Gonzales Offers a Defense to Senate Panel

Alberto Gonzales has offered a defence of his recent Congressional testimony insisting that he was telling the truth when he testified because of a very narrow definition of the Terrorist Surveillance Programme, which he insists was intended to refer only to eavesdropping and not to any other N.S.A. surveillance activities.

In a letter to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Gonzales said a dispute between the Justice Department and the White House in March 2004 involved other N.S.A. surveillance activities, not that domestic eavesdropping program. He said the White House first called the eavesdropping the Terrorist Surveillance Program after it was publicly disclosed in December 2005 and confirmed by President Bush.

“I recognize that the use of the term Terrorist Surveillance Program and my shorthand reference to the ‘program’ publicly ‘described by the president’ may have created confusion, particularly for those who are knowledgeable about the N.S.A. activities authorized in the presidential order,” he said in the letter, sent to Senators Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the committee’s senior Republican.

He added that the confusion might have been acute among those “who may be accustomed to thinking of them or referring to them together as a single N.S.A. program.”

I have always argued that I thought Gonzales was linguistically parsing to make such a distinction. However, there's a problem with this argument. Gonzales is now arguing that TSP began shortly after the President confirmed the existence of the eavesdropping programme in December 2005. However:

But after Alberto Gonzales testified about the NSA program in February, 2006, he was forced to send a lengthy letter (.pdf) several weeks later "clarifying" (i.e., correcting) much of the testimony he gave on the key issues and, among other things, this is what he said about when the "TSP" began:


That is a rather direct admission that the "TSP" -- as such -- began in October, 2001.

Gonzales, by his linguistic parsing, has tied himself up in knots here. It would have been much better had he simply given honest answers to the questions put before him rather than to have attempted the half arsed legalese that he has indulged in.

For instance, when he states "that the confusion might have been acute among those who may be accustomed to thinking of them or referring to them together as a single N.S.A. program”, he is - from all the evidence available - talking about everyone other than himself. Even the head of the FBI does not make the distinction that Gonzales is insisting upon. Indeed, judging from Gonzales's letter in February 2006, this is a distinction that he himself has only recently started to think of as existing.

So far it appears that no-one is buying this.

“The attorney general’s legalistic explanation of his misleading testimony under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week is not what one should expect from the top law enforcement officer of the United States,” a statement issued by Mr. Leahy said. “It is time for full candor to enforce the law and promote justice, rather than word parsing.”

Mr. Leahy added that he still wanted Mr. Gonzales to correct his testimony by the end of the week, although he did not say what action would be taken against the attorney general if he did not.

“I hope he will take that opportunity,” the senator said, “to clarify the many issues on which he appears not to have been forthcoming and to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee and the American people the whole truth.”

Another Democratic member of the committee, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, charged in a statement that Mr. Gonzales had done “far more than create confusion, he’s placed his office in disrepute.”

“After reading the letter,” Mr. Schumer said, “we renew our call for a special prosecutor” to investigate Mr. Gonzales.

It's ludicrous for Gonzales to say that he has merely "created confusion". He has invented a false distinction between eavesdropping and the rest of the TSP, insisting that TSP refers only to eavesdropping and that "other intelligence activities" refers to the other parts of the programme that are so far undisclosed.

It is quite clear that this distinction existed in no-one's mind other than his own, as he himself points out in his most recent letter.

It's rather startling that he states that his testimony would be confusing "particularly for those who are knowledgeable about the N.S.A. activities authorized in the presidential order".

This appears to be a confession that, the more you knew of the truth, the more "confusing" his testimony would seem. That's the nearest we are going to get to an outright admission that he dissembled and lied.

If you actually knew the truth, he now admits, you would have been more "confused" than anyone else.

Had he any dignity he would long ago have left the stage.

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Tags: Gonzales, fired US attorneys, wiretapping, FISA, Leahy, Feingold, Schumer, Congressional hearings