Attorney General Gonzales 'Clarifies' His Lies

Glenn Greenwald continues to be all over the NSA spying scandal, with an update yesterday morning on the latest developments. These developments include- a poll showing that, in 37 out of 50 states, a plurality agree it is "clear" that Bush broke the law; another round of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, this time gathering legal scholars and former government officials; and Republican discord on how to handle the scandal. In the middle, Greenwald notes-

For several weeks now, many people, including many at this blog, have speculated that two important as-yet-unrevealed facts were likely true: (a) that Gonzales’ conspicuous efforts to confine his statements defending the NSA program to "the program described by the President" strongly suggested that there are other warrantless eavesdropping programs directed at Americans on U.S. soil which have not yet been disclosed; and (b) the whole AUMF justification for the warrantless eavesdropping program is an after-the-fact justification which the DoJ only invented long after the program started; the notion that the AUMF exempted the Administration from FISA was not an actual understanding of the AUMF which anyone -- including the Administration -- had when the AUMF was enacted.

These suspicions, likely discussed by Bush supporters as "moonbat"-ish at the time, have been given greater weight by none other than Attorney General Gonzales himself. Perhaps anticipating a new leak of information (aka 'the truth') that would contradict his testimony, Attorney General wrote a letter to Committee members earlier this week to "clarify" said testimony. The Washington Post has the goods...

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales appeared to suggest yesterday that the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance operations may extend beyond the outlines that the president acknowledged in mid-December.

In a letter yesterday to senators in which he asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration's original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated three weeks ago...

Here is the part that tackles the scope of the administration's illegal spying activities-

At that appearance, Gonzales confined his comments to the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, saying that President Bush had authorized it "and that is all that he has authorized."...

...[Gonzales] wrote: "I did not and could not address . . . any other classified intelligence activities." Using the administration's term for the recently disclosed operation, he continued, "I was confining my remarks to the Terrorist Surveillance Program as described by the President, the legality of which was the subject" of the Feb. 6 hearing.

At least one constitutional scholar who testified before the committee yesterday said in an interview that Gonzales appeared to be hinting that the operation disclosed by the New York Times in mid-December is not the full extent of eavesdropping on U.S. residents conducted without court warrants...

And what about the illogical legal defense Gonzales used in his testimony?

On Feb. 6, Gonzales testified that the Justice Department considered the use-of-force vote as a legal green light for the wiretapping "before the program actually commenced."

But in yesterday's letter, he wrote, "these statements may give the misimpression that the Department's legal analysis has been static over time."

[Former government lawyer Bruce Fein said the letter seems to suggest that the Justice Department actually embraced the use-of-force argument some time later, prompting Gonzales to write that the legal justification "has evolved over time."

One government source who has been briefed on the issue confirmed yesterday that the administration believed from the beginning that the president had the constitutional authority to order the eavesdropping, and only more recently added the force resolution argument as a legal justification.

To summarize, Gonzales' clarifications seem to reinforce the previous suspicions that a) the program leaked by the NY Times in December is not the only spying program President Bush authorized that falls outside the legal parameters of FISA, etc; and b) that using the Afghanistan resolution as a legal defense for the program was a late decision the administration made after learning it had been leaked and was not something they originally thought of as a legal basis for their activities.

The Attorney General Gonzales' clarification letter not only underscores how widespread what they are doing is, but shows that they are scared of being caught in a lie. These new admissions/revelations should be a catalyst for more public concern and congressional action. Congress clearly has a lot to investigate and with all but 34% of the country ready to wash their hands of the President, now is the perfect time to start.