TPM Reader JJ makes an interesting observation about Alberto Gonzales’ latest account of his visit to the hospital bedside of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft:
I realize that there is a virtual treasure trove of obfuscation to wade through from [Gonzalesâ] appearance, but hereâs a point that I havenât seen addressed yet. AG trotted out a shiny new excuse for his visit to Ashcroft in the hospital. The so-called gang of eight had just met and were so concerned that the illegal wiretapping (or whatever) wouldnât be approved by Comey that they all agreed that it should continue anyway. This was a bombshell that AG felt Ashcroft must know about immediately. Yet when asked by Schumer whether classified information was discussed in the hospital setting with Mrs. Ashcroft present, who wasnât cleared for such info, AG responded that it had been Ashcroft who had done all of the talking and in an attempt at being cute, AG said that he didnât think that Ashcroft had let loose with any classified into during his monologue. How does that jibe with the stated reason for the visit, which was for AG to tell Ashcroft about the gang of eight meeting?
There are other inconsistencies, to be sure. Why did Gonzales bring the re-authorization order for the secret program to the hospital with him if, as Gonzales claims, he didn’t intend to press Ashcroft to sign it? Indeed, given Ashcroft’s condition, why go to the hospital at all if they were not prepared to pressure Ashcroft to overrule James Comey, the acting attorney general?
It would be all laughable were it not so serious.
Justin Rood reports:
The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort to boost its intelligence capabilities.
According to a recent unclassified report to Congress, the FBI expects its informants to provide secrets about possible terrorists and foreign spies, although some may also be expected to aid with criminal investigations, in the tradition of law enforcement confidential informants. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
The FBI said the push was driven by a 2004 directive from President Bush ordering the bureau to improve its counterterrorism efforts by boosting its human intelligence capabilities.
The aggressive push for more secret informants appears to be part of a new effort to grow its intelligence and counterterrorism efforts. Other recent proposals include expanding its collection and analysis of data on U.S. persons, retaining years’ worth of Americans’ phone records and even increasing so-called “black bag” secret entry operations.
Just the sort of thing you would want Alberto Gonzales ultimately in charge of.
Scenes from the House Judiciary Committee hearing this morning, where Republicans opposed citing Miers and Bolten with contempt. Their mind-bending rationale? Opposing the White House’s claim of immunity from Congressional investigations might eventually create an “imperial” presidency.
In March, President Bush offered his support for his embattled attorney general, but admitted that Alberto Gonzales “has some work to do” up on Capitol Hill:
[A]nytime anybody goes up to Capitol Hill, they’ve got to make sure they fully understand the facts, and how they characterize the issue to members of Congress. And the fact that both Republicans and Democrats feel like that there was not straightforward communication troubles me, and it troubles the Attorney General, so he took action. And he needs to continue to take action.
Perhaps someone can ask the President if he’s still troubled, since every time Gonzales has gone back to the Hill since March members of both parties have still felt “that there was not straightforward communication.” Or maybe the better question is, how is the attorney general’s “work” coming along up on the Hill?
Update: As of today, the official party line is still: Gonzales stays.
God, I’d almost forgotten we don’t have former Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY) to kick around any more. But I’m willing to make an exception. Sweeney was an Abramoff crony and the ringleader of the GOP “Brooks Brothers Riot” that helped shutdown the recount down in Florida in November 2000.
Sweeney, you’ll remember, was defeated last year in a very close and hard-fought race against Kirsten Gillibrand. Just before the election a police report surfaced describing a 911 call Sweeney’s wife had placed to police in the district after the congressman had apparently manhandled her during a domestic blow-up in their home. Sweeney rather unconvincingly challenged the authenticity of the report, calling it “fabricated” and “concocted” by the Gillibrand campaign. He later admitted something had happened. But he and his wife both refused to discuss details. Then they said they would authorize the police to release the report and then failed to do so.
The other big Sweeney story last year of course was that crazy night in April when a visibly drunk Sweeney stumbled out of a bar near a Union College frat house and joined throngs of youthful constituents for some extremely inebriated merriment.
In any case, Sweeney’s career swirled down the tubes on election day. And that was pretty much the last we’d heard.
Until just this last week.
Even though Sweeney gave his wife an illegal 10% cut of his fundraising take, the bloom is now officially off the Sweeney marriage. On Sunday, Gayle Sweeney, John’s now estranged wife told the Albany Times-Union that he frequently verbally abused her, sometimes physically abused her and “coerced” her into issueing the denial she made with him just befor election day. In fact, if the phyiscal abuse was only occasional it was apparently pretty extreme because Gayle Sweeney says she is now in hiding, staying in undisclosed locations, because she fears for her life.
But Sweeney himself is at least figuratively fighting back. According to a follow-up story that ran in the Times-Union yesterday, Sweeney claims that it was actually Gayle Sweeney who physically abused him. Her abuse was “pretty extreme,” said Sweeney. And he is afraid of her.
Indeed, in the original 911 incident in which Gayle Sweeney called 911 and told police her husband was “knocking her around” and asked for help, it turns out it was actually Gayle beating up John. Not the other way around. At least that’s now his story.
Sweeney also now concedes that he lied in his pre-election press conference but that he did it to protect his wife. “I had to make a choice about whether my marriage was going to survive or I was staying in Congress. If I stood up and told exactly what happened, I would have lost my marriage.” I’m a little unclear on this point. Sounds like he decided to keep the marriage and the congressional seat. But upstate New York is a different place. So I won’t pass judgment.
For the moment, aside from denying his wife’s claims of abuse, Sweeney is staying quiet on the advice of counsel. He says he still hasn’t decided whether he’ll run for elective office again.
This morning I noted, somewhat sarcastically, that the Transportation Security Administration had put out a bulletin warning that terrorists may be conducting dry runs for future attacks using airlines. The bulletin was based on the discovery of odd contents of passenger luggage around the country, including “block cheese.”
But it wasn’t just cheese. One incident involved mysteriously altered ice packs:
San Diego, July 7. A U.S. person – either a citizen or a foreigner legally here – checked baggage containing two ice packs covered in duct tape. The ice packs had clay inside them rather than the normal blue gel.
Or so it seemed. Now it turns out the ice packs didn’t contain clay, as initially reported, but rather they had leaked and the gel had congealed. False alarm.
The San Diego Union-Tribune sniffs out what really happened:
San Diego Harbor Police Chief Kirk Sanfilippo said the incident involved a bag checked by a woman in her 60s flying out of Lindbergh Field.
Sanfilippo said a routine swab test of the bag indicated the presence of a chemical that is sometimes used in explosives or medications. Inside the luggage, inspectors found cold packs, wrapped in clear packing tape, that were old and leaking.
The TSA bulletin said the ice packs were covered in duct tape and had clay inside of them.
Sanfilippo said they weren’t covered in duct tape and didn’t have clay inside of them. âIt is a little bit off,â he said of the bulletin.
The chief said a Harbor Police officer found what appeared to be hardened old gel that had seeped out of the ice packs and dried, leaving a clay-like substance around the outside edge of the pack.
. . .
In all, it took about three hours for the woman’s luggage to be cleared by security officials.
After the packs were cleared, the woman told authorities she didn’t want to keep them and they were thrown away, Sanfilippo said.
Sanfilippo said he first heard the San Diego incident was being highlighted in the TSA bulletin early Wednesday morning on the TV news.
Still no word on whether TSA got the “block cheese” reports wrong, too, but the money quote comes from the local TSA official in San Diego: âWe get these [bulletins] all the time,â he told the Union-Tribune. âAlmost all the time they prove false.â
Shakeups continue in McCain and Thompson camps. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
Just in case it wasn’t crystal clear that the contempt goes both ways, Tony Snow gave a memorable performance in this afternoon’s press briefing.
As regular readers of this site know, I’ve always been against the movement to impeach President Bush. I take this position not because he hasn’t done plenty to merit it. My reasons are practical. Minor reasons are that it’s late in the president’s term and that I think impeachment itself is toxic to our political system — though it can be less toxic than the high officials thrown from office. My key reason, though, is that Congress at present can’t even get to the relatively low threshold of votes required to force the president’s hand on Iraq. So to use an analogy which for whatever reason springs readily to my mind at this point in my life, coming out for impeachment under present circumstances is like being so frustrated that you can’t crawl that you come out for walking. In various ways it seems to elevate psychic satisfactions above progress on changing a series of policies that are doing daily and almost vast damage to our country. Find me seventeen Republican senators who are going to convict President Bush in a senate trial.
On balance, this is still my position. But in recent days, for the first time I think, I’ve seen new facts that make me wonder whether the calculus has changed. Or to put it another way, to question whether my position is still justifiable in the face of what’s happening in front of our eyes.
Most of those facts I’m referring to stem from the on-going Gonzales controversy (farce?) and the various running battles over executive privilege. In fact, the exchange I noted yesterday between Gonzales and Sen. Schumer (D-NY) stands out in my mind.
This was the exchange in which Gonzales simply refused to answer one of Sen. Schumer’s questions — didn’t say he didn’t remember, didn’t invoke a privilege, just said, No. Not going to discuss that with you. Move on to the next question.
It’s not that this one incident is a matter of such consequence in and of itself — though I would say it’s pretty consequential. But it captures pretty fully and in one small nugget the terrain the White House is now dragging us on to.
As I explained in that post, testifying before Congress is like testifying in a court of law. The questions aren’t voluntary. You have to answer every one. You can invoke a privilege and the court’s will decide whether the argument has merit. But no one can simply decline to answer a question. And yet this is exactly what Gonzales did.
[ed.note: TPM Reader GK suggests that with a closer viewing of the testimony Gonzales actually does implicitly invoke executive privilege. After several times refusing to answer to the question and having Schumer state his understanding that no privilege has been invoked, Gonzales says that the question “relates to his time at the White House” and thus he won’t answer. This is significant; I won’t deny that. But I don’t think it changes the thrust of what I said in the post. It is too casual, flippant and implicit. I think it amounts to the same thing. They’re really not even going through the motions of invoking the privilege. It’s just, no. To evaluate the ins and outs of this, you can watch the relevant segment here.]
The difference between invoking a flimsy claim of privilege and simply refusing to answer has little immediate practical difference, but it’s constitutional implications are profound.
Though other events in recent months and years have had graver consequences in themselves, I’m not sure I’ve seen a more open, casual or brazen display of the attitude that the body of rules which our whole system is built on just don’t apply to this White House.
Without going into all the specifics, I think we are now moving into a situation where the White House, on various fronts, is openly ignoring the constitution, acting as though not just the law but the constitution itself, which is the fundamental law from which all the statutes gain their force and legitimacy, doesn’t apply to them.
If that is allowed to continue, the defiance will congeal into precedent. And the whole structure of our system of government will be permanently changed.
Whether because of prudence and pragmatism or mere intellectual inertia, I still have the same opinion on the big question: impeachment. But I think we’re moving on to dangerous ground right now, more so than some of us realize. And I’m less sure now under these circumstances that operating by rules of ‘normal politics’ is justifiable or acquits us of our duty to our country.
Can a March 10, 2004 White House meeting on the Terrorist Surveillance Program magically transform into a March 10, 2004 White House meeting on some other intelligence program? If Alberto Gonzales wants to avoid perjury charges, he’d better hope so.