By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent
August 27, 2007
WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' resignation
Monday after months of draining controversy drew expressions
of relief from Republicans and a vow from Democrats to pursue
their investigation into fired federal prosecutors.
President Bush, Gonzales' most dogged defender, told reporters
he had accepted the resignation reluctantly. "His good
name was dragged through the mud for political reasons," Bush
said.
The president named Paul Clement, the solicitor general, as
a temporary replacement. With less than 18 months remaining
in office, there was no indication when Bush would name a successor — or
how quickly or easily the Senate might confirm one.
Apart from the president, there were few Republican expressions
of regret following the departure of the nation's first Hispanic
attorney general, a man once hailed as the embodiment of the
American Dream.
"Our country needs a credible, effective attorney general
who can work with Congress on critical issues," said Sen.
John Sununu of New Hampshire, who last March was the first
GOP lawmaker to call on Gonzales to step down. "Alberto
Gonzales' resignation will finally allow a new attorney general
to take on this task."
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, added, "Even after all the
scrutiny, it doesn't appear that Attorney General Gonzales
committed any crimes, but he did make management missteps and
didn't handle the spotlight well when they were exposed."
Democrats were less charitable.
Under Gonzales and Bush, "the Department of Justice suffered
a severe crisis of leadership that allowed our justice system
to be corrupted by political influence," said Sen. Patrick
Leahy, D-Vt., who has presided over the investigation into
the firings of eight prosecutors whom Democrats say were axed
for political reasons.
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the investigation
would not end with Gonzales' leaving.
"Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow
the facts where they lead, into the White House," said
the Nevada Democrat.
Gonzales also has struggled in recent months to explain his
involvement in a 2004 meeting at the hospital bedside of then-Attorney
General John Ashcroft, who had refused to certify the legality
of Bush's no-warrant wiretapping program. Ashcroft was in intensive
care at the time.
More broadly, the attorney general's personal credibility
has been a casualty of the multiple controversies. So much
so that Sen. Arlen Specter, senior GOP member of the Judiciary
Committee, told him at a hearing on the prosecutors that his
testimony was "significantly if not totally at variance
with the facts."
The speculation about a successor began immediately, and included
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; Asa Hutchinson,
former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration; former
solicitor general Ted Olson; and Larry Thompson, who was the
second-ranking official at the Justice Department in Bush's
first term.
Gonzales made a brief appearance before reporters at the Justice
Department to announce his resignation. "Even my worst
days as attorney general have been better than my father's
best days," said the son of migrants.
Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee as recently as
July 24 that he had decided to stay in his post despite numerous
calls for his resignation.
Several officials said the attorney general called Bush at
his ranch last Friday to offer his resignation. Bush did not
attempt to dissuade him but accepted with reluctance, they
said. The president then invited Gonzales and his wife to Sunday
lunch.
Gonzales was one of the longest-serving members of a group
of Texans who came to Washington with Bush more than six years
ago at the dawn of a new administration.
Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist, announced
his resignation last week. Presidential counselor Dan Bartlett
and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel who was forced
to withdraw her nomination for the Supreme Court, left earlier
in the year.
Gonzales, too, was once considered for the high court, but
conservatives never warmed to the idea and he was passed over.
His appointment as attorney general more than three years
ago marked the latest in a series of increasingly high-profile
positions that Bush entrusted him with.
A Harvard-educated lawyer, Gonzales signed on with Bush in
the mid 1990s. He served as general counsel and secretary of
state when his patron was governor of Texas, then won an appointment
to the state Supreme Court.
As counsel, Gonzales helped get Bush excused from jury duty
in 1996, which kept him from having to disclose a drunken driving
arrest in Maine in 1976. The episode became public in the final
days of the 2000 presidential campaign.
Gonzales was White House counsel during the president's first
term, then replaced Ashcroft as attorney general soon after
the beginning of the second.
Both jobs gave him key responsibilities in the administration's
global war on terror that followed the attacks of Sept. 11,
2001.
In a legal memo in 2002, he contended that Bush had the right
to waive anti-torture laws and international treaties that
protected prisoners of war. The memo said some of the prisoner-of-war
protections contained in the Geneva Conventions were "quaint" and
that in any event, the treaty did not apply to enemy combatants
in the war on terror.
Human rights groups later contended his memo led directly
to the abuses exposed in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.
Of greater political concern was the Democratic majority that
took office in Congress earlier this year. Leahy soon began
investigating the firing of federal prosecutors.
Testifying on April 19 before the Judiciary Committee, Gonzales
answered "I don't know" and "I can't recall" scores
of times when asked about events surrounding the firings.
His support among Republicans in Congress, already weak, eroded
markedly, then suffered further with word of the bedside meeting
in the intensive care unit of George Washington University
Hospital three years earlier.
Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified that
Ashcroft had refused to reauthorize the wiretapping program.
Appearing before the Judiciary Committee, he described a confrontation
in which Gonzales White House counsel at the time and White
House Chief of Staff Andy Card had appealed to Ashcroft to
overrule his deputy. The ill Ashcroft refused, saying he had
transferred power to Comey.
Comey described the events as "an effort to take advantage
of a very sick man who did not have the powers of the attorney
general."
Gonzales subsequently denied that the dispute was about the
terrorist surveillance program, but his credibility was undercut
when FBI Director Robert S. Mueller contradicted him.
Several Democrats called for a perjury investigation, but
no further action has been taken.
___
Associated Press writers Lara Jakes Jordan, Jennifer Loven,
Matt Apuzzo and Terence Hunt contributed to this story.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes. BadConcress.com has no affiliation
whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is BadCongress.com
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.
|
