A.L. (and his commenters) make this much clearer - particularly when the facts that Comey and Goldsmith came late to this party (as discussed in A.L. comment in the post below).
I find it fascinating that Gonzales is willing to snuggle up on perjury to avoid disclosing just how broad (and what detailed acts) the pre-Comey/Goldsmith 'program' entailed.
I suspect that broader program contained domestic/domestic intelligence (phone calls, internet traffic, etc.) that still haven't been admitted in public by the government but have been partly disclosed by outsiders - such as the 'boxes' installed in communications carriers' hub points. As I recall, AT&T et.al. were willing to have this traffic monitored without court orders - all but Qwest in the NW. It was also alleged that the carriers or the government was causing domestic-only traffic to be routed through Canada routinely to give it the appearance of being international.
If Gonzales was behaving as Anonymous Liberal describes, I agree with him that Gonzales did perjure himself in the technical sense, but getting a court or the Senate to convict on such a fuzzy situation without the full record of internal DoJ and WH memos and communications will be very difficult.
The WH will undoubtedly throw executive privilege and national security matters into the dough, and they have shown previously (refusal to grant DoJ attorneys a security clearance to review documents) that they can cut off the posse at the pass with this tactic.
I am now, more and more, convinced that the Attorney General and DoJ should be an independent agency that doesn't report to the President. Between a colluding DoJ and WH, oversight and holding responsible those who commit bad acts is not possible. This is especially true if 1/3 of the Senate will back ANY White House position.
A.L. (and his commenters) make this much clearer - particularly when the facts that Comey and Goldsmith came late to this party (as discussed in A.L. comment in the post below).
I find it fascinating that Gonzales is willing to snuggle up on perjury to avoid disclosing just how broad (and what detailed acts) the pre-Comey/Goldsmith 'program' entailed.
I suspect that broader program contained domestic/domestic intelligence (phone calls, internet traffic, etc.) that still haven't been admitted in public by the government but have been partly disclosed by outsiders - such as the 'boxes' installed in communications carriers' hub points. As I recall, AT&T et.al. were willing to have this traffic monitored without court orders - all but Qwest in the NW. It was also alleged that the carriers or the government was causing domestic-only traffic to be routed through Canada routinely to give it the appearance of being international.
If Gonzales was behaving as Anonymous Liberal describes, I agree with him that Gonzales did perjure himself in the technical sense, but getting a court or the Senate to convict on such a fuzzy situation without the full record of internal DoJ and WH memos and communications will be very difficult.
The WH will undoubtedly throw executive privilege and national security matters into the dough, and they have shown previously (refusal to grant DoJ attorneys a security clearance to review documents) that they can cut off the posse at the pass with this tactic.
I am now, more and more, convinced that the Attorney General and DoJ should be an independent agency that doesn't report to the President. Between a colluding DoJ and WH, oversight and holding responsible those who commit bad acts is not possible. This is especially true if 1/3 of the Senate will back ANY White House position.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | July 28, 2007 at 04:00 PM