Anything Goes

Patti Lupone performs “Anything Goes” at the 1988 Tony Awards show.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — either he is a serial liar or he has substantial comprehension and retention issues.  From the WaPo:

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. “There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse,” Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The acts recounted in the FBI reports included unauthorized surveillance, an illegal property search and a case in which an Internet firm improperly turned over a compact disc with data that the FBI was not entitled to collect, the documents show. Gonzales was copied on each report that said administrative rules or laws protecting civil liberties and privacy had been violated.

The reports also alerted Gonzales in 2005 to problems with the FBI’s use of an anti-terrorism tool known as a national security letter (NSL), well before the Justice Department’s inspector general brought widespread abuse of the letters in 2004 and 2005 to light in a stinging report this past March.

Justice officials said they could not immediately determine whether Gonzales read any of the FBI reports in 2005 and 2006 because the officials who processed them were not available yesterday. But department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that when Gonzales testified, he was speaking “in the context” of reports by the department’s inspector general before this year that found no misconduct or specific civil liberties abuses related to the Patriot Act.   (emphasis mine)

Oh, I get it. The defense is now going to be that Gonzales could not be bothered to actually do his job. Well, in Bushworld, anything goes…

PS — Happy 5th blogiversary to Skippy!

Related posts:

1. CIA IG Report to be Released June 19; More Torture Revelations Coming?
2. Brennan Provides Gonzales-Like Obfuscation on Illegal Surveillance Program
3. Zazi dans le WaPo: DOJ Feeds Press Still More Justifications for PATRIOT
4. Fredo Talks! Gonzales Advocates for an Independent AG
5. Found: The OGC Review. Still Missing: Legal Plausibility.