Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

Documents were released late last night in the U.S. Attorney firings scandal that appear to catch U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in a full-fledged lie to the American public.

While Gonzales Watch will release copies of the newly released documents when they’re available, the new docs show that Gonzales met for an hour on November 27, 2006 “in the attorney gneeral’s conference room” with some of his senior Justice Department aides to “review a plan to fire a group of U.S. attorneys.

The aides included Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, Gonzales’ former Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson, and four other DOJ officials.

The meeting Gonzales attended to discuss firing U.S Attorneys completely contradicts statements that the Attorney General made at a March 13, 2007 news conference where he characterized himself as being far removed from the actual firing firing process.

Here is what Gonzales said on March 13, 2007 when he faced a barrage of questions about his involvement in the firings controversy:

• “…when you have 110,000 people working in the department obvously there are going to be decisions that I’m not aware of in real time.”
• “I never saw documents. We never had a discussion about where things stood. What I knew was that there was ongoing effort that was led by Mr. Sampson, vetted through the Dpeartment of Justice, to ascertain were we could make imporvements in U.S. attorney performances around the country.” (emphasis added)
• Reporter’s Question: “Mr. [Kyle] Sampson drew up his list and are you know feeling like maybe they were removed without cause and that maybe it was an unfair removal since you were not aware of – you’re saying now you were not aware of the details of why he drew up the list? (emphasis added)”
  Gonzales’ Answers: “I stand by that decision. Again. all political appointees can be removed by the President of the United States for any reason. I stand by the decision and I think it was the right decision.”

The new documents reportedly show that Gonzales is now caught in an out-and-out lie to Congress and the American people in an apparent attempt to portray himself as an aloof executive unfamiliar with the operational details of the U.S. Attorney firings.

Background:

McNulty is the former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. When he was a U.S. Attorney, McNulty led the prosecution of some of this country’s highest profile terrorism cases. These include launching the case against French alleged 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, the prosecution of American Talib John Walker Lindh, and the conviction of members of a Virginia-based terrorist cell who trained with the Paikstan-based terrorist group Lashkar e-Taba.

Sampson is Gonzales’ former Chief of Staff and right-hand man who, newly released documents show, was was so intimately invovled in the firings process that he resigned.

Sampson just agreed to testify under oath before Congress next week about the U.S. Attorney firings.