Freddie Howard
July 16, 2007
Murphy Candies, Jr.
July 18, 2007“It’s hard to see how the Department of Justice can function and perform its duties with Mr. Gonzales remaining where he is.” – Sen. Arlen Specter
The U.S. Attorney General has, with good reason, historically been considered the “people’s lawyer.”
Charged with the weighty task of blindly pursuing justice, the Attorney General is responsible for making sure that the rule of law prevails over government corruption. This holds true even when justice requires the Attorney General, an unelected government official, to bring to account political allies and personal friends because the rule of law is no friend of nepotism.
According to its mission statement on the Department of Justice’s Web site, the office of the Attorney General is supposed to enforce the law and “ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.” In other words, the Attorney General is accountable to “we the people.”
By this standard, our current Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, has been a huge disappointment. Time and again, he has shown himself to be a political “yes-man,” more committed to protecting his political friends than upholding the rule of law.
Gonzales’ misplaced allegiance dates back to his tenure as White House Counsel, where he advocated the use of torture on captured detainees and insisted that the president can indefinitely detain U.S. citizens by labeling them “enemy combatants.” These assertions have since been seriously attacked by legal experts and, in some instances, refuted by the courts.
Unfortunately, not much has changed since Gonzales’ appointment to Attorney General. To the extent that he can evade, justify, fabricate and parse, Gonzales has remained the president’s man. This has been clearly illustrated each time Gonzales has testified before Congress. Whether testifying on the government’s domestic spying program, the torture of detainees or the firing of federal prosecutors, Gonzales’ outright refusal to answer a direct question with a straight answer has become something of a running joke among late-night talk show hosts.
During testimony in April 2007 regarding his role in the questionable firing of nine U.S. attorneys, Gonzales routinely responded with variations on the theme of “I don’t recall” (as in “I don’t recall,” “I have no recollection” and “I have no memory”) a reported 64 times.
His evasions became so comical that at one point a Marine onlooker replaced his placard protesting the Iraq war with a running “I don’t recall” tally. And while Gonzales was not even sanctioned for his defiance, the average citizen would have been hauled off to jail for contempt.
Now, recently released FBI documents indicate that Gonzales lied under oath in his testimony to Congress on at least one occasion. Appearing before Congress to urge the renewal of the USA Patriot Act in April 2005, Gonzales assured senators that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers under that law.
“There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse,” Gonzales declared.
In fact, just six days earlier, the FBI had reported to Gonzales that its agents had obtained personal information they were not entitled to have. That was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months prior to his testimony before Congress, each of which was serious enough to require notification of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. But Gonzales apparently did nothing.
Perhaps Gonzales believes he is acting in the best interests of the American people, but I highly doubt it. The ends do not justify the means, especially if it means forsaking the rule of law. As John Adams remarked in a December 5, 1777, letter to Elbridge Gerry, “Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.”
America’s founders understood that a precious balance would have to be maintained between the people and their elected rulers in order that the nation not give way to anarchy or, at the other extreme, tyranny. They recognized that men in power often become corrupt. Thus, they looked to the Constitution as the foundation for our rule of law. “In questions of power let no more be heard of the confidence in man,” Thomas Jefferson warned, “but bind them down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.”
Hence, we require government leaders – from the president to the Attorney General to law enforcement officials – to take an oath of office in which they swear to uphold and defend the Constitution. In so doing, they agree to be held accountable to the people. Accountability means openness – in meetings and records, but it also means that no man is above the law.
Whatever else might be said about Alberto Gonzales, at the very least, he has shown himself to be either utterly incompetent as head of the Justice Department, contemptible for lying under oath, a political hack with no qualms about putting politics before the law or all of the above.
Either way, his presence at the Justice Department undermines the rule of law and the credibility of his office. Thus, if the rule of law means anything in America, Gonzales must go.
