Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

Now that the Justice Department’s Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility (’OPR’) are expanding their internal probe beyond U.S. Attorney firings to include investigating hiring practices of Monica Goodling and others, it’s worth another look back at last year’s fight between OPR Chief H. Marshall Jarrett, Attorney General Gonzales, and the White House.

Jarrett has served as OPR’s Chief Counsel and Director since 1998 when then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno appointed to the position in the Clinton Administration. Jarrett was a career prosecutor — not a political hack — and has been a Department of Justice employee for more than 32 years.

According to a report by CBS News, Jarrett duked it out with Gonzales and President Bush. in the spring of 2006 when he was stonewalled while investigating the role of Justice Department attorneys in creating the warrantless surveillance progam authorizing NSA to conduct domestic surveillance.

Memos from Jarreett to “Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, in February, March and April of [2006],” CBS reported, “show that while Gonzales publicly told the Senate that OPR was investigating, Jarrett was complaining to higher-ups that he was “unable to move forward” because of the lack of security clearances for himself and six staff members.”

Two weeks ago former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified that in 2004 Gonzales tried to push renewal of a domestic surveillance bill past then Attorney General John Ashcroft after Ashcroft and Comey had already concluded that a warrantless domestic surveillance program was unconstititonal.

Given Jarrett’s battles with Ashcroft and President Bush over these highly controversial legal moves in the past, it would appear that his record as a career prosecutor — and not a political hack — will serve this investigation well.

Wall Street Journal editorial board member Kimberley Strassel has a column this morning attacking Sen. Charle’s Schumer’s criticism of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, calling the New York Democrat’s actions an effort to “ride the steady drip-drip of negative Bush headlines all the way to more Senate seats and the Oval Office.” She poo-poo’s Schumer’s introduction of the new Senate ‘no-confidence’ resolution on Gonzales.

Incredibly, she argues that former Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s testimony on how then White-House Counsel Gonzales and Andrew Card tried to override Attorney General John Ashcroft’s conclusion that a warrantless domestic surveillance program was unconstititonal, and get Ashcroft to do an about-face when he was seriously ill and hospitalized. Strassel says that Comey’s testimony was somehow “staged,” and that Schumer “cooked up this dramatic event…a week in advance.”

Strassel’s greatest fear? That Schumer’s efforts could ultimately “hamstring the president’s surveillance powers.” Wouldn’t that just be illegal and unconstitutional alleged “surveillance powers?”

She conveniently forgets to mention that Schumer originally supported the war in Iraq, and that he has been realist on continuing the war on terror, wherever it is in the world. Earlier this year, Schumer reiterated this set of beliefs, arguing that “if we beef up human intelligence, provide our military with stronger and more adept strike forces, and work in a more multi lateral way, we could focus on the small groups of terrorists without fighting large-scale wars like we are in Iraq.”

Last week’s revelation that former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft emerged as an unlikely defender of Americans’ civil liberties is putting a new light on the Missouri lawyer.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, Ashcroft’s former Deputy Attorney James Comey detailed how a hospitalized and severely ill Ashcroft effectively told then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff Andrew Card to get lost when they tried getting Ashcroft to renew unconstitutional domestic surviellance.

But a little known detail emerged from interviews that NPR’s Terri Gross conducted on her “Fresh Air” show with Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage and Regent University Law School Dean Jeffrey Brauch: Ashcroft teaches part time at Regent University Law School — the alma mater of embattled former DOJ White House liaison and Senior Counsel Monica Goodling.

Both have ties to the law school founded by Christian conservative evangelist Pat Robertson.

Yet Ashcroft has emerged as an unlikely hero, taking a higher ground in his refusal to let Gonzales run rough-shod over civil liberties. Goodling is still being investigated by the DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine’s Office for possibly basing her Justice Department hiring practicies on job candidates having GOP ties on their resumes.

Goodling received a court-ordered grant of immunity to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in its ongoing investigation of the U.S. Attorney firings.

Washington Post Columnist Eugene Robinson has some advice following this week’s testimony by former Deputy Attorney General James Comey: “This the attorney general of the United States, ladies and gentlemen. Heaven help us.”

Comey testified that while his former boss, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized on March 10, 2004 with a severe attack of pancreatitis — a condition so severe at the time, that it necessitated transfering the Attorney General’s powers to Comey while Ashcroft was hospitalized — then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and President Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card rushed to the hospital in despereate attempt to have Ashcroft approve the highly controversial domestic surveillance program that the Justice Department had just studied and concluded was unconstitutional.

Comey raced to the hospital where Ashcroft was ill, and ran up the stairs to try and meet with him before Gonzales and Card arrived (Ashcrofts’s wife had alerted Comey to the White House Counsel’s and Chief of Staff’s impending visit).

According to Comey, Ashcroft told off Gonzales and Card when he refused to authorize a renewal of the domestic surveillance legislation.

But what is most signficant is that Ashcroft effectly told Gonzales and Card that he was disgusted at their attempt to make an end run around Comey, the acting Attorney General.

Ashcroft dismissed the White House attempts to have him sign off on the surveillance bill, telling them their efforts “do[n’t] matter, because I’m not the Attorney General, there’s the attorney general,” pointing to Comey.”

In a move that smacks’s of an anecdote from Stanford Business School Professor Robert Sutton’s book, “The No Asshole Rule,” Comey testified that Gonzales and Card “did not acknowledge me, they turned and walked from the room.”

There you have it. Gonzales ignored the acting Attorney General in a Machiavellian, but unsuccessful maneuver.