North Star Writers Group

Conservatives continue to reprimand the rabid U.S. Congress for essentially pushing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales out the door for politically motivated reasons. For example, my fellow North Star Writers Group columnist David Karki writes:

“[I]t is pointless for President Bush to even try to get along with or accommodate or appease [liberals]. The only thing offering them a morsel like Gonzales accomplishes is to whet their appetite for even more fresh meat. This also explains why the staggering hypocrisy of the left goes unacknowledged. They all but scream death to Gonzales for firing eight partisan liberal U.S. attorneys, who refused to prosecute vote fraud cases lest the result help Republicans win future elections in those districts.”

But calls for his resignation were not hinged on the firings themselves — as unjust as they were — but on Gonzales’s deceitful testimonies on this and other incidents that took place during his tenure as Attorney General. During his testimony about the firings before Congress on April 19, 2007, Gonzales offered up 71 replies consisting of what amounts to “I cannot recall.”

That Gonzales attempted to wash his hands of the matter shows the firings were something of which to be ashamed, but I digress. Among things he failed to recollect were a meeting that took place just five months before his testimony, and an e-mail conversation during which Gonzales advocated for the release of Carol Lam, one of the U.S. attorneys who would be fired six months later. Eventually, e-mails surfaced showing that he was indeed notified of the situation and had given his approval.

Liberals in this situation were not hungry carnivores out for “fresh meat,” unless fresh meat includes those who play important roles in our government and lie to protect their own interests. But if they were, conservatives were salivating right beside them. Republicans, including Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, whose voting record shows a strong allegiance with the Bush administration, questioned Gonzales’s memory during testimony, saying: “Well, I guess I'm concerned about your recollection, really, because it's not that long ago. It was an important issue. And that's troubling to me, I've got to tell you.”

Gonzales also previously lied during a different congressional testimony about his clandestine hospital bed meeting with then Attorney General John Ashcroft on the subject illegal NSA wiretapping, presenting a version of events that did not jibe with the versions others in the room that night presented. At this, Arlen Specter, a ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, commented “Your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable.”

Either Alberto Gonzales’s memory is significantly lacking, or he was purposely being disingenuous. If it is the former, then I would suggest he stock up on fish oil in his downtime. If it is the latter, and I am convinced it is, then his resignation — and Congress’s demands for it — were quite appropriate.

Gonzales defended his selective memory by claiming that, in the same week as the forgotten meeting during which the attorney firings were discussed, he had taken a trip to Mexico for the inauguration of its new president and had taken part in National Meth Awareness Day. These events somehow managed not to escape his memory, but an important meeting that would later decide his fate as Attorney General, conveniently did.

In an age where e-mail communication documents conversations that may be intended to be private, and where accessing information is easier than ever (despite the Bush administration’s various efforts at keeping its affairs as private as possible), politicians should be aware that lying or feigning innocence is not a surefire escape from scrutiny. It’s ironic that the very man who advocated for unwarranted wiretapping of Americans would later be incriminated as a result of lack of privacy in his own correspondences.

Given the number of political scandals that are made public in any given year, I shudder to think of the lies that politicians from both parties have gotten away with. However, no politician should think his reputation unassailable, unless he is in fact truthful in his endeavors. Not only is it dangerous for the politician who could get careless and forget to delete e-mails or erase engagements from his or her calendar, but dangerous for the American people, whose leaders make decisions based on the likelihood of getting caught.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.

This is Column # JV019. Request permission to publish here.