Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

At his speech before the National Press Club this morning, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales answered prepared questions that were required to be submitted by attendees in advance if the Q&A.

He began his speech after snickering at a protestor who called for his resignation and had to be removed from the room.

One question involved the U.S. Attorney firings debacle: the query [from whom, we don’t know] asked “has the controversy over the u.s. attorneys distracted you and taken time away from time that you should have spent fighting crime and terrorism.”

Gonzales held fast to his denial of any wrongdoing — his “I’ve done nothing improper” defense — and denied failing to cooperate with Congress during its ongoing investigation of firing career employees at the agency.

“It’s been an unfortunate episode, as far as I’m concerned, for the Department. Obviously…uh, uh…I’m commited to working with the Congress to make information available about what happened here. Uh…in my judgment, we’ve been extremely cooperative in turning over documentation and making Deptartment employees available for testimony, and I want to reassure the American public that nothing improper happened here.”

In what has become his traditional response to queries about the U.S. Attorney firings scandal, Gonzales ended this question by saying that the country had to remain focused on catching terrorist, gang violence, and violent pedophiles.