Alberto Gonzales Has Blood on His Hands

Alberto Gonzales Has Blood on His Hands
The Minneapolis Star Tribune | Editorial

Thursday 06 January 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010705Y.shtml

When the White House announced in November that Attorney General John Ashcroft would depart and be replaced by presidential counsel Alberto Gonzales, it was a good news-bad news sort of day: good news that Ashcroft, enemy of the Bill of Rights in this war-on-terror era, would be departing; bad news that he would be replaced by Gonzales, enemy of the rights of prisoners of war and architect of policies that led to the abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Since November, the bad news has gotten large amounts worse as horrific abuses of prisoners have been documented, especially by the American Civil Liberties Union and documents it forced into the public domain. Which leaves us to ask: Why in the world should the United States be saddled with an attorney general who, from the White House, framed cockamamie legal policies that sought to make it permissible for American forces to commit war crimes?

Indeed, when Gonzales comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, the committee must challenge him to explain fully both his role in authorizing torture and his rationale for doing so. If the answers aren't satisfactory, and it is impossible to imagine how they could be, then the full Senate should reject his nomination and tell President Bush to pick someone else.

At the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal, someone leaked to Newsweek a memorandum Gonzales authored in January 2002 which argued that the war on terror had "rendered obsolete" the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture and abuse of prisoners of war. The conventions, he said, did not apply to enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan. Gonzales also was a principal architect of Bush's order authorizing the secret trial of combatants from Afghanistan by military tribunal.

Only within the last few days has it become known just how key a role Gonzales played in the formation of a notorious Department of Justice memo issued in August 2002. That memo defined torture quite narrowly -- it said that only physical pain "of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure" amounted to torture. It also said the president had inherent authority to authorize use of extreme means of interrogation on detainees suspected of terrorist activities.

Gonzales asked for the memo and discussed draft language with its author. Small wonder that, according to a "senior administration official" interviewed by the New York Times, the memo hewed closely to views already held by senior White House officials.

That memo, by the way, was rescinded by the Justice Department last week (a bit of tidying before Gonzales' confirmation hearing) and replaced with a new one that explicitly rejects the reasoning put forward in the first.

Gonzales has a great deal to answer for. He contributed substantially to prisoner abuses that brought the United States into worldwide disrepute and sullied its record for valuing human rights. If the Judiciary Committee should find his answers evasive or uncompelling, he doesn't deserve to be attorney general of this nation.

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Gonzales's Clemency Memos Criticized
By R. Jeffrey Smith
The Washington Post

Thursday 06 January 2005

Crucial facts were missing, lawyers say.

In 1995, a one-eyed drifter named Henry Lee Lucas was headed for execution by injection in a Texas prison for the murder of an unnamed woman, one of hundreds he confessed to killing in a crime spree lasting more than a decade.

The task of recommending whether then-Gov. George W. Bush should grant a reprieve or commute Lucas's death sentence fell to Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush's counsel. In a memo to Bush dated March 13, 1995, Gonzales marshaled a case for Lucas's guilt. He noted that Lucas had given a sheriff a drawing of the victim, and attached a record of Lucas's eight other Texas murder convictions, each of which led to lengthy or life prison sentences.

Left out of Gonzales's summary was any mention of a 1986 investigation by the Texas attorney general's office that concluded that Lucas had not killed the woman, and that he had falsely confessed to numerous killings in an effort to undermine the veracity of his confessions to the crimes he did commit.

While the six-page memo factually summarizes Lucas's court appeals, "it does not really address in any way . . . all the questions that were raised about his guilt," said Jim Mattox, the Texas attorney general from 1983 to 1991, who instigated an investigation of police conduct in the case. He said that if the memo had been prepared for him, he would have chastised the author "for allowing me to make a decision on partial information."

Senate hearings today on Gonzales's nomination to become the next U.S. attorney general are expected to focus on his work as White House counsel. But his memos for Bush on Texas clemency matters illustrate how Gonzales approached another momentous task: endorsing the taking of a life.

Several other attorneys for convicts executed in Texas during Bush's tenure -- who recently reviewed the memos for the first time at the request of The Washington Post -- complained that Gonzales provided unfair or incomplete summaries of evidence and mitigating circumstances. They said the missing information might have influenced Bush's decisions had he been aware of it.

Jim Marcus, an attorney for convicted murderer Kenneth Ray Ransom, said, for example, that Gonzales's memo does not correctly state the basis for the clemency request he filed in 1997. "Had I known that the 40-page petition I filed would be boiled down to one slipshod sentence in Mr. Gonzales's memo, I would simply have filed a one-sentence petition," he said.

White House spokesman Brian R. Besanceney said in response to the complaints yesterday that Gonzales and his colleagues in the Texas counsel's office "treated each clemency petition with careful scrutiny and sensitivity." He also said the summaries Gonzales prepared represented "a small fraction of the information provided to the governor" and sought only to document "the governor's final decision" rather than recommend a course of action.

Pete Wassdorf, head of the general counsel's office for the Texas attorney general, who served as Gonzales's deputy at the time, also said additional information about some of the cases was provided to Bush in other documents. But only a few of the 62 clemency memos Gonzales prepared for Bush between January 1995 and November 1997 make any reference to additional documentation.

The Gonzales memos were first released to journalist Alan Berlow, who wrote about them in the Atlantic Monthly magazine, and later provided to The Post by the Texas archives.

Gonzales's staff in the Texas counsel's office drafted the memos. He edited and approved about one every two months during the first three years of Bush's governorship. Gonzales acted under a provision of the state constitution that required him to "review and make recommendations on applications for pardons, commutations and reprieves."

Each of the memos included a line at the end where Bush could check off "deny" or "grant." Most were three to four pages long, although one -- for female ax-murderer Karla Faye Tucker, who gained wide attention by embracing Christianity in prison -- included a letter and videotape from Tucker to Bush.

Gonzales's habit in the memos was to present what he listed as a "brief summary of the facts," followed by a family and personal history of the convict, a tally of other crimes, a summary of litigation and a one-paragraph conclusion. In some cases, Gonzales said, "we feel that nothing will be gained by granting a 30-day reprieve" or "no compelling legal or factual reasons support" commutation of the death sentence.

But in other instances, when no clemency petition had been made, it had already been denied by the state board of pardons, or the defendant did not have a lawyer, Gonzales expressed no opinion about guilt or innocence; he merely predicted that the convict "will be executed on the scheduled date," and left room for Bush's check mark.

In the case of David Herman, who was executed in 1997 a few days after an attempted suicide, Herman's lawyer, Jack Strickland, said that Gonzales's memo was "a skeletal attempt to brief Bush on a complex case." He said Gonzales had not given adequate attention to whether Herman was mentally competent, a requirement for executions. Strickland, who both prosecuted and defended death penalty cases, said actions by Gonzales and Bush left a wide impression that "it was a waste of paper" to request a commutation.

Greg Wiercioch, another Texas defense attorney, said in an interview that for two of his death row clients, appellate courts granted stays of execution or ordered additional evidentiary hearings after Gonzales declared in his memos that the case had no worthy pending legal issues.

Bush did eventually commute Lucas's death sentence to life imprisonment -- the only commutation during his five-year tenure -- after Mattox pressed the issue publicly during a 1998 campaign for reelection as attorney general on the Democratic ticket. Gonzales legally witnessed Bush's written "proclamation."

"I take every death-penalty case seriously and review each case carefully," Bush said at a news conference on the day of his decision.

The Alliance for Justice, a coalition of 70 civil rights and other organizations, charged in a statement released yesterday that "the deficiencies in Gonzales' memoranda may have played a role in Bush's failure to grant clemency." They said his record on the issue, along with policies he embraced on the detention of prisoners in the war on terrorism, raised questions about "whether he can properly serve as the nation's chief law enforcement officer."

Besides the sole commutation, Bush granted a single 30-day death penalty reprieve, in a case that arose after Bush had appointed Gonzales to the Texas Supreme Court. In non-death-penalty cases, Bush granted 19 of the 149 pardons "for innocence" or compassion that were urged by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, an official review body for such requests. Scholars at the University of Pittsburgh have said that was the lowest number by any Texas governor since the 1940s.

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Research editor Lucy Shackelford and researcher Karl Evanzz contributed to this report.

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Harkin is up
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 02:22
and stands in support.

"The debate is short today, and I hope it will continue."

Not questioning the 2004 outcome. On message.

"I thank Senator Boxer, and Rep. Tubbs-Jones."

Zaps DeWine, says this isn't about removing Bush, but about how we can make elections better in America.

(How can that be a bad thing to stand on as a politician?)

(It isn't)

(For those who might have been worried about this)
Reid is up
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 02:16
I knew someone would bring up the troops, but I expected the GOP to do it in order to cry "Unpatriotic!" Yet here is Reid, saying we owe it to our soldiers to check these allegations out, and to reform the system.
Here comes Hillary
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 02:12
"I commend the Senator from California."

It permits us to air these issues, which protects the integrity of our most precious right. There are many questions about the integrity of this election, and not just in Ohio.

We stood with and admired the people of the Ukraine a few weeks ago when they fought for their rights. Our moral authority is in danger.

Some blivet in the House is telling stories about soldiers. I knew it.
Lautenberg is up
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 02:06
"We have to take a very hard look at this."

Talks about advertising democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, but we have these flaws here.

Not challenging the result, but "we would be derelict in our duty if we failed to investigate."
Pelosi is up in the House
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 02:03
"The right to vote is sacred."

The House will accept Bush and Cheney's victory, this isn't about rjecting that, so let's be respectful. There are problems with the electoral system. It is about election reform.

(Crazy, when you think about it. Pelosi and the others accept the results but discuss a busted system. In other words, the election system in America is broken...but it also worked.)
Wydwen (D-OR) demands a paper trail
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 02:01
for all votes cast on electronic machines.

Oregon, where voting works.
Kennedy is up
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 01:57
We do not question the outcome, but we gave deep concerns.

They are lining up behind Boxer here.

Hillary just walked in, and we haven't heard from Obama yet.

"The voting process did not live up to the standards we require," said Kennedy. "We must admit the election was flawed...I commend the many thousands of citizens who asked us to register our protest. We hope this issue is firmly planted on our agenda. No democracy worth the name can allow such a flawed process to stand."
You are watching Senators
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 01:55
speaking the words of the activists. You are watching Senators deliver the goods activists delivered to them.

Impressive.
Stabenow (D) stands in support
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 01:53
of Boxer, and repeats the stories related in the Conyers report.
Durbin (D-IL)
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 01:49
The outcome is not being challenged. The nature of this debate auger towards an analysis of the electoral system.

We have the opportunity to have a bipartisan discussion on the disparate election practices across the states.

"I do not challenge the legitimacy of the 2004 election outcome...but we can and should do better."

Durbin touting the Jackson proposal for a constitutional amendment cementing the right to vote. Puts the Conyers report into the Senate record. Gives examples of irregularities in Illinois.

Durbin was on message.
Bernie Sanders in the House
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 01:45
is en fuego.

This isn't about replacing Bush. "Today is about every American feeling confident in the vote. That is what democracy is about."
Senator Dayton (D-MN)
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 01:43
rises to object to Boxer's challenge. Calls it "seriously misguided."

This fellow is going to get some nasty emails today.
Reid is telling Senators to get down to the well
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 01:42
so they can speak. The time is now.
Conyers stands in the House
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 01:41
"We are here not as partisans for one party or the other, but to protect our democracy."
Senator DeWine is up
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 01:37
He can't believe they are debating whether Bush won Ohio, thus completely missing the point.

You knew this was coming. I'll bet you a dollar he brings up the troops in Iraq somehow. This is betraying them. Bet he says it.

My favorite bit is how he dismisses all the proof offered of fraud contained in the Conyers report, and proves there was no fraud...by reading editorials. Hm.
Worth a couple of hours
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 01:36
"I think it is worth a couple of hours to discuss these issues."

She gave a good speech.
Boxer speaking in the Senate
Thursday 06 January 2005 @ 01:34
We now fight for electoral justice. Everyone's vote must matter and be counted. Their votre must have as much weight as any Senator, House member, President, CEO.

"In the voting booth, everyone is equal."

"We must ask certain questions."

Why did voters have to wait in line for hours to vote because there were only two machines?

Why did voters in poor and African-American districts not have enough machines?

Why were machines held back from use in these commun