GONZALES THE PRESIDENT'S MAN

Ever since Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fell under George Bush’s spell his professional life has been riddled with controversy and history may credit him with expanding the presidency in a way that threatened the powers of Congress.
But his career did not start out that way. His grandparents were illegal Mexican immigrants and his father was a construction worker with eight children. Alberto was born near Houston in 1955 and by the time his father died in 1982 he had been awarded a degree from Harvard Law School. A Roman Catholic, he remained a churchgoer after he divorced his first wife and remarried in 1985. Most observers agree he was a quiet, successful and effective Houston lawyer in the firm of Vinson and Elkins until he aligned his star with the ambitious Texas Governor called George Bush. It was 1994 and Bush persuaded him to be his general counsel.
No one quite knows what Bush saw in Gonzales though history may show he recognized a person who would give him unquestioning loyalty. During his time as general counsel in Texas, Gonzales was credited with actively promoting the death penalty and ensuring there were more death row inmates in Texas than elsewhere in the nation. Some of his critics allege he deliberately blocked clemency petitions and furthered George Bush’s agenda to have the toughest criminal justice system of any state. His signature appeared on 57 documents of people sentenced to death and 56 were executed. The Atlantic Monthly accused him of not providing detailed enough death penalty briefs for his boss and of ignoring pleas for clemency in some cases where death row inmates were considered mentally incompetent. In 2000, he launched a successful campaign for the Texas Supreme Court and the energy industry in Texas was his biggest donor, with Enron donating $34,500.
When George Bush entered the White House no one was surprised that he appointed the ever smiling Gonzales to the role of White House Counsel. By then, Gonzales was Bush’s legal guardian and oracle and it was not long before he showed he was a tough, no- nonsense adviser. One of his first controversial moves was the drafting of an Executive Order that restricted access to the personal records of former presidents. It was a devious way of ensuring that documentation on George Bush’s past would not be available to anyone. It was a serious blow to the Freedom of Information Act and was an indication that Gonzales and the Bush White House were prepared to draw a veil of secrecy over anything that could shed light on the past and president activities of the president and his vice- president.
Though Gonzales was willing to restrict information about Bush and Cheney, no one imagined he would question whether the United States of America should adhere to the Geneva Conventions. But he did just that in January 2002 in a memo that questioned the validity of the Conventions, especially Article III, for dealing with detainees arrested in the war on terrorism. Some experts now see that memo as the start of a process that weakened America’s commitment to the treatment of the prisoners of war and led to a legal void in which abuses began, starting with the brutal interrogation of prisoners and followed by the scandal of Abu Ghraib prison. That was followed by secret CIA prisons, the rendition of suspects for interrogation ton countries that used torture and the use of interrogation techniques like water boarding.
Gonzales argued that the Geneva protocols were “quaint,” a description that shocked our allies and held the US up to ridicule across the globe. He also declared that the war on terrorism rendered “obsolete” Geneva's strict limitations on the questioning of enemy prisoners. Two years later when the White House tried to distance itself from his view on Geneva, he remained resolute that he had acted correctly in his reasoning about torture. In fact, he even proposed that it would be unconstitutional for Congress to attempt to prohibit an act of torture ordered by the president.
George Bush was not the only person Gonzales was prepared to go to any lengths to protect. He made sure no one got access to documents that would have revealed what Vice-President Dick Cheney had been up to when he held secret meetings of his Energy Task Force. For come commentators it was evidence that Gonzales’ energy industry donors from his days in Texas had finally got their money’s worth.
Of course all of these issues were not hot topics in 2004 when he was privately touted by the White House as a future Supreme Court Justice. When word of that reached highly placed conservatives they became alarmed because they viewed Gonzales with deep suspicion, convinced he was pro-choice. They told Karl Rove and the president they would vigorously campaign against any effort to nominate Gonzales to the Court. Their opposition may have encouraged the president the rethink his plans for his favorite lawyer because he abandoned the Supreme Court possibility and in November 2004 nominated him to replace John Ashcroft as Attorney General.
With some irony one can point to the fact that in 2004 leading democrats like Charles Schummer and Patrick Leahy, who are now calling for Gonzales head, thought he would make a better attorney general than his predecessor. It is clear they saw him then as a smiling, affable attorney, not realizing he was not only tough and dedicated to the president but was anxious to expand the powers of the presidency, even if it meant eroding Congressional oversight. At the time, Sen. P. Leahy, D-Vermont, said he liked and respected Gonzales and looked forward as a member of the Judiciary Committee to considering his nomination. Sen. C. Schummer, D-New York gushed enthusiasm for Gonzales and in a press release remarked that “it is encouraging to see the president has chosen someone less polarizing……I can tell you he is a better candidate than Ashcroft.”
If Schummer and Leahy could take back those 2004 comments they would in a heart beat. They had mistaken believed Gonzales as Attorney General would represent the American people as the country’s leading law officer. But that was never going to be the case. His loyalty was to George Bush and he exploited his new role to further the agendas of the president and vice-president. That became apparent at the end of 2005 when it was revealed that as White Counsel he had authorized NASA to eavesdrop on US citizens without seeking appropriate warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Act. He had then continued to oversee and provide legal cover the program in his attorney general role. In doing so he undermined FISA and the Fourth Amendment. When Congress demanded answers and threatened an inquiry the White House shut down the program but in the process some critics accused Gonzales of advising the president on how to ensure Congress was unable to investigate it. The president did that by denying investigators the necessary security clearances to analyze the history of the NASA program.
It was Gonzales who also provided legal cover for Guantanamo and made the legal arguments for military commissions. Some retired generals accused him of preventing military legal experts from participating in Justice Department discussions about detention and interrogation practices because he knew that JAGS’ lawyers – Judge Advocate Generals Corps – would not have backed his assault on the Geneva Conventions.
Until recently, his main critics were democrats, human rights organizations, retired generals and international lawyers. A German court indicted him in absentia last year for what it regarded as his role in authorizing the rendition of a German citizen. That case may well end up in the International Criminal Court in the Hague, thereby making it impossible for Gonzales to travel freely at any time in the future to countries that have signed up to the Hague court.
The clamor for him to resign over the questionable sacking of eight prosecutors may lead to even greater scrutiny of his role in the Bush administration over the past six years. A Democratic Congress has him in its sights and it is unlikely to allow him to feel comfortable, even if the president stands by him. On the other hand, Gonzales has shown such unquestioning loyalty he would probably fall on his sword tomorrow if his biggest client, George Bush, asked him to take a hit for the team. Some critics have speculated that it would easier anyway for the president to sacrifice his personal lawyer than his brain – Karl Rove.