Gonzales Cramming for Critical Hearing
April 10, 2007 — -- In the last week or so the attorney general has been studying, cramming for his April 17 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee as if it were a final exam.
Gonzales knows what's at stake: his job. The conventional thinking around Washington is that the attorney general's future is riding on his performance.
To prepare for the grilling he is likely to face from angry senators, the attorney general has been reviewing thousands of pages of documents related to the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Conflicting testimony before Congress about why the prosecutors were fired -- whether they were fired for poor performance or perhaps for political reasons -- have created a brewing political storm for the Justice Department.
In preparation, Gonzales may also be participating in mock sessions with Justice Department officials or outsiders playing the role of an irate senator or two.
Gonzales has faced a barrage of negative press in part because of his confusing and sometimes conflicting testimony that Democrats have seized upon. Most under scrutiny now are his statements that he did not take part in any discussions about the firing of those eight U.S. attorneys.
After an internal administration e-mail was released showing he was part of a Nov. 27, 2006 meeting with senior staff to discuss the firings, Gonzales clarified his statements. He explained that he was involved in the final decisions -- but not in developing the list of who was to be fired. But when his former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, contradicted that timeline during a hearing two weeks ago, the controversy was stoked once again.
Part of Gonzales' difficulty is that his entire department's answers to questions from Capitol Hill have been -- in a word -- conflicted. And in recent weeks, we have begun to get some answers as to why.
Gonzales clearly did not have all the answers about how the firing of these U.S. attorneys unfolded. Sampson suggested the reason why during his testimony. The process of firing the U.S. attorneys was conducted in a less than precise manner with almost no documentation.
