”If we are to meet our constitutional responsibility in the confirmation process, we must insist that Mr. Gonzales provide responsive answers to these fundamental questions,” Kennedy said. ”He should not be listed on the agenda for a committee vote on his nomination until he does so.”