Alberto Gonzales Background
Here are some interesting pieces of information about Alberto Gonzales who apparently will be our new Attorney General, from TalkLeft archives:
- He disagreed with President Bush's nomination of Priscilla Owen for a 5th Circuit judgeship:
The [New York] Times points out that at one time even President Bush's own White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales, charged Owen (in a dissenting opinion) with engaging in "unconscionable . . . judicial activism."
The Houston Chronicle stated in a July, 2002 editorial, "It doesn't take a raving pinko to catch on to Owen's act. Actually, it was pointed out very astutely by Alberto R. Gonzales, now Bush's White House counsel, when he was on the state's top civil court with her."
- He was considered to be one of Bush's top choices for the Supreme Court.
- He authored 57 death row clemency opinions for President Bush. The Atlantic Monthly wrote:
As the legal counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush, Alberto R. Gonzales — now the White House counsel, and widely regarded as a likely future Supreme Court nominee—prepared 57 confidential death-penalty memoranda for Bush's review. Never before discussed publicly, the memoranda suggest that Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise Bush of some of the most salient issues in the cases at hand.
The memos can be read by Atlantic Monthly subscribers here.
- In the Valerie Plame affair, he instructed white house staffers to preserve their emails upon learning of the DOJ investigation.
White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales told the staff: "You must preserve all materials that might in any way be related to the department's investigation." Presumably that would include telephone logs, e-mails, notes and other documents.
Discourse.net has more.
- The Washington Post reported he was said to have fed questions for Richard Clarke to Republican members of the 9/11 commission.
such ex parte contacts would be improper because "the conduct of the White House is one of the key issues being investigated by the commission."
- He was one of the officials Lynndie England sought to subpoena for her courtmartial on prisoner abuse charges stemming from Abu Ghraib.
- He first said al Qaeda and Taliban detainees would be covered by the Geneva Conventions and then backtracked.
- He received a policy memo concerning interrogation techniques deemed legally permissible by the Justice Department More on the memo here, here and here.
- He was part of the Administration's plan to deny due process to foreign detainees.
To be continued....In the meantime, check out Patrick at the Samuel Coleridge Foundation blog and People for the American Way.
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