Fredo’s Big Day

By Scott Horton

At this point it’s pretty simple: if you believe that America found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that Brownie did a “heckuva job” in New Orleans, and that all the flap over treatment of soldiers at Walter Reed is just so much nonsense manufactured by the media – then you’ll agree that Alberto Gonzales is telling the truth. And you’ll see no reason why he shouldn’t stay on as attorney general.

If, on the other hand, you have actually followed the hearings, read the transcripts or taken the time to examine some of the documents which have been released, you won’t be persuaded by Gonzales’ claims that he did “nothing improper.” Attorney General Gonzales isn’t coming clean. He’s probably misrepresenting his involvement in the dismissal of the U.S. attorneys, and he’s certainly mischaracterizing the entire process. In the meantime the process of sorting the contradictions is underway. In today’s Washington Post, Dan Eggen and Paul Kane report on yet another problem for Gonzales:

The former Justice Department official who carried out the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year told Congress that several of the prosecutors had no performance problems and that a memo on the firings was distributed at a Nov. 27 meeting attended by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, a Democratic senator said yesterday.

The statements to House and Senate investigators by Michael A. Battle, former director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, represent another potential challenge to the credibility of Gonzales, who has said that he never saw any documents about the firings and that he had “lost confidence” in the prosecutors because of performance problems.