A defense fund for Gonzales? How quaint

A defense fund for Gonzales? How quaint
By Tim Grieve, http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/?last_story=/politics/war_room/2007/11/15/gonzales/">Salon

In an email solicitation for contributions to Alberto Gonzales' legal defense fund, Ford Motor Co. General Counsel David Letich complains that, "in the hyper-politicized atmosphere that has descended on Washington, an innocent man cannot simply trust that the truth will come out."

We're certainly sympathetic to the idea that criminal defendants need good legal representation, but that notion seems to have been a foreign one to Gonzales until rather recently.

As counsel to Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Gonzales prepared briefings on the last-ditch clemency petitions filed by men and women sentenced to death. In one such briefing, Gonzales failed to mention that the condemned man's lawyer had slept during parts of his trial. In another, he failed to mention that the petitioner's lawyer had an obvious conflict of interest. In that case, Gonzales did mention that the condemned man no longer had a lawyer representing him. But if Gonzales thought that was some sort of barrier to executing the man, he didn't say so in briefing Bush.

As attorney general, Gonzales argued that the government should be free to hold indefinitely anyone the president deemed an "enemy combatant" -- and that such a person should not have access to counsel during the time of his detention. "Any interest" such individuals have "in obtaining the assistance of counsel for the purpose of preparing a habeas petition must give way to the national security needs of this country to gather intelligence from captured enemy combatants," Gonzales argued in a 2004 speech to the American Bar Association. Gonzales said that the "debriefing of enemy combatants" -- and we think we know what that means -- is a "vital source of intelligence," and that that "stream of intelligence would quickly dry up if the enemy combatant were allowed contact with outsiders during the course of an ongoing debriefing."

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