Worse Than Watergate, Part II
Posted on May 22, 2007
By Robert Scheer
Let me offer a word in defense of Alberto R. Gonzales now that a majority of U.S. senators, including six Republicans, are poised to demand his resignation as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. The breaking point was last week’s revelation by former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey that Gonzales paid a rude, nighttime visit to then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s intensive-care hospital room.
The goal of bursting into the hospital and alarming Ashcroft’s wife, in a scene reminiscent of “The Godfather,”
was to obtain the signature of the semiconscious attorney general upon a document renewing an electronic eavesdropping program that Ashcroft’s Justice Department had concluded was not legal. Gonzales had lied about this secret program in Senate testimony when he claimed that it was not regarded as controversial within the administration; actually, it was so controversial that officials at Justice, from the attorney general to the FBI director, had threatened to resign in protest, if it were renewed.
But don’t blame Gonzales; he’s just another lightweight zealot exploited by the Cheney White House. Not that Gonzales isn’t a thoroughly loathsome character deserving of Senate rebuke and worse. He has been party to dragging this nation down in the eyes of the world, ordering and justifying torture while shredding the limitations on imperious governance that have been the hallmark of American liberty.
Yet while the man has been associated with a pernicious assault on our freedoms, he has never been the independent actor, but rather a dutiful toady carrying out the wishes of a tightly monitored White House with the blessings of the president............
Having researched and written scenes for Oliver Stone’s movie “Nixon,” a devastating portrait of what we then presumed was the low point in the history of the American presidency, I can well predict the good use that a future screenwriter will make of this hospital scene to document the frightening reality, first effectively outlined in a book by John Dean, that the assault on American representative democracy during the Bush years has been “Worse Than Watergate.” Dean was the White House counsel who broke with Nixon over that president’s betrayal of the U.S. Constitution and who revealed the truth in a subsequent Senate hearing. By contrast, as Bush’s counsel, Gonzales eagerly abetted White House crime, lied to the Senate and was rewarded for that behavior.
The real culprit here, as in Watergate, is the president of the United States. more at:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070522_gonzales_bedside_manner/
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