http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/14/gonzales/index.html (I also have a couple of clips of Feingold grilling Gonzalez during the hearing on this at
VideoClips look for Feingold #2
The attorney general nominee claims he and then Texas Gov. Bush held "rolling" discussions before executions were approved. He's almost certainly not telling the truth.
In seven hours of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Alberto Gonzales demonstrated astute powers of evasion, obfuscation and equivocation when it came to the Bush administration's torture policy, leading one Democratic senator, Joseph Biden of Delaware, to ever so gently suggest that the attorney general nominee might be less than totally forthcoming. "So we're looking for candor, ol' buddy. We're looking for you when we ask you questions to give us an answer, which you haven't done yet. I love you, but you're not very candid so far."
In the end, few senators wanted to sully the Gonzales love-in just because the sworn testimony of the soon-to-be rubber-stamped head of the nation's chief law enforcement agency was not entirely responsive. But if Gonzales was lacking in candor on the subject of torture, the main thrust of the hearing, he almost certainly crossed the line from half-truth to untruth when it came to a discussion of his role in the execution of 57 Texas death row inmates.
In response to questions from Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold and Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, Gonzales repeatedly stated that each of the so-called execution memos he wrote for then Texas Gov. George W. Bush was nothing more than a "summary" of what he suggested had been an elaborate, ongoing review process for each and every execution Bush approved. "It was not unusual -- in fact, it was quite common that I would have numerous discussions with the governor well in advance of a scheduled execution," Gonzales told Feingold. "There would be a rolling series of discussions in connection with every execution."
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