Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

Despite weeks of preparation and canceling Spring Break family vacation plans, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales showed he was thoroughly unprepared to convince members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that he could tell the truth about his knowledge and level of involvement in the U.S. Attorney firings scandal.

Gonzales’ standard reply to questions asking for more detail in the controversy was simply, “I can’t recall.”  This was his response, or variations of it, according to USA Today (71 times) and The Washington Post (64 times).  One keen observer at the hearing even kept a running count of the Attorney General’s “I Don’t Recall” answers.

Other Gonzales pat replies included “that’s a fair question,” and “that’s a fair statement,” suggesting that observers should respect the analytical abilities of an executive agency head who can’t remember conversationas and details about why career prosecutors were fired.

Few observers came away from the hearing respecting Gonzales’ analytical abilities — none appeared to be present.

From former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie and former Deputy White House Counsel Timothy Flanigan reportedly helped Gonzales prepare for yesterday’s hearing by putting him through mock testimony.

Gonzales stuck to the sound bite that his handlers crafted for the Attorney General’s Op-Ed piece in Sunday’s Washington Post, and his prepared testimony before the Committee: he did “nothing improper.”

If the country’s top law enforcement officer was thoroughly unprepared and incapable of delivering truthful, candid responses to Congress, how can he be expected to run the Department of Justice in anything more than a dysfunctional manner?

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is busy preparing to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in two weeks. He’s canceled family vacation time to hunker down with preparations.

This morning’s Washington Post reports that Gonzales is getting help from former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie and former Deputy White House Counsel Timothy Flanigan. They’re said to be putting him through days of mock testimony. This is the kind of stuff that helps trial lawyers earn their contigency fees.

Dismissing repeated calls for his resignation over the politically charged firings of eight (8) U.S. Attorneys, the country’s top law enforcement officer is standing his ground.

The trickiest issue for Gonzales appears to be keeping clear of legal conflicts with other Justice Department aides who either already testified, or like Monica Goodling, are being repeatedly sought by Congress to give sworn testimony about what, if any, knoweldge and role they had in the firing of the eight former federal prosecutors.

One anonymous senior aide to Gonzales told the Washington Post that keeping clear of legal conflicts has been a challenge: “We are hampered because some senior officials are not able to discuss the facts as they know them in the same room, for fears of additional accusations of misleading Congress.”