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<font size=3>Center for Constitutional Rights Opposes Nomination of
Alberto Gonzales to Attorney General Post <br>
Group Cites Gonzales Memo Calling Geneva Conventions “Quaint” and
“Obsolete”<br>
<a href="http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/home.asp" eudora="autourl">http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/home.asp<br><br>
</a>Synopsis<br><br>
On November 10, 2004 in New York, NY the Center for Constitutional Rights
(CCR) voiced strong opposition to the nomination of White House Counsel
Alberto Gonzales to replace Attorney General John Ashcroft. Citing
the infamous leaked January 25, 2002, Gonzales’ memo justifying the
suspension of the Geneva Conventions in the war on terror, CCR Legal
Director Jeffrey Fogel said, “To call the Geneva Conventions, which were
put in place after the atrocities of World War II to govern the future
conduct of war and prevent such horrors from ever occurring, ‘quaint’ and
‘obsolete’ is to go back down a path we thought we would never travel
again.” <br><br>
In early 2002, Gonzales, then Counsel to the President, sought a memo
from the Justice Department addressing whether the Administration could
evade current treaties and laws in its treatment of Al Qaeda and Taliban
detainees without being open to prosecution for war crimes.
Gonzales used that memo to justify ignoring such bedrock guarantees as
the Geneva Conventions in the interrogation of prisoners, which led
directly to the abuse and torture in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib prison.
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Many within the Administration disagreed with the DOJ’s reasoning.
Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in opposition saying it would
“reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the
Geneva Conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for
our troops”; that it would have a “high cost in terms of negative
international reaction with immediate adverse consequences for our
conduct of foreign policy”; and that it would make it harder to prosecute
terrorists because other countries would have problems sending suspects
to the U.S. as a result, among other concerns.<br><br>
Gonzales flippantly dismissed Powell’s and others’ concerns,
writing to the president that the Geneva Conventions had become
“obsolete” in the context of the war on terror, and further trivialized
the core point of the Conventions by enumerating such “quaint” provisions
as affording prisoners athletic uniforms. Since then, the Secretary
of State’s dire predictions have been borne out, and the disregard for
law has made the U.S. less safe, not more.<br><br>
CCR President Michael Ratner said, “making Alberto Gonzales the Attorney
General of the United States would be a travesty: it would mean
taking one of the legal architects of an illegal and immoral policy and
installing him as the official who is charged with protecting our
constitutional rights. The Gonzales memo paved the way to Abu
Ghraib.”<br><br>
In the same January 25 torture memo, Gonzales outlined plans to use
military “commissions” to try prisoners so the Administration could deny
them all military and civilian protections. These commissions were
suspended indefinitely at Guantánamo due to a ruling by a federal judge
this week.<br><br>
<br><br>
More on Gonzales:<br><br>
Gonzales is an old Bush crony from back in Texas who supported their
friends’ corporate interests and took contributions from Halliburton and
Enron when he was a judge. <br><br>
• As counsel to the Governor of Texas from 1995 to 1997, he provided Bush
with what the Atlantic Monthly characterized as “scant summaries” on
capital punishment cases that ''repeatedly failed to apprise the governor
of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of
interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.'' He
did 57 such summaries, including for the case of Terry Washington, a
mentally retarded man executed for murdering a restaurant manager. The
jury was never told of his mental condition. Gonzales wrote a three-page
summary of the case for Bush, which mentioned only that a 30-page plea
for clemency by the defendant’s counsel (including the issue of his
mental competency) was rejected by the Texas parole board. <br><br>
• Gonzales was Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court from
1998-2000. During that time, Vice President Dick Cheney was head of
Halliburton, and it was the second-largest corporate contributor to Texas
Supreme Court races. Over a period of seven years, five cases
involving Halliburton went before the Court, and the Court consistently
ruled in favor of the corporation or let a lower court decision favorable
to Halliburton stand without re-hearing the case.<br><br>
• During this same period, Gonzales lawfully accepted $14,000 from Enron,
yet he subsequently did not recuse himself from the Administration’s
investigation of the Enron scandal when he was White House counsel.
<br><br>
• Gonzales upheld a law requiring parents to be notified before a minor
could get an abortion, though the law, like most parental-notification
laws, allowed judges to waive the requirement if observing it could be
expected to lead to the abuse of the girl in question<br><br>
• In another nod to corporate interests over those of the people, his
decision in Fort Worth v. Zimlich eliminated a key shield protecting
whistleblowers from retaliation.<br><br>
• As White House Counsel, from 2000 to the present, Gonzales led the Bush
Administration’s blocking of access by the Government Accountability
Office to documents from Cheney’s secret energy policy meetings.
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