StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

Gonzalez: Not Lying and Not Disclosing “Other” National Security Issues

When Alberto Gonalez said that his meeting with Atty Gen’l Ashcroft in the hospital was not to discuss the Terrorist Surveillance Program, I’m betting that he was truthful. That meeting was about an undisclosed surveillance activity.

Somehow, when I posted about it last night, Gonzalez: Terrorist Surveillance Program "Plus", it didn’t seem to set off any bells. So here it is today being discussed in the Washington Post. I don’t actually care if its the rebirth of the Total Information Awareness program or some other anti-terrorism program. It was pretty obvious to me that as squirrely as Gonzalez is, he wasn’t really lying, he simply wasn’t answering questions that hadn’t been asked. As Ruth Marcus has written in the WaPo article, Short of Perjury:

"The disagreement that occurred and the reason for the visit to the hospital…was about other intelligence activities. It was not about the Terrorist Surveillance Program that the president announced to the American people."

– and it makes sense that we don’t know: This was a classified program, and all the officials, current and former, who have testified about it have been deliberately and appropriately vague.

That’s why Robert Mueller’s testimony doesn’t contradict the testimony of Gonzalez. They were referring to different programs. I wrote about data mining in Gonzalez: Terrorist Surveillance Program "Plus". No, I don’t know any of this for certain.

The Supreme Court could have been writing about Gonzales when it ruled that "the perjury statute is not to be loosely construed, nor the statute invoked simply because a wily witness succeeds in derailing the questioner — so long as the witness speaks the literal truth" — even if the answers "were not guileless but were shrewdly calculated to evade."

Everyone is so damn anxious to take shots at GWB and his people that they miss the real issues. Marcus argues that Conrgess should be:

…to see what changes might guard against a repetition of the early, apparently unlawful activities; and to determine where the foreign intelligence wiretapping statute might need fixes.

I’m no fan of Alberto Gonzalez. But when it comes to National Security and surveillance of potential or suspected terrorists, I say HAVE AT IT!

Please place your "mark" (vote) on RCP.