The New Fascist Attorney General: Gonzales
Alberto Gonzales: A Record of Injustice
Bush attorney general pick is Alberto Gonzales Will replace Ashcroft if
confirmed by Senate
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http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/10/bush.cabinet/index.html
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As White House Counsel
GONZALES APPROVED MEMO AUTHORIZING TORTURE: An August 2002 Justice
Department memo "was vetted by a larger number of officials,
including...the White House counsel's office and Vice President Cheney's
office." According to Newsweek, the memo "was drafted after White House
meetings convened by George W. Bush's chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales,
along with Defense Department general counsel William Haynes and [Cheney
counsel] David Addington." The memo included the opinion that laws
prohibiting torture do "not apply to the President's detention and
interrogation of enemy combatants." Further, the memo puts forth the
opinion that the pain caused by an interrogation must include "injury
such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body
functions=97in order to constitute torture." The methods outlined in the
memo "provoked concerns within the CIA about possible violation of the
federal torture law [and] also raised concerns at the FBI, where some
agents knew of the techniques being used" overseas on high-level al
Qaeda officials. [Gonzales 8/1/02 memo; WP, 6/27/04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8534-2004Jun26.html;
Newsweek, 6/21/04 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5197853/site/newsweek;
NYT, 6/27/04
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=3DF60E14FB3C5C0C748EDDAF089=
4DC404482]
GONZALES BELIEVES MANY GENEVA CONVENTIONS PROVISIONS ARE OBSOLETE: A
1/25/02 memo written by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales said "the
war against terrorism is a new kind of war" and "this new paradigm
renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy
prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." The memo pushes to
make al Qaeda and Taliban detainees exempt from the Geneva Conventions'
provisions on the proper, legal treatment of prisoners. The
administration has been adamant that prisoners at Guantanamo are not
protected by the Geneva Conventions. [Gonzales 1/25/02 memo; Newsweek,
5/24/04 http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989481/]
GONZALES ADMITTED HIS VIEWS 'COULD UNDERMINE U.S. MILITARY CULTURE': The
1/25/02 memo shows Alberto Gonzales was aware of the risk that ignoring
the Geneva Conventions could create for the military. One concern
expressed is that failing to apply the Geneva Conventions "could
undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest
standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of
uncertainty in the status of adversaries," which is what happened at Abu
Ghraib. Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly warned against taking
this decision, as did lawyers from the Judge Advocate General's Corps,
or JAG. This week, a federal judge ruled that "President Bush had both
overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the
Geneva Conventions" when he established military tribunals in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, to try detainees as war criminals. [Gonzales 1/25/02 memo;
Bloomberg, 6/14/04
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=3D10000039&refer=3Dcolumnist_wool=
ner&sid=3DaJEp1ExaMybo;
New York Times, 11/9/04]
GONZALES BLOCKS INFORMATION FROM CONGRESS: Historically, senators have
been allowed to review some memoranda by judicial nominees. But, in a
letter [about nominee Miguel Estrada], Gonzales told the Democrats that
the administration would not produce the memos, because to do so would
chill free expression among administration lawyers and violate the
principle of executive privilege, which protects the internal
deliberations of the president's aides. [New Yorker, 5/19/03
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030526fa_fact]
As Texas Chief Legal Counsel
DEATH PENALTY MEMOS: GONZALES'S NEGLIGENT COUNSEL: As chief legal
counsel for then-Gov. Bush in Texas, Gonzales was responsible for
writing a memo on the facts of each death penalty case =96 Bush decided
whether a defendant should live or die based on the memos. An
examination of the Gonzales memoranda by the Atlantic Monthly concluded,
"Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in
the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating
evidence, even actual evidence of innocence." His memos caused Bush
frequently to approve executions based on "only the most cursory
briefings on the issues in dispute." Rather than informing the governor
of the conflicting circumstances in a case, "The memoranda seem attuned
to a radically different posture, assumed by Bush from the earliest days
of his administration=97one in which he sought to minimize his sense of
legal and moral responsibility for executions." [Atlantic Monthly,
July/August, 2003
http://www.fdp.dk/act/030928_texas_clemency.php]
MEMORANDUM ON TERRY WASHINGTON: A CASE STUDY IN INCOMPETENCE: In his
briefing on death-row defendant Terry Washington =96 a mentally retarded
33-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old =96
Gonzales devoted nearly a third of his three-page report to the gruesome
details of the crime, but referred "only fleetingly to the central issue
in Washington's clemency appeal=97his limited mental capacity, which was
never disputed by the State of Texas=97and present[ed] it as part of a
discussion of 'conflicting information' about the condemned man's
childhood." In addition, Gonzales "failed to mention that Washington's
mental limitations, and the fact that he and his ten siblings were
regularly beaten with whips, water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers,
and fan belts, were never made known to the jury, although both the
district attorney and Washington's trial lawyer knew of this potentially
mitigating evidence." Nor did he mention that Washington's lawyer had
"failed to enlist a mental-health expert" to testify on Washington's
behalf, even though "ineffective counsel and mental retardation were in
fact the central issues raised in the thirty-page clemency petition" it
was Gonzales's job to review. This all came at a time when "demand was
growing nationwide to ban executions of the retarded." [Atlantic
Monthly, July/August, 2003
http://www.fdp.dk/act/030928_texas_clemency.php]
GONZALES TOLD GOV. BUSH HE COULD IGNORE INTERNATIONAL LAW: In 1997,
Alberto Gonzales wrote a memo for then Gov. Bush to justify
non-compliance with the Vienna Convention. The Vienna Convention,
ratified by the Senate in 1969, was "designed to ensure that foreign
nationals accused of a crime are given access to legal counsel by a
representative from their home country." Gonzales sent a letter to the
U.S. State Department in which he argued that the treaty didn't apply to
the State of Texas, as Texas was not a signatory to the Vienna
Convention. Two days later, Texas executed Mexican citizen Irineo
Tristan Montoya, despite Mexico's protestations that Texas had violated
Tristan's rights under the Vienna Convention by failing to inform the
Mexican consulate at the time of his arrest. (Slate, 6/15/04
http://slate.msn.com/id/2102416)
GONZALES GETS BUSH OUT OF JURY DUTY TO KEEP DUI SECRET: In 1996, as
counsel to Gov. Bush, Gonzales helped to get him excused from jury duty,
"a situation that could have required the governor to disclose his
then-secret 1976 conviction for drunken driving in Maine."
Gonzales argued "that if Bush served, he would not, as governor, be able
to pardon the defendant in the future." [USA Today, 3/18/02
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020318/3948380s.htm]
As Texas Supreme Court Justice
GONZALES DOES ENRON'S BIDDING: As an elected member of the Texas Supreme
Court, "Enron and Enron's law firm were Gonzales's biggest
contributors," giving him $35,450 in 2000. Overall, Gonzales raked in
$100,000 from the energy industry. In May 2000, "Gonzales was author of
a state Supreme Court opinion that handed the energy industry one of its
biggest Texas legal victories in recent history." Since Bush brought him
into the White House, Gonzales has worked doggedly to keep secret the
details of energy task force meetings held by Vice President Cheney.
[New York Daily News, 2/2/02 ]
ACCEPTING DONATIONS FROM LITIGANTS: In the weeks between hearing oral
arguments and making a decision in Henson v. Texas Farm Bureau Mutual
Insurance, Justice Alberto Gonzales collected a $2,000 contribution
premium from the Texas Farm Bureau (which runs the defendant insurance
company in this case). In another case, Gonzales pocketed a $2,500
contribution from a law firm defending the Royal Insurance company just
before hearing oral arguments in Embrey v. Royal Insurance. [Texas for
Public Justice
http://www.tpj.org/page_view.jsp?pageid=3D117&pubid=3D60]
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=3DbiJRJ8OVF&b=3D246536
https://www.quickbase.com/db/99r7qj9f?redmsg=3DE-mail+sent+to+HaversineCon=
sulting
(Class action lawsuit state info)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/louisianacivilrightscouncil/ (LA state
info)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LA-CRC/
Constitutional Rights and this governments Constitutional Restrictions
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