WP, Cohen: "Gonzales was always the imperturbable cog in Texas's killing machine." [View All]

[DeepModem Mom]

Gonzales the Cipher
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, April 3, 2007; Page A23

Dead men tell no tales. But if they did, the ones they would tell about Alberto Gonzales would by now be familiar: an expert in giving his boss, George W. Bush, precisely what he wanted. The dead men in this case are the ones who were executed while Bush was governor of Texas and Gonzales was his legal counsel. Sometimes, as often seems true with Gonzales, the details eluded him.

Clearly, those details could have made the difference between life and death -- or, given the realities of the Texas system, death and a remote chance of a reprieve. But since Bush was not likely to temporarily block any execution or even to raise his voice in mild objection to a particularly heinous railroading, Gonzales kept his death penalty memos short and to the point. Almost always, the point was that the execution should proceed.

The first 57 of the 152 death penalty cases Bush presided over occurred when Gonzales was general counsel. It was his job to prepare a document summarizing the facts of the case. Those memos were examined by Alan Berlow of the Atlantic magazine, who reported on them back in 2003. What he found was that of the 57, there was hardly a case that gave Gonzales pause -- not the mental retardation of the condemned, not the stunning negligence of some lawyers and not the occasional use of questionable police methods. Gonzales was always the imperturbable cog in Texas's killing machine.

In some respects, this should come as no surprise. Bush was -- and remains -- a major advocate of the death penalty, and he retains a touching belief in the near-perfection of the system. Indeed, one reason his Justice Department looked askance at some U.S. attorneys is that they were insufficiently enthusiastic about capital punishment. In career terms, this, in itself, is a capital crime. Gonzales, to the extent that he has any views of his own, apparently thinks as Bush does in this regard -- that is to say, he does not really think at all....

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All of this is of a piece, the characteristic profile of a man who casts only the dimmest shadow and who, when he worked as legal counsel to the governor of Texas, saw himself as a facilitator representing one man and not, significantly, those who needed him most: the many condemned of Texas. Little wonder Bush supports him.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040201265.html?hpid=opinionsbox1