To those who watched, help with some questions about today's hearing please.

[Hamlette]

I heard something about Whitehouse (the good kind) having a chart. What was that about?

I heard something about the number of times Gonzo said "I don't remember" or something like that. Was it in today's testimony or earlier stuff?

What was the gist of the hearing, that Gonzo didn't know why they fired those people? That he had tasked it out to Kyle and just did what Kyle told him to?

[C_U_L8R]

1. Yes- anyone have screen grabs of the chart?

All I saw were the collective DU ooohs and aahhhs.

[Hamlette]

3. me too! I keep reading how great the chart was but not what was on it n/t

[Hepburn]

2. Bottom line on the hearing:

Gonzo played all of the the three starring roles depicted below:



He saw nothing, heard nothing and said nothing....:eyes:

[in_cog_ni_to]

4. The Whitehouse testimony, I missed part of it. I saw an earlier count of "I don't recall" 56? from

the morning testimony. Just heard on Lou Dobbs...a Senator said Gonzo said "I don't recall" over 100 times!

The gist of what he didn't know? He said he was called by the WH (Miers?) and told they wanted ALL the USAs fired. Gonzo said NO. Yet, Sampson continued with his plan to investigate USAs, recommended which ones to fire, they were fired and Gonzo still says he knew NOTHING about the plan to fire the USAs....yet HE approved the firings. It sounds like Gonzo had NO CLUE what was going on at the DOJ OR is lying his ass off. His testimony was PATHETIC. REALLY pathetic.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

5. Ok, on the chart. Whitehouse made a point of how to maintain the integrity of the

justice system, there has to be very little communication on cases between the JD and the WH.
He then showed a chart of the Clinton administrations policy as to who in both the JD and WH could communicate. I believe for the WH it was the Pres, VP and I believe the Atty for the Pres. and could only have contact with the AG, Deputy AG and the next top person in the AG's office.

He then showed a chart of the Shrub's administration where everyone and their brother could have contact with anyone and their brother at the AG's office.

[Spazito]

6. The chart compared the policy implemented by Janet Reno while

she was Attorney General dealing with who should have contact with the DOJ on issues of criminal and/or civil cases in order to retain the independence of the DOJ, I believe there were 5 names in the Admin on her list versus 300 plus names in the Gonzales DOJ. If this a wrong summation re the chart I hope someone will correct me.

Gonzales said he didn't recall, didn't remember, etc. at least 100 times according to one of the Senators at the hearing, I think it may have been Schumer but can't be totally certain.

Gonzales never answered any of the questions you refer to in your OP. For a man who had spent weeks preparing for this, it was an unmitigated disaster for him, imo.

[Hamlette]

10. ahhhh, that is interesting....no wonder the other Senators were impressed

saying stuff like "in my 32 years here I've never seen anything like this".

And it is a GREAT point...what measures the WH (the bad one) should take to insure independence of DOJ. (I'm a lawyer and work for the gov't so I get a little geeky over stuff like this.)

[Spazito]

12. Here are Whitehouse's own words on this,

re-reading this re-inforces how devastating Whitehouse's points were in relation to the comparison:

snip

So I asked my staff to take a look at what the difference was between those two in effect, and if you could.

This is in effect during the previous administration. This is the Clinton protocol. And there were four people -- the president, the vice president, the deputy White House counsel and the White House counsel -- who could participate in these kind of discussions about cases and matters and initiate them with the Department of Justice.

And on the Department of Justice side, the only people who were qualified to engage in those discussions were the attorney general, the deputy attorney general and the associate attorney general.

So they had narrowed very carefully the field of people who could have these discussions, which I think is a very important safeguard -- to narrow that porthole, to police it. It's almost like there's an airlock there for those communications.

Now, here's the result that I asked my staff to put together, if you count all the people who are eligible under the new program.

That, to me -- your staff can check on exactly how accurately we've done it -- but there are, I want to say, five -- what were the numbers?

(CROSSTALK)

WHITEHOUSE: 417 folks in the White House who are eligible to have these contacts and...

(CROSSTALK)

WHITEHOUSE: About 30-some in the Department of Justice.

And, again from a structural point of view, my question to you is, when over years this issue of White House to Department of Justice contacts has become so significant when, you know, even on the Republican side of the Judiciary Committee there's intense concern about this over the years.

End of snip

Page this testimony can be found:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902234_5.html

[Uben]

7. The short answer

Schumer brought up the number of times he said "I don't recall". Why the USAs were fired? Looks like even Gonzo doesn't know, which of course only leaves that it was done for political purposes.

Gonzales is incompetent, just like the majpority of the bUsh cronies. They are where they are because of their loyalty to a C student rich boy who cowered away from Viet Nam, is an alcoholic and coke head, and has never headed a successful effort in his life.

We, the people of America, deserve better. To give us an incompetent idiot like Gonzales for AG is disgusting and shows the disdain Bush has for the American people.

Impeach, Remove from office, and imprison George W. Bush. It is the only reasonable course of action now. America cannot stand on the word of Bush. He is a liar and is responsible for over 3000 deaths of American soldiers because he wanted to be a "war president". Let's make him a "war convict"!

[babylonsister]

8. Here's an article/video on Whitehouse's questions:

Video at link:

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003063.php

Whitehouse Presses Gonzales on What's "Improper"
By Paul Kiel - April 19, 2007, 3:22 PM

Alberto Gonzales, following the lead of Kyle Sampson, has drawn a well defined line at what would be an "improper" reason to fire a U.S. attorney: the motive of affecting a particular criminal case.

As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) pointed out, that's a "very low bar." What Gonzales is describing is what would constitute possible criminal obstruction of justice. Gonzales admitted as much, saying that in considering what would be improper, he'd thought, "what is the legal standard?"

Pressing on, Whitehouse tried to get Gonzales to understand that it would also be improper to fire a U.S. attorney for a generally political reason -- that attempting to discourage U.S. attorneys who might follow in Carol Lam's path, for instance, would be improper. Gonzales didn't seem to grasp the idea.

[Broken Top]

9. Gonzales Hearing Today

I only watched about half hour and heard him say, "I don't remember" so many time I lost count.
I hope the committe brings Ms. Goodling to a hearing and drills her on her activities. I don't care how many times she has to say she takes the 5th, this entire DOJ needs to be exposed for what it is--a completely disfunctional government department where the personnel are simply robots with titles and Rove operates it from the White House. Our government is dead, dead, dead!
Broken Top

[ljm2002]

11. I'm with ya!

And Welcome to DU, Broken Top!