Monday Morning Coffee

Alberto Gonzales Brought the Papers


In March 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized for a few weeks when a gallstone blocked his pancreas and he had to have his gallbladder removed. While he was recovering, the acting Attorney General was his deputy, James Comey. On March 10, 2004, the night that the Presidential order the Bush administration was trying to use to justify illegally spying on all Americans was set to expire, then Bush's work lawyer Alberto Gonzales and chief lap dog Andy Card tried to go behind acting Attorney General James Comey's back to get a signature by visiting Comey's ill boss John Ashcroft after business hours at the hospital. The signature they were looking for is one that would say 'Yes, this Presidential order authorizing the Bush administration spying program is legal'. They had to go behind James Comey's back because he refused to sign it. John Ashcroft, in quite dramatic fashion, refused to sign it too.

One of the many problems with Alberto Gonzales's and Andy Card's actions on the night of March 10, 2004 was that hauling around classified documents and speaking about them in a hospital room is an inappropriate way to handle classified information. The Justice Department's inspector general was assigned to look into whether or not Alberto Gonzales illegally mishandled classified information, including whether or not he took Top Secret papers with him when he left his office. After all, if he never took the eavesdropping papers or any related notes outside the White House, how could he bring them to the hospital to get them signed?

The inspector general's office has just released their report. It concluded that Alberto Gonzales did bring home Top Secret documents related to the 'spying on Americans' scheme.

"Comey Don't Play That"- May 15, 2007




He Put Us All in Danger - Literally

During the work day on March 10, 2004, before Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card's prime-time hospital journey, these three guys:




Alberto Gonzales - then the head lawyer for the White House








Dick Cheney - Darth Vader

Micheal Hayden - NSA director (aka - the guy in charge of the spying)






put together an "emergency meeting" in the White House Situation Room to see if Congress could find a way around James Comey's refusal to certify that the spying program was legal. The people invited were some of the most powerful members of Congress known by their media code-name "The Gang of Eight".

During that meeting, Alberto Gonzales took notes. While the notes were meant to record the "Gang of Eight's" responses to the briefing, Alberto also wrote down,

"Specific operational terms associated with the program, as well as the codeword used to identify the program...One of these operational terms was “zealously protected” by the NSA and that designating the references to the term in the notes as TS/SCI was “not a close call.”

(TS/SCI = Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information)

After he wrote the notes containing that super secret information, Alberto Gonzales said he stored them in a safe in the West Wing of the White House. Then, the report concludes that

"On February 3, 2005, when he was sworn in as Attorney General, Gonzales took classified notes about the NSA surveillance program from the White House to the Department of Justice and then to his residence, where he kept them for an indeterminate period of time and stored them there in his briefcase. We further concluded that although Gonzales had a safe in his residence, he did not store the notes in it, and that in any event a SCIF, the only proper storage facility for such TS/SCI materials, was never installed there."

And that, my friends, is a crime.

According to the Justice Department inspector general, anyone who improperly handles classified material in this manner "shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both."

Despite this, the Justice Department has declined to prosecute.

A Tale of Two Safes


In the Justice Department inspector general's report, we also learned something strange about Alberto Gonzales's home decor.

When George W. Bush brought Alberto Gonzales into the White House as his lawyer, the White House provided Alberto Gonzales with some materials he would need for a home office, including a phone, a fax, a shredder, and a safe. When Alberto Gonzales was made Attorney General (the head of the Justice Department), all equipment provided by the White House was supposed to be switched out for Justice Department equipment. On February 26, 2005, everything was switched out - except for the White House safe. That stayed in Alberto's home.

Sometime within the next few weeks, a member of Alberto's security detail called the Executive Office of the President (EOP) to get the combination to the White House safe at Alberto's crib "because Gonzales could not open it" (this is how they know that Alberto didn't store those classified notes in his home safe). The staff at the White House tried to help, but there were no records matching the bar code and serial number for Gonzales's safe. In August, Alberto Gonzales moved into a new home and the White House safe was returned -still unopened- to the mother ship.

Anyone else curious about what was in that safe?

Should Have Claimed Executive Privilege

Monica Goodling was an employee of Alberto Gonzales's at the Justice Department. After graduating from Pat Robertson's "law" university (Regent's University), she went to work for the Republican party as an "opposition researcher", which is a person who digs up dirt on people all day. When the Republicans won (?) the election in 2000, she was given a job at the press office in the White House. She was later moved to the executive office, where she was in charge of "personnel management and evaluation". She was later made "White House liaison to the Justice Department", which means she was the person who coordinated business between the Bushies and Alberto Gonzales.

The President has the authority to hire and fire federal prosecutors. A group of Republicans used this authority to fire prosecutors who were either not willing to play by their rules or had positions those Republicans wanted filled by their own people.

In May 2006, Monica Goodling was granted immunity by the House Judiciary Committee for the crimes related to the firing of those attorneys that she committed in the White House/Justice Department and she testified to Congress. During her testimony, Monica didn't realize what the term 'caging' meant when she said that fellow "opposition researcher" Tim Griffin was in charge of the 'caging lists' for the Republicans in 2004.



Tim Griffin was a right hand man of Karl Rove and US Attorney Bud Cummins was fired so that Tim Griffin could be appointed US Attorney of Arkansas.

The Patriot Act was used to make that possible.

After her testimony, the Bush administration stopped allowing anyone to testify in front of Congress.

"They Got Served" - July 30, 2007




Check for Junk Mail Dated September 5th

A good way to steal a contest is to get the other side to not score points. Even if your team doesn't get a lot of points itself, if you can get enough from the other side to not count, your score can end up higher than theirs and you win.

Imagine if the Giants had paid the referees to reverse a touchdown score in the Super Bowl.

Imagine if Kelly Clarkson found a way to get American Idol vote phone operators not to count calls from guys.

Imagine if the Republicans had found a way to get a bunch of Democratic voters disqualified.

While the first two scenarios are highly unlikely, the third one happened and we know one way they did it. It's called 'voter caging'.

The idea is to get people's votes not to be counted by challenging their eligibility to vote. The party doing the caging (Republicans 1980's, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006) basically says 'This person does not really live at this address, so don't count their vote." The votes get "challenged" and the caged are not allowed to vote.

Caging is done by creating a list of people who would likely vote for the other side and then sending them something in the mail to addresses they may not be living at. In 2004, some reasons the targeted people weren't living at their listed addresses was because they were students or off at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The caging flyer itself is marked "do not forward" so that when it sits in the mailbox for a while, it gets returned to the sender. The cagers are then able to challenge the votes of the people whose names appear on the stack of mail that they get back.

It's like fishing with a net. You won't get them all, but you can still get a lot.

Information about Republican caging efforts, while ignored on television everywhere except BBC, went viral on some American talk radio shows and on the internet and therefore enough people knew this happened in 2004 to know to keep an eye out for it in 2008.

This year's caging letters may have gone out back in March and again on September 5th in Ohio. We also need to keep an eye out in Nevada, Florida, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico. To find out if you have received a caging letter, look specifically for the words 'Do Not Forward' or 'Return to Sender'. The return address and/or sender will be an office associated with the Republican party. They may look like junk mail.

If you think you have received one, you should make sure your local county clerks office, your Congressman, your two Senators, and your local media outlets all receive a copy. Posting it on the internet to get the word out wouldn't be a bad idea either.

PBS Still Has Real News

This is part of a great investigative report on Republican caging in 2004. The two videos are 17 minutes total.





Thanks for reading. Now get to work.