from the OH NO files: Attorney general nominee has long history of legal service to Bush
Gonzales, now White House counsel, has helped craft policies for war on terror.
By Robert Elder Jr.
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Alberto Gonzales plans to take on a new post as the next U.S. attorney general. But the underlying job -- crafting legal fixes and strategy for George W. Bush -- is a familiar one.
President Bush on Wednesday nominated Gonzales to replace John Ashcroft, who submitted his resignation last week. If confirmed by the Senate, Gonzales would be the first Hispanic attorney general.
The president's nomination marks the fifth time in a decade that Bush has turned to Gonzales, a former partner in Houston law firm Vinson & Elkins. Gonzales, 49, served as then-Gov. Bush's general counsel and as Texas secretary of state, a Texas Supreme Court justice and, since 2001, President Bush's White House counsel.
Gonzales' legal handiwork has followed the arc of Bush's career. In 1996, he crafted a novel legal argument that got Bush excused from jury duty in Austin and allowed him to avoid disclosing a drunken-driving conviction. Of late, Gonzales has helped craft the U.S. policy toward "enemy combatants" in Afghanistan and Iraq, writing rules that limited the rights of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba -- and drawing fire from civil liberties groups and human rights organizations.
With Gonzales at his side Wednesday, the president said his nominee's "sharp intellect and sound judgment have helped shape our policies in the war on terror, policies designed to protect the security of all Americans while protecting the rights of all Americans."
Gonzales said: "As a former judge, I know well that some government positions require a special level of trust and integrity. The American people expect and deserve a Department of Justice guided by the rule of law."
Gonzales' judicial experience is on a civil court -- the Texas Supreme Court does not hear criminal cases -- and he has no experience as a prosecutor. He practiced corporate law at Vinson & Elkins, where his background differed from his fellow lawyers.
Gonzales, who was born in San Antonio, was raised in Houston, one of eight children of migrant-worker parents. He became one of the first minority partners at the giant law firm.
In the coming confirmation hearings, the international debate over the rule of law in war should provide the most sparks.
"Gonzales provided the Bush administration with the legal architecture to sidestep and ignore the rule of law that, as attorney general, he will be mandated to enforce," said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, an advocacy group that has lobbied against many Republican judicial nominees.
In a January 2002 memo, Gonzales advised Bush to declare that the war in Afghanistan and the detention of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are not subject to the Geneva Conventions,. That step would protect U.S. officials from being charged with war crimes, Gonzales wrote.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June rejected the White House view that battlefield detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay are beyond the reach of U.S. legal protections.
Gonzales' career in Texas government will also supply fodder for his opponents, but nothing that will derail his nomination, said Anthony Champagne, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Retired Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Phillips praised Gonzales as "very careful and thorough in coming to a decision."
"He was not one of these judges who had already 'received wisdom,' who knew five minutes into a case what the outcome was going to be," Phillips said.
Champagne, who specializes in judicial politics, said Gonzales' brief state Supreme Court career could boil down to one topic in confirmation hearings: his vote in a 2000 case that granted a young woman the right to get an abortion without telling her parents. The 6-3 decision interpreted a 1999 law that allows a minor to have an abortion without parental consent if a court approves. Bush signed the measure into law as governor.
"The parental notification ruling is, I think, something that would upset the Christian right under ordinary circumstances," Champagne said, adding, though, that many hard-right advocacy groups would not mount a substantial campaign against Gonzales because he is a close ally of the president.
One topic that will play only a minor role, Champagne said, is Gonzales' aggressive fund raising in his successful effort to win a full six-year term on the state high court in 2000, including collecting money from many Enron Corp. executives.
As counsel to Gov. Bush, Gonzales advised him on more than 100 death-penalty cases. Critics of Texas' criminal justice system contended that Gonzales' office supplied Bush with incomplete analyses of the condemned inmates' cases.
At the state Supreme Court, Gonzales, who was regarded as one of the moderates on the all-Republican body, helped the court limit the ability of plaintiffs to file class-action lawsuits.
At the governor's office in Austin and then in Washington, Gonzales built a reputation of loyalty to Bush by fighting difficult legal battles. He blocked attempts by Congress to make public details of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy commission meetings, for instance.
In recent weeks, Gonzales had been rumored as a potential nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court should a vacancy occur. But the attorney general post is likely to close the door on that, Champagne said. He said the president is unlikely to pull Gonzales, or any attorney general, out of the office after just a year or two.
Over the past decade, Gonzales has conjured up legal arguments in defense of Bush's political interests.
In 1996, when then-Gov. Bush was called as a potential juror in a DWI case in Travis County, Gonzales argued that Bush could not serve as a juror because he had the power to pardon felons. The argument worked, Bush was excused from jury service, and he avoided having to answer under oath jury-selection questions about whether he had ever been convicted of a crime.
Late in the 2000 presidential campaign, the reason for Gonzales' argument became clear: Bush admitted to a misdemeanor conviction for driving under the influence in Maine in 1976.
Phillips, the former Texas chief justice, said Gonzales' even temperament and "enormous capacity for hard work" will serve him well.
"He was also virtually unflappable, no matter how serious we thought the crisis was" at the court, Phillips said. |
