Senate Dems Call For Special Consel to Investigate AG
Start warming up the Capitol jail, we're gonna have company. Senate Dems have now called for a special counsel to investigate whether Ag Big Alberto lied under oath when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The committee is asking for a special counsel to investigate Big Alberto's apparent conflicting testimony, under oath, relating to the Terrorist Surveillance Program. It's a bit confusing, but here's what's at issue, basically:
• Deputy AG James Comey, acting as AG while his boss John Ashcroft was laid-up in the hospital for gallblatter surgery, says that he had to fight off then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and then-White House Chief of Staff Andy card when the duo came to pressure Ashcroft to override Comey's resistance to renewing the Terrorist Surveillance Program (AKA: Warrantless Spying on Americans).
• In Feb. 2006, Big Alberto testified under oath to Congress that there were no "serious disagreements" pertaining to the program, which is in direct conflict with the above point.
• Earlier this week, Alberto says that meeting in the hospital was about some other, as-yet-undisclosed intelligence program and NOT the Terrorist Surveillance Program. He also said that members of congress were briefed on the program in March 2004.
• The AP this week posted a 2006 memo from then-National Intelligence Director John Negroponte confirming that the briefing was in fact related to the Terrorist Surveillance Program and not some other program.
• Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) and Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV) also confirmed that the briefings they received were about the administration's NSA domestic surveillance program.
• Big Alberto was given a chance to (again) correct his testimony and clarify his statements, to which he gave the committee a hearty "fuck you."
Bush continues to stand by Big Alberto and that leads one to wonder why. There's always a lot of hay made about Bush's value of loyalty. That's a one-way street though, as we all know. He values loyalty to HIM. He needs a lackey like Gonzales as Attorney General to ensure prosecution of lying White House aides die on the vine. Imagine if a truly independent AG were sitting at the Department of Justice. Jesus...
