Saturday, March 24, 2007
Who Are You Going To Believe, The Documents or The AG?
Maybe it depends on your definition of "involved."
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senior advisers discussed the plan to remove seven United States attorneys at a meeting last Nov. 27, 10 days before the dismissals were carried out, according to a Justice Department calendar entry disclosed Friday. ...
The calendar entry was among more than 280 pages of Justice Department documents released Friday night and immediately provoked further criticism of Mr. Gonzales in Congress, where the Senate and House Judiciary Committees have authorized subpoenas for sworn public testimony of presidential aides and senior department officials.
The hour-long November meeting in the attorney general's conference room included Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and four other senior Justice officials, including the Gonzales aide who coordinated the firings, then-Chief of Staff D. Kyle Sampson, records show.
Documents detailing the previously undisclosed meeting appear to conflict with remarks by Gonzales at a March 13 news conference in which he portrayed himself as a CEO who had delegated to Sampson responsibility for the particulars of firing eight U.S. attorneys.
"I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on," Gonzales said.
