Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Resigns
By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 27, 2007; 1:00 PM
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced his resignation today, ending a controversial cabinet tenure that included clashes with Congress over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys and over the use of warrantless wiretaps in the war on terror.
The first Hispanic to hold the job, Gonzales will step down on Sept. 17. In a brief statement, he called his 13 years in public service a "remarkable journey," but he gave no explanation about why he chose to resign now after resisting months of pressure to quit.
In a brief statement from an airport tarmac in Waco, Tex., President Bush praised Gonzales as "a man of integrity, decency and principle." The president also asserted that his attorney general had been unfairly maligned.
"It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons," Bush said.
A senior administration official said that Gonzales called Bush Friday to inform him of his decision to step down. The president invited Gonzales and his wife, Rebecca, to lunch Sunday at his Prairie Chapel, Tex. ranch. There, Gonzales formalized his resignation with a letter to Bush.
Bush said he had appointed Solicitor General Paul Clement to serve as acting attorney general after Gonzales steps down.
The official would not speculate on a long-term replacement for Gonzales, although the official urged caution about the possible selection of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "If you nominate Chertoff, then you have two confirmation hearings on your hands," the official said. Gonzales took no questions from the press as he announced his plans, but he said that even his "worst days" as attorney general were "better than my father's best days" as a migrant worker in Texas.
"I have lived the American dream," said Gonzales, 52.
His resignation marks the loss of another Bush loyalist at a time when the president's support in public opinion polls has been lagging and amid a fight with Congress over the future of Iraq war policy. Although Bush consistently expressed confidence in Gonzales, arguing that his longtime Texas ally was being targeted by Democrats for political reasons, the attorney general's support in Congress had withered after a series of run-ins.
His testimony on issues such as a federal wiretap program required follow-up explanations and was contradicted by documents or the statements of other federal officials. At hearings on the U.S. attorney firings, Gonzales frequently said he could not remember details about key events -- frustrating members of Congress who felt he was trying to minimize his role in what they regarded as politically motivated dismissals. Some suggested that the nation's top law enforcement official had committed perjury.
"Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job. He lacked independence, he lacked judgment, and he lacked the spine to say no to Karl Rove," said Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), referring to the belief among many Democrats that political strategist Rove engineered the ouster of the U.S. attorneys to make room for appointees more loyal to Bush.
"This resignation is not the end of the story. Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow the facts where they lead, into the White House."
The departure leaves Bush with a key cabinet opening nearing the end of his second term. As controversy around Gonzales mounted, so has speculation about possible replacements. Among the names mentioned by lawmakers and their aides in recent weeks: Chertoff, White House Homeland Security aide Frances Townsend and former deputy attorney general Larry Thompson.
Chertoff was previously an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's criminal division during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and was later appointed to a federal circuit appeals court. He was confirmed by the Senate to the bench and as Secretary of the Department Homeland Security in 2005, factors cited by supporters for his nomination.
But naming Chertoff would mean replacing him at Homeland Security, prompting two simultaneous confirmation battles and Senate scrutiny of homeland security and justice issues.
Chertoff has been accused of bungling the government response to Hurricane Katrina, whose second anniversary is this week. Democratic contenders for the 2008 presidential nomination and congressional leaders are expected to cite the lapses this week.
But Chertoff's stock rose among moderates in both parties during Congress's bruising battle over immigration, in which Chertoff served as a key administration spokesman and negotiator.
Gonzales came to Washington in 2001 to serve as Bush's first White House counsel, touted as an American success story. The son of migrant workers in San Antonio, he attended the Air Force Academy and studied law at Harvard, joining Bush's Texas gubernatorial staff as general counsel and eventually being appointed to the Texas Supreme Court.
But his nomination as attorney general -- the first Hispanic to hold the job -- was clouded from the start. In the White House, he wrote a memo that seemed to condone some forms of torture, a sensitive point as the nation debated the treatment of terror suspects. Only six Democrats voted in favor of his confirmation, an unusually low level of minority support for a cabinet member who serves as the nation's top law enforcement officer.
Gradually, opposition to him spread from the Democrats to include key Republicans.
"I do not find your testimony credible," Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) told him flatly in a July hearing on the surveillance program.
"Under this Attorney General and this President, the Department of Justice suffered a severe crisis of leadership that allowed our justice system to be corrupted by political influence," Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), said as news of Gonzales' resignation circulated. "I hope the Attorney General's decision will be a step toward getting to the truth about the level of political influence this White House wields over the Department of Justice and toward reconstituting its leadership."
Gonzales' departure follows that of Rove and other top White House aides who have left in recent months. White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten recently told senior aides that if they were not planning to stay until the end of Bush's second term, they should leave by Labor Day.
Staff writers Dan Eggen and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.
No comments:
Post a Comment