2. Dana Milbank, “White House Split on Taking Affirmative Action Stance,” Washington Post, December 18, 2002, www.stgate.com/politics/article/white-house-split-on-taking-affirmative-action-2745053.php.
3. Grutter v. Bollinger-No. 011516–05/14/2002; Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit.
No. 97–75928—Bernard A. Friedman, District Judge.
Argued: December 6, 2001
Decided and Filed: May 14, 2002; Dissenting opinion by Judge Julian Boggs, dissenting, 796–797, accessed March 9, 2016, http://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/legal/grutter/gru-ap-op.html.
4. Ron Fournier, Associated Press, January 16, 2003, accessed March 8, 2016, http://www.heraldextra.com/news/world/bush-affirmative-action-program-unconstitutional/article_46d4885e-3524–500f-9597–892fb3dc58bd.html.
5. Neil A. Lewis, “Angry Groups Seeking a Justice Against Affirmative Action,” New York Times, June 24, 2003, accessed March 4, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2003/06/24/politics/24/CONS.html.
CHAPTER 22: “CASUS BELLI”
1. Cheney, 365.
2. Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), October 16, 2002.
3. The principals committee consisted of all members of the National Security Council with the exception of the president.
4. From a declassified report by the Central Intelligence Agency, “Key Judgments,” National Intelligence Estimate: Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, October 2002.
5. President George W. Bush, speech to the United Nations General Assembly, September 12, 2002.
6. Rumsfeld, 440–41.
CHAPTER 23: DANCING WITH A DEVIL
1. Tenet, 322.
2. Ibid., 333.
3. Ibid., 323.
4. Ibid., 327.
5. Ibid.
6. CIA, “Key Judgments.”
7. Tenet, 328.
8. Ibid., 338.
9. John Kerry, statement, “Authorization of the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq—Continued,” 107th Cong., 2d sess., Congressional Record, vol. 148, no. 132, October 9, 2002, S10174.
10. Senator Joseph Biden, in an interview with Tim Russert, Meet the Press, NBC News, August 4, 2002.
11. Hillary Rodham Clinton, statement, “Authorization of the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq,” 107th Cong., 2d sess., Congressional Record, vol. 148, no. 133, October 10, 2002, S10288.
12. Hans Blix, statement to the United Nations Security Council, January 27, 2003.
CHAPTER 24: FOR THE SAKE OF PEACE AND SECURITY
1. George Tenet, 373.
2. Colin Powell, speech before the United Nations Security Council, New York, NY, February 5, 2003.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Report on Postwar Findings About Iraq’s WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare with Prewar Assessments, 109th Cong., 2d sess., September 8, 2006, 93–94.
6. Rumsfeld, 451.
7. President George W. Bush, Address to the Nation, March 17, 2003.
8. Franks, 431.
CHAPTER 25: LISTENING TO THE ENEMY
1. Glenn Greenwald, “NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily,” The Guardian, June 5, 2013.
2. Yoo, 107.
3. Cheney, 348.
4. Interview with General Michael Hayden, Frontline, PBS-TV, accessed February 22, 2016, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/united-states-of-secrets/the-frontline-interview-michael-hayden/.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Cheney, 350.
8. Hayden, Frontline.
9. Ibid.
10. Report on the President’s Surveillance Program, Volume 1, July 10, 2009, 60–66, prepared by the Offices of Inspector General of the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Director of National Intelligence, Report No. 2009-0013.A, accessed March 8, 2016, https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2015/PSP-09–18–15-vol-1. Pdf.
11. Ibid.
12. Goldsmith, 71.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 73–74.
CHAPTER 26: STUNTING STELLAR WIND
1. Interview with Mike Hayden, Frontline. Hayden later commented on the inception of the program during a nationally televised PBS interview:
We have the dialogue with the president, the vice president, director of Central Intelligence. We get the order from the president. My lawyers look it over, and I had three really good operational lawyers, really good, really operational. And all three of them serially, independently said, “the president has the authority to authorize this.”
Again, we hadn’t done it before. In fact, we had rejected an approach a little bit like this during the Millennium Weekend. Remember the threats there? But we had no authority to do it, not presidential authorization.
With this program, we did.
And they all three agreed that it was within the president’s Article II authorities. Now, there’s been a grand debate about what justifies this, the raw commander in chief authorities from Article II or the AUMF, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force? Justice has frequently argued AUMF. My lawyers never went there. My lawyers said, “Raw Article II commander in chief authorities.” And I think appellate courts have kind of upheld that.
There have been two FISA appellate court decisions; both of them contained the language: We take as a given that the president has inherent constitutional authority to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant for foreign intelligence purposes. So we had that meeting.
But then we had a workforce. We had a workforce that’s very cautious, very conservative, that drilled into it, on an annual basis—and they have to certify the training—“thou cans” and “thou cannots.” This was going to be something they had never been previously authorized to do. So we took the small team, probably several dozen, into my large conference room at Fort Meade.
I went in there, explained the broad outlines to the program with my ops and legal team right there. Explained the broad outlines of the program to the folks there. Said that it was different but lawful, and that we were going to do this, and we were going to do it very, very well. In fact, I recall saying, “We are going to do what the president has authorized us to do, and not one electron or one photon more.”
2. The thought occurred to me that the DAG had conferred with Ashcroft and was speaking for him. But he never said that. Perhaps the DAG did not want to put additional stress on the attorney general by telling him that his previous legal advice to the president was being second-guessed. If the DAG had spoken with the attorney general while he was hospitalized and in a weakened condition, no doubt he would be subject to the same sort of criticism that Andy Card and I would later receive: attempting to influence a sick man.
CHAPTER 27: JOINING FORCES WITH CONGRESS
1. Bush, Decision Points, 172.
2. Ibid.
3. Cheney, 351.
4. Hayden, Frontline interview.
CHAPTER 28: THE INFAMOUS HOSPITAL VISIT
1. Anticipating that the congressional leaders might later publicly say something at odds with their private support in the meeting, the president asked me to memorialize the discussions, which I did in a handwritten summary. My handwritten notes later became the subject of an IG investigation in 2007 because I had included the name of the classified program, Stellar Wind. The IG concluded that when I moved from the White House to the DOJ, I improperly stored the notes. The IG ultimately concluded my actions were not knowing or intentional. (Report of Investigation Regarding Allegations of Mishandling of Classified Documents by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, September 2, 2008.)
2. Bush, Decision Points, 173.
CHAPTER 29: RESIGNATION THREATS
1. Ibid.
>
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Cheney, 353.
7. Bush, Decision Points, 176.
CHAPTER 30: GET YOUR UNIFORM ON
1. In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Yaser Esam Hamdi, a Saudi national born in Louisiana, and thus a US citizen, was captured in Afghanistan. The Supreme Court held that the president on his own could not declare an American citizen an enemy combatant without a civilian criminal charge. The court ruled that Hamdi, as a US citizen, was entitled to a notice of charges and enabled to contest his designation as an enemy combatant. The court also overturned Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo Bay, was granted the right of habeas corpus, holding that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applied to the conflict with al-Qaeda and Gitmo detainees.
2. An example of the flagrantly vindictive and mistaken journalism was: Murrey Waas, “Aborted DOJ Probe Probably Would Have Targeted Gonzales,” National Journal, March 15, 2007, accessed May 31, 2016, http://warisacrime.org/node/19696.
3. In response to suggestions that the president or I blocked the investigation to protect me, Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling informed Congressman John Conyers on March 22, 2007, “The president made the decision not to grant the requested security clearances to OPR staff. Judge Gonzales did not ask the president to shut down or otherwise impede the OPR investigation.” Judge Gonzales “recommended to the president that OPR be granted security clearances.” (Letters from R. Hertling, Acting Assistant Attorney General to Rep. Conyers, March 22, 2007; see also: DOJ000748–63, letter from R. Hertling to Sen. Feingold, Sen. Schumer, Sen. Durbin, Sen. Kennedy, Rep. Hinchy, Rep. Lewis, and Rep Woolsey, DOJ 000772.)
CHAPTER 31: SEARCHING FOR JUSTICE
1. Jan Crawford Greenburg, Supreme Conflict (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2008), 263.
2. Ibid., 266.
3. Ibid., 270.
4. Rove, 422.
CHAPTER 32: MONEY IN THE FREEZER
1. Garrett M. Graff, The Threat Matrix (New York, NY: Little Brown/Hachette Publishing Group, 2011), 509.
2. Section 6, Article 1 of the Constitution provides this protection, and the US Supreme Court has held that the speech and debate clause protects activity that is an integral part of Congress’s deliberative and communicative processes with respect to the consideration of legislation or other matters within their jurisdiction. Gravel v. United States, 408 US 606 (1972).
CHAPTER 33: WRONG EVEN WHEN RIGHT
1. “The Real Scandal,” The Economist, January 17, 2002, accessed February 22, 2016, www.economist.com/node/940091.
2. Ibid.
CHAPTER 34: HUNTING SEASON
1. US DOJ IG and OPR, “An Investigation into the Removal of Nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006,” September 2008.
2. Indeed, later FBI director Mueller would testify that he was unaware of any case that had been compromised or adversely affected because of the US attorney removals. Some time later, the OIG/OPR report found no evidence that the removals were intended to obstruct justice, nor was there any finding that the manner in which I cooperated with Congress and answered questions were intended to obstruct justice. There were improper political considerations by some junior staffers at the DOJ in the hiring of individuals for the Summer Honors Program, but no evidence the department was used for political reasons to affect a specific case. Contrast these events with President Bill Clinton’s granting of a pardon to Mark Rich, a fugitive from the law. Rich was granted a pardon with the support of the Department of Justice; later, Rich’s wife made a sizable donation to the Clinton library.
3. DOJ officials Will Moschella and Monica Goodling both testified under oath that EARS evaluations are office-wide reviews; they are not reviews of the US attorneys themselves. See: Will Moschella, House Judiciary Committee Testimony, March 6, 2007, 8 and 15; Monica Goodling, House Judiciary Committee Testimony, May 23, 2007, 14.
4. Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, spoke in glowing terms about my efforts on behalf of children. In a USA Today article, “Gonzales Concentrates Outrage on Child Abuse,” December 14, 2006, he described my example in raising this issue to prominence as a “clear profile in courage.”
CHAPTER 35: BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH
1. Senator Mark Pryor, accessed March 8, 2016, https://books.google.com/books?id=utWm7XbC784C&pg=PA6486&lpg=PA6486&dq=Congressional+ Record,+March+15,+2007+US+Senate&source=bl&ots=vq9J1K7B-B&sig =hSVRSFziYWLwnqimtZJZjVyhqKE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHiY Hem7LLAhWlkoMKHSN5C7UQ6AEIPDAF#v=onepage&q=Congressional %20Record%2C%20March%2015%2C%202007%20US%20Senate&f=false. See also: Meet the Press, April 1, 2007, MTP Transcript for April 1, 2007, accessed March 8, 2016, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17857501/ns/meet_the_press/t/mtp-transcript-april/#.Vt9evenvaJU.
2. US Department of Justice, An Investigation into the Removal of Nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006; US Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General /US Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibilities, September 2008, accessed March 8, 2016, https://oig.justice.gov/special/s0809a/final.pdf.
CHAPTER 36: TOO SAD FOR A COUNTRY SONG
1. Ruben Navarrette Jr., “Gonzales’ Persecutors Blinded by Rage,” CNN Commentary: March 22, 2007, accessed May 31, 2016, www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/22/navarrette/index.html?ereff=rss_latest.
2. David Johnston and Neil A. Lewis, “ ‘Nothing to Hide,’ U.S. Attorney General Insists,” New York Times, April 15, 2007, accessed March 8, 2016, http://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/world/americas/16iht-web-0416attorneys.5301215. html?_r=0.
3. I did have a conversation with Monica Goodling, a liason between the DOJ and the White House, about events leading up to the dismissals. The OIG report (pages 342–44) concluded that I did not speak to Ms. Goodling to influence her testimony, but rather to comfort her after she displayed serious emotional and personal problems. Additionally, the OIG report (page 352) concluded that Ms. Goodling committed misconduct in failing to disclose important information to DOJ officials and failing to correct DOJ officials when she knew they were giving false information to the public and Congress.
4. Statement by Senator Arlen Specter, US Senate Judiciary Committee: Preserving Prosecutorial Independence: Is the Department of Justice Politicizing the Hiring and Firing of US Attorneys?, accessed March 9, 2016, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110shrg35800/html/CHRG-110shrg35800.htm. See also: CQ Transcripts, “Gonzales Testifies Before Senate Panel,” Washington Post, April 19, 2007, accessed March 9, 2016, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902035.html.
5. Dan Eggen and Paul Kane, “Senators Chastise Gonzales at Hearing,” Washington Post, April 20, 2007, accessed March 9, 2016, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902935.html?hpid=topnews.
6. Ibid.
7. David Johnston and Eric Lipton, “Gonzales Endures Harsh Session with Senate Panel, New York Times, April 20, 2007, accessed March 10, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/washington/20gonzales.html?_r=0.
8. Testimony by Robert Mueller, US Senate Judiciary Committee, “FBI Investigation Oversight,” broadcast archived on C-SPAN, March 27, 2007, accessed February 22, 2016, www.c-span.org/video/?197355–1/federal-bureau-investigation-oversight.
9. Andrew Zajac, “Gonzales Gives Little to House,” Chicago Tribune, May 11, 2007. Online version reprinted by The Baltimore Sun, accessed February 22, 2016, http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2007–05–11/news/0705110348_1_gonzales-conyers-attorney-general.
10. Ibid.
11. At the time of the announcement of Jim Comey as President Obama’s pick as FBI director, the Wall Street Journal noted, “Obama’s FBI nominee has a record of prosecutorial excess and bad judgment,” Review & Outlook, “The Political Mr. Comey,” Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2013, accessed May 31, 2016,. http:// www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323728204578515650309268038.
12. Ibid.
13. Jeffr
ey Toobin, “The Showman,” The New Yorker, May 9, 2016, accessed May 5, 2016, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/09/the-man-who-terrifies-wall-street?mbid=rss.
14. Testimony by James B. Comey, former US Deputy Attorney General, Senate Judiciary Committee, Preserving Prosecutorial Independence: Is the Department of Justice Politicizing the Hiring and Firing of US Attorneys?—Part IV, May 15, 2007, accessed March 9, 2016, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110shrg35800/html/CHRG-110shrg35800.htm.
15. Ibid.
CHAPTER 37: A SLOWLY TURNING TIDE
1. David Johnston and Scott Shane, “F.B.I. Chief Gives Account at Odds with Gonzales’s,” New York Times, July 27, 2007, accessed February 22, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/washington/27gonzales.html?_r=0&pagewanted =print.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
CHAPTER 38: GOD MUST HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR
1. John D. McKinnon, “Karl Rove to Resign at the End of August,” Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2007, accessed February 22, 2016, www.wsj.com/articles/SB118698747711695773.
2. Steven Lee Myers and Philip Shenon, “Embattled Attorney General Resigns,” New York Times, August 27, 2007, accessed February 22, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2007/08/27/washington/27cnd-gonzales.html?_r=0.
3. Dan Eggen and Michael A. Fletcher, “Embattled Gonzales Resigns,” Washington Post, August 27, 2007, accessed February 22, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/27/AR2007082700372.html.
4. Review & Outlook, “General Pinata’s Exoneration,” Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2010, accessed May 31, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703467304575383192738893092.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alberto R. Gonzales was the eightieth attorney general of the United States and the first Hispanic to lead the nation’s largest law enforcement agency. He served as counsel to President George W. Bush from 2001–2005. Prior to his service in the White House, he served as general counsel to the Texas governor, as Texas secretary of state, and as a justice on the Texas supreme court.
Gonzales is an air force veteran and attended the US Air Force Academy. He is a graduate of Rice University and Harvard Law School. Presently, he is dean and Doyle Rogers distinguished professor of law at Belmont University College of Law.
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