This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
If, as reported, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spent weeks preparing to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, he might as well have saved himself the trouble.
Gonzales tried to plausibly deny to Congress that he had had much to do with the questionable firings of eight U.S. attorneys, a claim that is substantially contradicted in e-mails and in testimony from subordinates at the Justice Department. He failed miserably.
Indeed, with 71 claims of faulty memory during an intense, five-hour grilling, Gonzales came across as having something to hide. His vague, legalistic responses to important questions - such as who, exactly, was behind the firings - were clearly not the whole truth that he is sworn to uphold.
Republicans and Democrats alike were skeptical that Gonzales was telling them the whole story. For he utterly failed to counter mounting evidence that at least some of the firings were orchestrated by the White House for partisan political reasons, not for poor performance, as Gonzales claimed.
He did acknowledge having spoken with President Bush and White House adviser Karl Rove last October about complaints that the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, David Iglesias, had failed to pursue alleged voter-fraud cases involving Democrats. Iglesias was shortly added to the list of seven attorneys who got the ax Dec. 7.
In an editorial three weeks ago, we wrote that Gonzales had lost credibility and the confidence of Congress and should resign. His appearance Thursday, a final opportunity to resolve serious inconsistencies in his public comments about the firings and to convince Congress of his trustworthiness and fitness to remain as attorney general, was instead a disgraceful exhibition of parsing, obfuscating and bending the truth.
As attorney general, Gonzales has never, to anyone's knowledge, failed to do the White House's bidding. His allegiance to President Bush, to whom he owes his career in Washington and Texas, has been absolute. After Thursday, it still is.
For the good of the country, Gonzales must, finally, resign. Or rather, President Bush should clap him on the back and tell him that his time as a trusted and loyal servant is up.