Alberto Gonzales

I

Introduction

Alberto Gonzales, born in 1955, American lawyer and judge who became the first Hispanic-American attorney general of the United States in 2005. Prior to being named as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer by Republican president George W. Bush, Gonzales had been counsel to the White House during Bush’s first term (2001-2005). Gonzales resigned as attorney general in 2007.

The son of two migrant workers, Gonzales was born in San Antonio, Texas, and raised just outside Houston, Texas, along with seven siblings. His home in the small community of Humble had no hot running water and no telephone for many years. After graduating from high school, Gonzales joined the United States Air Force in 1973. While in the Air Force, he won an appointment to the United States Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs, Colorado. He attended the academy from 1975 to 1977, transferring to Rice University in Houston in 1977. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Rice in 1979, becoming the first member of his family to earn a college degree. Gonzales then entered Harvard University Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, obtaining a law degree in 1982.

II

Counsel to Bush

From 1982 to 1995, Gonzales worked for the influential law firm Vinson & Elkins in Houston, where he became one of the firm’s first minority partners and specialized in real estate and energy-related work, including some work for Enron Corporation. In 1995 he was appointed general counsel to then Texas governor George W. Bush and served as Bush’s point person in reviewing dozens of clemency petitions in death row cases. He served as Texas secretary of state from 1997 to 1999, when Bush appointed him to the Texas Supreme Court.

After Bush became president of the United States in 2001, he named Gonzales his White House counsel. As counsel, Gonzales was a relatively anonymous figure until he made headlines for a memo advising President Bush that his decision was correct in not applying the Geneva Conventions to suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners captured in the war on terror. Gonzales advised that the Geneva Conventions’ strict limitations on the questioning of prisoners were “obsolete” in the “new paradigm” of fighting against terrorists. Anticipating that new interrogation methods would be used, the memo advised the president that he would be immune from prosecution under the War Crimes Act of 1996 if he determined that the Geneva Conventions did not apply.

---

---

In his capacity as White House counsel, Gonzales also solicited and reportedly approved other memos written by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) of the Justice Department that argued for a narrow definition of torture and claimed the president had broad powers to detain suspected terrorists and override existing laws as commander in chief. Critics charged that these memos helped set the stage for reported abuses and torture of detainees at a detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Gonzales and other Bush administration officials denied that torture had ever been approved, pointing to a February 2002 memo from the White House that said prisoners would be treated “humanely” and according to the “principles” of the Geneva Conventions. The administration also defended itself by noting that during the U.S. invasion of Iraq it openly proclaimed that the Geneva Conventions would apply to Iraqi prisoners.

III

Attorney General

After winning reelection in 2004, Bush nominated Gonzales to head the Department of Justice as attorney general. At hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales’s nomination was supported by several Hispanic-American organizations and the Republican Party leadership but was notably opposed by a dozen retired generals and admirals, including the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General John Shalikashvili, and several military lawyers known as judge advocate generals, including Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, who had served as the Navy’s judge advocate general. The retired military officers said Gonzales’s recommendation to reverse a long-held U.S. policy of compliance with the Geneva Conventions in all armed conflicts had “fostered greater animosity toward the United States, undermined our intelligence gathering efforts, and added to the risks facing our troops around the world.”

Although members of the Judiciary Committee initially predicted easy confirmation, the committee eventually split ten to eight, with eight Democrats saying that Gonzales had failed to provide satisfactory answers to their questions. Specifically, they charged that he failed to repudiate an August 2002 memo that attempted to reinterpret U.S. torture statutes by narrowly defining torture as injury akin to “organ failure.” During an exchange with Democratic senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Gonzales said he did not “have a disagreement with the conclusions” reached in that memo. At the same time, however, Gonzales said he did not condone torture and that the Justice Department had determined that the controversial August memo was no longer operative.

The full Senate confirmed Gonzales’s nomination in February 2005, voting 60 to 36 in favor. The vote was overwhelmingly along party lines with only 6 Democrats voting in favor. Many Republican senators were angered by the vote, saying the dissident Democrats failed to acknowledge that the Bush administration had consistently called for humane treatment of prisoners.

Throughout his tenure in the Bush administration, Gonzales has been repeatedly mentioned as a possible nominee for associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. According to political observers, his chances have been both enhanced and harmed by suggestions that Gonzales had taken a strict interpretation of abortion laws during his tenure as a Texas Supreme Court justice and that he appeared to have moderate views on affirmative action.

As three others—John Roberts, Harriet Miers, and Samuel Alito—were nominated by Bush, speculation waned that Gonzales would become the first Hispanic member of the U.S. Supreme Court. As he was passed over, some Hispanic organizations continued to advocate for a Supreme Court appointment.

A

Warrantless Surveillance Controversy

As 2006 began, Gonzales continued to be at the center of various controversies regarding the Bush administration’s policies in the war on terror, including criticisms over the limits and boundaries of a domestic, covert operation known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program. The program monitored telephone and e-mail communications in the United States without judicial warrants. In hearings before Congress, Gonzales defended the warrantless electronic surveillance, which was carried out by the National Security Agency and which appeared to violate the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). He said the program was constitutional under Bush’s powers as commander in chief and also under a congressional resolution that authorized the use of force in the war on terror. Gonzales said it was necessary to avoid a special court set up under FISA because often the court was too slow in acting on requests for warrants.

However, several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including prominent Republican members, questioned the legality of the program. In January 2007 Attorney General Gonzales informed the Senate Judiciary Committee that the administration would not be reauthorizing the Terrorist Surveillance Program. In a letter to the committee, Gonzales wrote that the administration had obtained “orders” from the FISA special court that would give it the “necessary speed and agility” it sought.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain