The Osterley Times: F.B.I. Chief Gives Account at Odds With Gonzales’s

Regular readers will know that, whilst I don't doubt for a minute that Alberto Gonzales is one of the most pathological liars ever to hold high office, I was actually willing to cut him some slack over his recent claims that the arguments over the hospital bed of John Ashcroft were about “other intelligence activities” rather than over the NSA wiretapping programme.

I had watched him couch his denials of official wrongdoing by consistently referring to "the program that the president has confirmed" and had convinced myself that he was choosing his words very carefully by making sure that all his denials referred only to this one known programme. This left open, and still does, the possibility that there were other programmes and that it was one of these other programmes that Gonzales and the others were arguing about on that fateful night around that hospital bed.

However, yesterday, that thesis was undermined by no less an authority than the Director of the FBI himself.

The director, Robert S. Mueller III, told the House Judiciary Committee that the confrontation was about the National Security Agency’s counterterrorist eavesdropping program, describing it as “an N.S.A. program that has been much discussed.” His testimony was a serious blow to Mr. Gonzales, who insisted at a Senate hearing on Tuesday that there were no disagreements inside the Bush administration about the program at the time of those discussions or at any other time.

Considering that Gonzales sat there the other day insisting that this dispute was not about the NSA programme, which he has repeatedly said attracted no serious controversy inside the administration, and the fact that we now have the director of the FBI sitting there saying that this was, indeed, about the NSA programme; it's got to be game, set and match.

I thought perhaps Gonzales was using that linguistic parsing thing he does to convince people that they were talking about one thing when Gonzales was, in fact, discussing another. However, there's only so much rope you can allow someone and I think Mueller's testimony takes us to the end of that rope.

“I had an understanding that the discussion was on a N.S.A. program,” Mr. Mueller said in answer to a question from Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, in a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.

Asked whether he was referring to the Terrorist Surveillance Program, or T.S.P., he replied, “The discussion was on a national N.S.A. program that has been much discussed, yes.”

Perhaps Gonzales's team can seek to mine the fact that Mueller "had an understanding" of what was being discussed, but I doubt that will get them very far. It now appears that everyone except Gonzales were very clear about what was being discussed that night.

And, considering what was being discussed was of such importance that it led Gonzales and Card to harrying a sick Ashcroft as he lay in his hospital bed, it really is doubtful that every other participant - with the exception of Gonzales - has misremembered what they were all arguing about.

Which leaves only one conclusion. The Attorney General sat in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and simply lied his head off.

Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said Thursday night that Mr. Gonzales had testified truthfully, saying “confusion is inevitable when complicated classified activities are discussed in a public forum where the greatest care must be used not to compromise sensitive intelligence operations.”

The spokesman said that when Mr. Gonzales had said there had been no controversy about the eavesdropping operation, he was referring only to the program to intercept international communications that Mr. Bush publicly confirmed.

“The disagreement that occurred in March 2004 concerned the legal basis for intelligence activities that have not been publicly disclosed and that remain highly classified,” Mr. Roehrkasse said.

Roehrkasse's defence appears to be that there was great confusion that night and that there are other "intelligence activities that have not been publicly disclosed".

There is undoubtedly truth in that. After all, numerous officials were threatening to resign over whatever these guys were up to and Ashcroft and Comey were refusing to sign off on the legality of the programme in whatever form it took that night. Something, somewhere, changed. I say this simply because the resignations were avoided and the programme was eventually signed off as legal. Which surely means that, before that night at the hospital bed, the programme was even more invasive than it is now.

However, even accepting that the programme was changed to make it legal in the eyes of Ashcroft and Comey, and accepting - as I did yesterday based on Gonzales's continual use of carefully chosen phrases - that there are other programmes that we don't know about; nevertheless, I think Gonzales has linguistically parsed himself out of a job.

I was willing to believe that he was talking about another secret programme which we are all unaware of, which appears to be the defence being mounted by Roehrkasse. However, when the Director of the FBI, the Justice Department’s chief law enforcement official, looks over his notes and comes to the conclusion that what was being debated was the "NSA programme that has been much discussed", there's nowhere left to go. Especially as Mueller made those remarks well aware of how Gonzales testified the other day.

Not that I think Gonzales will do the right thing and stand down. I think we can expect more of this shabby unedifying spectacle where the entire world knows that the chief law officer of the United States is an habitual liar and the President continues to stand by his man. That's the script it's run to so far.

As Democrats yesterday issued a subpoena to Karl Rove and J. Scott Jennings for their role over the dismissed federal prosecutors, the White House hit a familiar refrain:

White House officials said the Democrats had engaged in political gamesmanship.

“What we are witnessing is an out-of-control Congress which spends time calling for special prosecutors, starting investigations, issuing subpoenas and generally just trying to settle scores,” said Scott M. Stanzel, a White House spokesman. “All the while they fail to pass appropriations bills and important issues like immigration reform, energy and other problems go unanswered.”

The argument of "an out of control Congress" would be much easier to sustain were it not for the fact that we can all see quite clearly that the Attorney General has a recollection of events that is shared by none of the other participants.

Karl Rove is sold as a smart political operator, as Bush's brains. I can only look at this from a British perspective and conclude that when Peter Mandelson got into bother, Alastair Campbell told Blair that Mandelson had to go. Not because Campbell thought Mandelson had actually done anything wrong, but because it looked so bad that it mattered neither way. The government would have been crippled for as long as Mandelson stayed in office.

That Rove can't look at Gonzales and see a liability that undermines the entire credibility of the Bush administration, makes me wonder just how smart he actually is.

The White House can shout "out of control Congress" as loud as it likes, but for as long as that perceived liar sits in the Attorney General's office, there's not a chance in Hell that anyone is listening.

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