NYT: Bush Nominates His Top Counsel for Justice Post

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - President Bush on Wednesday nominated Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel and a longtime political loyalist, to be his next attorney general.

The speed with which Mr. Bush acted, only a day after making public the resignation of John Ashcroft, indicated that the president wants to get his new appointees in place before the start of his second term, 10 weeks from now. The nomination of Mr. Gonzales would also put one of his most trusted aides in a post where past presidents have wanted to have a confidant, as well as someone who can help defend the White House, much as John F. Kennedy chose his brother Robert, or Ronald Reagan chose Edwin Meese III.

Mr. Bush said of Mr. Gonzales in a brief announcement in the Roosevelt Room of the White House: "His sharp intellect and sound judgment have helped shape our policies on the war on terror, policies designed to protect the security of all Americans while protecting the rights of all Americans. He is a calm and steady voice at times of crisis."

If confirmed, Mr. Gonzales will be the first Hispanic ever to serve as the nation's most senior law enforcement officer.

The choice was immediately embraced by Senate Republicans, who promised speedy action on the nominee. But Senate Democrats appear eager to question Mr. Gonzales, who is considered more conservative than several other leading candidates for the attorney general's job. Issues almost certain to come up in his confirmation hearings include his stances on terrorism and civil liberties; the treatment of detainees in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay; the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, passed in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks; abortion; the death penalty; and other potentially contentious issues.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a leading Democrat on law enforcement and judicial issues, said he was "concerned about aspects of his record as White House counsel that raise doubts about his commitment to the rule of law."

Even before the announcement, civil liberties and human rights groups began recirculating copies of drafts of memorandums Mr. Gonzales or his aides wrote, including one from January 2002, advising Mr. Bush that the "nature of the new war" on terror "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

Many civil rights groups on Wednesday were quick to attack Mr. Gonzales for what they saw as legal policies and opinions that opened the door to the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Critics of Mr. Gonzales argue that such logic put military and intelligence officials on the path to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, even though the White House had previously insisted that the Geneva conventions applied to detainees. Mr. Gonzales has denied a link between those memorandums and the abuses. Yet the issue seems bound to be explored, and Anthony Romero, head of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the 2002 memorandum "will be the single toughest issue for him, because there's actually a paper trail."

Mr. Bush spoke emotionally of Mr. Gonzales's background as the son of migrant workers, and of his confidence in an old friend who has been at his side since 1995, when Mr. Gonzales came to the Texas state house to help the newly elected governor as his top legal counselor. At the White House, the nominee is known as "Judge Gonzales" in the White House because of his post on the Texas Supreme Court before coming to Washington with Mr. Bush four years ago.

While the selection of Mr. Gonzales as attorney general may create a public fight, some Senate Democrats said they might want to save their heavy ammunition for what is expected to be a battle over possible Supreme Court nominees rather than expending it on what is likely to be a losing cause for attorney general.

For months, there has been speculation in Washington that Mr. Gonzales would be selected to fill any vacancy on the Supreme Court. White House officials said he preferred the attorney general's job, and Republicans close to the White House said there was no reason he might not be nominated to the court later in Mr. Bush's term.

A court appointment, senior Republicans said, could have prompted a more intense confirmation fight, especially because some conservatives regard Mr. Gonzales as too moderate on the question of abortion and not sufficiently hardline in opposing affirmative action.

Then again, Mr. Bush's nomination of Mr. Ashcroft for attorney general in 2000 was also expected to gain confirmation relatively smoothly, but the 58-to-42 vote was the closest for the position in decades.

Some reaction to the nomination suggested that the shadow of Mr. Ashcroft, whose resignation was announced Tuesday after a four-year term that won him admirers as well as enemies, could work to the advantage of Mr. Gonzales.

"I think he's a pretty solid guy," Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, said of Mr. Gonzales. "If you had said to me six months ago I can have Gonzales or Ashcroft, it wouldn't have been a hard choice."

Republicans and Democrats said there was little reason to think that Mr. Gonzales, as a longtime insider at the White House, would take the Justice Department on a path dramatically different from that of Mr. Ashcroft on issues like terrorism, white-collar crime, gun enforcement, judicial nominees or civil rights.

"There's a feeling that Gonzales is less confrontational that John Ashcroft and he at least tries to reach out," Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in an interview. "His style is not to throw down the gauntlet. So the White House has taken a step back from the red-hot confrontation that Ashcroft embodied, but we don't know how big a step back."

Mr. Ashcroft had a sometimes tense and distant relationship with the White House, in contrast to Mr. Gonzales's place as a close confidant to the president.

As White House counsel, Mr. Gonzales took on much broader powers than many of his predecessors in formulating legal policy and tactics, a role that supporters said should position him well to act as the nation's top law enforcement official.

Some legal analysts said Mr. Gonzales's relationship with Mr. Bush reminded them of the Justice Department reigns of Robert Kennedy, who served as attorney general under his brother, John F. Kennedy, and of Mr. Meese, who was a White House counselor and close adviser to Ronald Reagan.

Every attorney general ultimately answers to the president, but historically, some have seen themselves largely as extensions of the White House, while others were more willing to try and insulate themselves from political pressures. Most famously, Elliot Richardson resigned in 1973 after refusing to fire the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox.

"A quasi-independence is something that historically has been valued at the Justice Department," said Elliott Mincberg, legal director for People for the American Way, a liberal group that raised concerns about Mr. Gonzales's nomination. "With Gonzales at the Justice Department, it raises the question of his willingness and ability to be independent and to shift to a very different role than he had at the White House."

Republican leaders described Mr. Gonzales as an able steward for the administration's legal policies. Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, said he had "lived the American Dream - from humble roots as the son of migrant workers who never finished elementary school to be nominated by the president of the United States as the first Hispanic American attorney general."

Mr. Bush also met Wednesday with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who is rumored to be looking to leave the administration, though perhaps not for several months. The president ducked a question about Mr. Powell's future, telling reporters in the Oval Office today, "I'm proud of my secretary of state - he's done a heck of a good job."

But he said nothing about Mr. Powell's future, just as he has been studiously silent about what may happen to another of his closest advisers, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. Ms. Rice and John Danforth, the ambassador to the United Nations, are considered two of the leading candidates to replace Mr. Powell if he departs, but in the past Ms. Rice has suggested that she would be impatient with the diplomatic formalities and constant travel of the job.

Asked on Wednesday about the speculation about Mr. Powell's future, Richard Boucher, the state department spokesman, said, "The only voices that matter are the president and the secretary, and they don't have anything to say or speculate right now."

President Bush said he was confident that Alberto R. Gonzales
would be "a steward of civil rights" as attorney general.

ALBERTO R. GONZALES

BORN Aug. 4, 1955, San Antonio.

HOMETOWN Houston.

EDUCATION MacArthur High School, Houston; Air Force Academy, two years; B.A., Rice University; J.D., Harvard Law School.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS Air Force, 1973-1975; lawyer, Vinson & Elkins, 1982-1995; general counsel to Gov. George Bush of Texas , 1995-1997; Texas secretary of state, 1997-1999; justice, Texas Supreme Court, 1999-2000; counsel to the president, 2001-present.

FAMILY Married to Rebecca Turner Gonzales; three sons.

HOBBIES Racquetball and golf.

* * *

Excerpts From Gonzales's Legal Writings

As a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, Alberto R. Gonzales wrote a majority opinion issued on June 22, 2000, in a case in which a minor was seeking to have an abortion without notifying her parents, as state law required. Then as counselor to the president, Mr. Gonzales drafted a memorandum dated Jan. 25, 2002, about the application of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War (G.P.W.) to the conflict with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Following are excerpts from those writings:

An Abortion Ruling

Our role as judges requires that we put aside our own personal views of what we might like to see enacted, and instead do our best to discern what the Legislature actually intended. ... Once we discern the Legislature's intent we must put it into effect, even if we ourselves might have made different policy decisions. ...

The dissenting opinions suggest that the exceptions to the general rule of notification should be very rare and require a high standard of proof. I respectfully submit that these are policy decisions for the Legislature. And I find nothing in this statute to directly show that the Legislature intended such a narrow construction. As the court demonstrates, the Legislature certainly could have written section 33.033(i) to make it harder to bypass a parent's right to be involved in decisions affecting their daughters. ... But it did not. Likewise, parts of the statute's legislative history directly contradict the suggestion that the Legislature intended bypasses to be very rare. ... Thus, to construe the Parental Notification Act so narrowly as to eliminate bypasses, or to create hurdles that simply are not to be found in the words of the statute, would be an unconscionable act of judicial activism. As a judge, I hold the right of parents to protect and guide the education, safety, health and development of their children as one of the most important rights in our society. But I cannot rewrite the statute to make parental rights absolute, or virtually absolute, particularly when, as here, the Legislature has elected not to do so.

Prisoner of War Status

As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. It is not the traditional clash between nations adhering to the laws of war that formed the backdrop for G.P.W. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities or war crimes, such as wantonly killing civilians. In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms and scientific instruments.

Although some of these provisions do not apply to detainees who are not P.O.W.'s, a determination that G.P.W. does not apply to Al Qaeda and the Taliban eliminates any argument regarding the need for case-by-case determination of P.O.W. status. It also holds open options for the future conflicts in which it may be more difficult to determine whether an enemy force as a whole meets the standard for P.O.W. status.

By concluding that G.P.W. does not apply to Al Qaeda and Taliban, we avoid foreclosing options for the future, particularly against nonstate actors.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.