He told the Senate that Pentagon interrogation methods were “plain vanilla,” but e-mails reveal his top staff met weekly with FBI officials who said they were torture.
By Mark Benjamin, The Salon
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will leave office Sept. 17 with a reputation for being untruthful. During his repeated appearances before Congress earlier this year to explain the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, Gonzales answered “I don’t recall” or some variation as many as 70 times at a sitting. When his replacement comes to Capitol Hill for confirmation, lawmakers hope they will hear nothing but the truth.
But one of the men most often mentioned as his replacement may have some of the same trouble with the truth. Since rumors of Gonzales’ departure surfaced last week, speculation about his successor has centered on Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Just as Gonzales, under oath before Congress, failed to recall whether there was dissension within the Bush administration over a controversial war-on-terror-related policy, so Michael Chertoff seems to have suffered a similar lapse of memory while under oath before Congress when pressed on a different terror-related policy.