Senate Judiciary Committee w/Alberto Gonzales-7/24/07 Pt31

Part 31 of 32 Senate Judiciary Committee with Alberto Gonzales. Senator Specter's third round of questions to Alberto Gonzales. 7/24/07


KEEP IN MIND: Gonzales was given each and every question he would be asked beforehand. Nothing was a surprise - there was absolutely NO "GOTCHA!"

Transcript of this portion of the hearing:
SPECTER: Just a few concluding comments.

Attorney General Gonzales, I would ask you to take a close look at the functioning of your department or perhaps consult with others to give you an objective view as to what is happening.

The consensus appears to be that the morale is at an all-time low from what has happened. The U.S. attorneys around the country don't know when the next shoe is going to drop, although perhaps replacements or requests for resignations have been tempered or slowed down or perhaps even eliminated because of the focus of this committee's inquiry.

But I would ask you to take a look at that morale issue.

GONZALES: I will do so.

SPECTER: And then I'd ask you to take a look at how the department is functioning generally. I mentioned the OxyContin case only because it received a lot of newspaper publicity.

SPECTER: And the case involving the homicide where you asked for the death penalty also received a lot of publicity.

But it looks to me candidly, Attorney General Gonzales, as if the department's dysfunctional. When you have many people killed and many people addicted from a dangerous drug, where there is malicious misleading of the consumers, that constitutes malice. That's criminal conduct.

And the profits that are made from these drugs are in the billions. So when you have even $600 million -- I don't know all the details and this committee can't possibly run your department. We can't possibly run your department. And I know you're recused technically, but you're still the attorney general.

And we really ought to reach an accommodation with the administration on finishing up this investigation. And I think you would obviously be as anxious to have it finished as anyone, perhaps more so. And we've made concessions to what the president has proposed and I wrote to White House counsel -- you're not White House counsel anymore -- and talked to Mr. Fielding about a meeting where Chairman Conyers, Chairman Leahy and I might talk to the president.

I find dealing with the president when you move above the levels of bureaucracy to be able to come to conclusions and come to judgments. And the transcript issue seems to me fundamental. I don't know why any witness would want to appear before a committee on an informal basis and not have a transcript so that someone might contend at a later time that a false official statement was made which carries the same penalty as perjury, five years. I don't know why anyone would want that. But if they insist on it, I'd even take that.

I think that John Conyers and Pat Leahy and Chuck Schumer and Arlen Specter and others could find out a lot of information even on an informal basis. But I won't give up the Senate's right to pursue a subpoena if we feel it necessary. We cannot delegate that.

I think back to the great attorneys general in our history: Edmund Randolph, Washington's attorney general; Harlan Fiske Stone, later chief justice of the Supreme Court; Robert Jackson, FDR's attorney general -- still citing his opinions on a wide variety of subjects. And I would just ask you to consider the interests of the Department of Justice and the interests of the American people because your department, next to the Department of Defense, is the most important department in the government.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

LEAHY: Thank you, Senator Specter.

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[sina22]

i love you specter