Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

In an Independence Day editorial titled ‘Liberties Lost‘, the Baltimore Sun has some scathing words for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The newspaper’s editors tell readers that Vice President Cheney’s repeated claims of Executive Privilege where none really appear warranted, they maintain that Cheney has been aided by “Alberto R. Gonzales, the lapdog of an attorney general, powerfully underscor[ing] Jefferson’s point that the time has come to retrace these missteps and get back on the road to peace, liberty and safety.”

White House Counsel Fred Fielding rejected the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subpoenas served yesterday demanding information about the legal rationale and justifications behind the White House’s warrantless domestic surveillance program, or what President Bush calls the “Terrorist Surveillance Program.”

As anticipated, Fielding is claiming that Executive Privilege exempts the White House from having to comply with the subpoenas, including subpoenas previously served on former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and Political Director Sarah Taylor.

Here is the full text of Fielding’s letter and its legal rationale:

Unfortunately, the response was predictable.

The subpoenas that the Senate Judiciary Committee served on the White House, Dick Cheney, National Security Council, and Dept. of Justice were rejected by the White House within less than twenty-four hours.

The Committee’s latest subpoenas were preceded by similar subpoenas that it served on former White House and Justice Department officials:

* A subpoena was issued by the Committee on June 13, 2007 to former White House Counsel Harriet Miers over the U.S. Attorney firings debacle. Miers was givien a July 12, 2007 deadline to comply with the subpoena.

* The Committee served a subpoena on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on May 2, 2007 when he failed to comply with its repeated requests for turning over correspondence (e-mail, etc.) involving White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and his use of non-White House e-mail to conduct goverment business.

The latest legal battle stems from the revelation by former Deputy Attorney General James Comey that Gonzales tried (unsuccessfully) to ram-rod a very ill Attorney General John Ashcroft into extending warrantless domestic surveillance just after Justice Department officials had concluded that it was unconstitutional.

Youc an re-examine Comey’s testimony here:

In the old days, having a “party line” meant that telephone customers shared the same network line for their calls. If someone picked up the phone when you were on a call with someone else, they could ‘join the party’ by eavesdropping in on your most intimate details, or joining the conversation.

Today, when somebody listens in on your phone call, there’s a whole new legal meaning associated with it. Now, unless the government has a warrant, it can’t eavesdrop on your phone calls.

At least that was the case until Sept. 11th came along.

Then President George W. Bush decided that it was O.K. to have a “terrorist surveillance program” to listen to conversations and open e-mails without first getting a judge to authorize a warrant.

When he was White House Counsel, Gonzales believed that this was a necessary legal Texas two-step dance around the Fourth Amendment and Supreme Court case law on searches and seizure.

Despite years of requests for more information about the program, the White House, Dick Cheney, and Department of Justice Lawyers haven’t been forthcoming about the legal rationale and due process considerations behind the decision to use warrantless wiretaps inside the U.S.

Now, the Senate Judiciary Committee concluded that its time to set things straight by issuing subpoenas for the DOJ, the White House, Cheney, and the National Security Council for documents about the surveillance program. Documents produced in response to the subpoenas are due on July 18, 2007.

This is bound it end up in federal court.