Report Confirms: Gonzales is Truly Stupid
In what can be called the shocker of the day, a report issued Tuesday by the Justice Department’s inspector general says that former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales mishandled counterterror secrets.
Mishandling secret informatoion violates Justice Department regulations, and ‘removing them from special secure facilities without proper authorization is a misdemeanor crime.‘
Despite the above, the Department decided not to press charges against Gonzales.
The report, written by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, ‘found that Gonzales risked exposing at least some parts of the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program, as well as interrogations of terrorist detainees. Some aspects of the surveillance program explicitly referred to in the documents were “zealously protected” by the NSA, the report found.’
Investigators considered prosecuting Gonzales for his bad management, but decided not to do it after ‘an internal debate.’ The exact reason for the decision not to punish Gonzales for his stupidity remains, as of yet, unknown.
The main problem with Gonzales’ handling of classified material is that he did not protect them well enough; others had the opportunity to read them, just because he was too lazy or to incompetent to take good care of sensitive materials. Instead of locking them in a safe, for instance, he simply put them in a briefcase. To make matters even worse, he admits he did not always lock it, making it even easier for third parties to read information they are not allowed to see.
Gonzales may lose all the security clearances he still has due to his incompetence. One wonders, however, whether the ones who hired him should not be punished as well; after all, it should have been glaringly obvious that Gonzales was not competent enough to be the messenger of the Attorney General, let alone the AG himself.
Someone explain to me how what Gonzo did is any different than what Sandy Berger was prosecuted for.
You call a paltry $50,000 fine for stealing classified documents from the National Archives as part of a political cover-up a "prosecution"?
Gonzales’ actions seem comparable under the letter of the law, but somehow I suspect that you, Kim, and others of your ideological bent will be more…um….energetic in insisting on accountability in his case. LOL
It is interesting to see you bring up Sandy Berger, since I have never once seen you bring up any Democrats who misbehave except as quickly-forgotten rhetorical foils to claim Republicans are worse. Oh. Wait. That’s exactly what you are doing here. Never mind.