[NYTr] Alberto Gonzales and His Boss: American Nightmare

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Greg Palast - Aug 28, 2007
http://www.gregpalast.com


American Nightmare: Gonzales "wrong and illegal and unethical"

by Greg Palast

"What I've experienced in the last six months is the ugly side of
the American dream."

Last month, David Iglesias and I were looking out at the Statue of
Liberty and Ellis Island where his dad had entered the US from
Panama decades ago.  It was a hard moment for the military lawyer
who, immediately after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired
Iglesias as US Attorney for New Mexico, returned to active military
duty as a Naval Reserve JAG.

Captain Iglesias, cool and circumspect, added something I didn't
expect:

"They misjudged my character, I mean they really thought I was just
going to roll over and give them what they wanted and when I didn't,
that I'd go away quietly but I just couldn't do that. You know US
Attorneys and the Justice Department have a history of not taking
into consideration partisan politics. That should not be a factor.
And what they tried to do is just wrong and illegal and unethical."

When a federal prosecutor says something is illegal, it's not just
small talk.  And the illegality wasn't small.  It's called,
"obstruction of justice," and it's a felony crime.

Specifically, Attorney General Gonzales, Iglesias told me, wanted
him to bring what the prosecutor called "bogus voter fraud" cases.
In effect, US Attorney Iglesias was under pressure from the boss
to charge citizens with crimes they didn't commit.  Saddam did that.
Stalin did that.  But Iglesias would NOT do that - even at the
behest of the Attorney General.  Today, Captain Iglesias, reached
by phone, told me, "I'm not going to file any bogus prosecutions."

But it wasn't just Gonzales whose acts were "unethical, wrong and
illegal."

It was Gonzales' boss.

Iglesias says, "The evidence shows right now, is that [Republican
Senator Pete] Domenici complained directly to President Bush. And
that Bush then called Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, and
complained about my alleged lack of vigorous enforcement of voter
fraud laws."

In other words, it went to the top.  The Decider had decided to
punish a prosecutor who wouldn't prosecute innocents.

All day long I've heard Democrats dance with glee that they now
have the scalp of Alberto Gonzales.  They nailed the puppet.  But
what about the puppeteer?

The question that remains is the same that Watergate prosecutors
asked of Richard Nixon, "What did the President know and when did
he know it?"

Or, to update it for Dubya, "What did the President know and how
many times did Karl Rove have to explain it to him?"

During the Watergate hearings, Nixon tried to obstruct the investigation
into his obstruction of justice by offering up the heads of his
Attorney General and other officials.  Then, Congress refused to
swallow the Nixon bait.  The only resignation that counted was the
one by the capo di capi of the criminal-political cabal:  Nixon's.
The President's.

But in this case, even the exit of the Decider-in-Chief would not
be the end of it.  Because this isn't about finagling with the power
of prosecutors, it's about the 2008 election.

"This voter fraud thing is the bogey man," says Iglesias.

In New Mexico, the 2004 announcement of Iglesias' pending prosecution
of voters (which he ultimately refused to do) put the chill on the
turnout of Hispanic citizens already harassed by officialdom.  The
bogus "vote fraud" hysteria helped sell New Mexico's legislature
on the Republican plan to require citizenship IDs to vote - all to
stop "fraudulent" voters that simply don't exist.

The voter witch-hunt worked.  "Wrong" or "insufficient" ID was used
to knock out the civil rights of over a quarter million voters in
2004.  In New Mexico, that was enough to swing the state George
Bush by a mere 5,900 votes.

So what is most frightening is not the resignation of Alberto
Gonzales, the Pinocchio of prosecutorial misconduct, but the
resignation of Karl Rove.  Because New Mexico 2004 was just the
testing ground for the roll-out of the "ID" attack planned for 2008.

And Rove who three decades ago cut his political fangs as chief of
the Nixon Youth, is ready to roll.  To say Rove left his White House
job under a cloud is nonsense.  He just went into free-agent status,
an electoral hitman ready to jump on the next GOP nominee's black-ops
squad.  The fact that Rove's venomous assistant, Tim Griffin, was
set up to work for the campaign Fred Thompson, is a sign that the
Lord Voldemort of vote suppression is preparing to practice his
Dark Arts in '08.

It was Rove who convinced Bush to fire upright prosecutors and
replace them with Rove-bots ready to strike out at fraudulent (i.e.
Democratic) voters.

Iglesias, however, remains the optimist.  "I'm hopeful that I'll
get back to the American dream.  And get out of the American
nightmare."

Dreams.  Nightmares.  I have a better idea for America:  Wake up.


[Greg Palast is the author of Armed Madhouse:  From Baghdad
to New Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House
Gone Wild (http://www.gregpalast.com/order-the-book/)
Sign up for Palast's investigative reports at www.GregPalast.com ]