Enforcer in Chief

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ALREADY Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales is making some liberals pine for John Ashcroft. Gonzales has stonewalled Congress on the extent of electronic surveillance, raided a congressional office and, for good measure, raised the possibility of prosecuting journalists, including some at The New York Times, for publishing classified information. Far from blunting his impulses for overreaching, his post at the Justice Department seems to have whetted them.

In “The President’s Counselor,” Bill Minutaglio shows that Gonzales has taken an elastic view of the law ever since he began working for George W. Bush in Texas. Minutaglio, the author of a biography of Bush and a former reporter for The Dallas Morning News, has conducted hundreds of interviews and mined the state archives. His prose is sometimes repetitive and can veer between melodrama and Bush-like folksiness. But he has carefully amassed a wealth of information that suggests Gonzales is less a conservative ideologue than a diligent subordinate whose only principle is abject fealty to Bush.

Minutaglio explains how Gonzales worked to suppress the slightest hint of emotion in order to fit into Houston’s Anglo world. Growing up in Humble, Tex., in the 1960’s with seven siblings, and ashamed of his alcoholic father, he never let friends visit his home. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1973 after graduating from high school, opting for an assignment in Fort Yukon, Alaska — “somewhere that could have been on the dark side of the moon compared to Humble.”

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Minutaglio shrewdly observes that Bush and Rove became emboldened by the lack of any Democratic opposition in Austin, and were determined to exercise the same kind of power in Washington. As White House counsel, Gonzales sought to supply them with the means, whether it was to justify military tribunals or torture. Minutaglio’s fascinating book will surely not be the last word on this sorry tale, but it goes a long way toward removing the veil Gonzales has tried to drape over his career.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/books/review/Heilbrunn.t.html?ex=1157256000&en=bfdd24ecc3943942&ei=5040&partner=MOREOVERNEWS