NYT editorial: Alberto Gonzales, the Sequel
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should have considered himself a lucky man when he was allowed to resign in disgrace in August 2007 without being hauled into Congress on perjury or contempt charges.
He was in the thick of President George W. Bush’s most damaging attacks on the rule of law. As White House counsel, he helped to justify torture and illegal wiretapping. As attorney general, he politicized the Justice Department. And he misled Congress in both jobs.
He could have told the truth about those things. Or, he could have gone quietly away and waited for a subpoena from the Obama administration.
Instead, he is trying for some sort of bizarre comeback by painting himself as an upstanding man victimized by a “mean-spirited town.”
In an interview with National Public Radio this week, Mr. Gonzales attacked President Obama’s choice for attorney general, Eric Holder, for saying that waterboarding is torture. To hear Mr. Gonzales tell it, Mr. Holder was in the wrong — not the lawyers like Mr. Gonzales who tortured the law to justify torture, or the former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who approved its use, or the interrogators who actually subjected detainees to waterboarding and other inhumane and illegal interrogation techniques.
(More here.)
He was in the thick of President George W. Bush’s most damaging attacks on the rule of law. As White House counsel, he helped to justify torture and illegal wiretapping. As attorney general, he politicized the Justice Department. And he misled Congress in both jobs.
He could have told the truth about those things. Or, he could have gone quietly away and waited for a subpoena from the Obama administration.
Instead, he is trying for some sort of bizarre comeback by painting himself as an upstanding man victimized by a “mean-spirited town.”
In an interview with National Public Radio this week, Mr. Gonzales attacked President Obama’s choice for attorney general, Eric Holder, for saying that waterboarding is torture. To hear Mr. Gonzales tell it, Mr. Holder was in the wrong — not the lawyers like Mr. Gonzales who tortured the law to justify torture, or the former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who approved its use, or the interrogators who actually subjected detainees to waterboarding and other inhumane and illegal interrogation techniques.
(More here.)
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