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— In the court of public opinion, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' best defense is memory failure. Again.
Throughout congressional testimony and in responding to various investigations, Gonzales has said he can't remember key events or didn't know what was happening at the Justice Department under his watch.
In perhaps the most memorable example, he ducked 71 questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee in April 2007 by citing a faulty memory or saying he didn't know the answer. His responses evoked cringes from fellow Republicans, eye-rolling from Democrats and hoots from protesters at the hearing.
Now, in his latest lapse, a Justice Department investigation found Tuesday that Gonzales risked exposing highly classified documents about two of the Bush administration's most sensitive counterterror programs because he failed to properly store them in special secure facilities.
Even though he was briefed at least twice on the rules, Gonzales told investigators with the department's Office of Inspector General that he did not know that the documents — about a terrorist surveillance program and terror detainee interrogations — needed to be kept in the secure facilities.
At one point, the report says, Gonzales took his classified handwritten notes about the surveillance program home, where the government had installed a safe for his use.
However, investigators found, "Gonzales did not know the combination" and the safe went unused.
"Whether it concerned hiring, policy, or the handling of classified documents, Alberto Gonzales never showed a level of care commensurate with the job of attorney general," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., one of the attorney general's chief critics.
Gonzales' attorney George Terwilliger responded, "Agreeing to serve as attorney general inevitably means one becomes a magnet for criticism."
Gonzales is now a year gone from the government, having resigned under fire. Yet his management of the Justice Department remains a hot topic, one fueled by a series of internal investigations focusing on improper or illegal personnel decisions while he was at the helm.
To be clear: Gonzales is not on trial. He does not face criminal charges, although Justice Inspector General Glenn A. Fine asked national security prosecutors to consider whether his mishandling of the classified documents broke the law.
The department's National Security Division decided not to pursue charges after reviewing the case, said Justice spokesman Dean Boyd. He declined to say why.
Results from another internal Justice investigation loom. This one, expected within weeks, examines Gonzales' role in the controversial 2006 firings of nine U.S. attorneys that ultimately marked the beginning of the end of his own job.
Given that the report will examine whether the firings were politically motivated, Gonzales probably will stick to his oft-repeated story: The ousters were largely planned and carried out by underlings, the reasons never fully explained to him until after the fact.
As he put it in a news conference in March 2007: "When you have 110,000 people working in the department, obviously there are going to be decisions that I'm not aware of in real time. Many decisions are delegated."
In other words: Gonzales was largely out of the loop.
Few dispute that Gonzales is an extremely nice man. People who know him well or who have worked with him closely also call him honest.
But even his supporters, mostly other Republicans, say Gonzales should have made more of an effort to surround himself with longtime career attorneys devoted to the Justice Department instead of inexperienced political appointees.
Eileen O'Connor, who served as Gonzales' assistant attorney general overseeing tax issues until last year, said what he learned at the White House as the president's chief legal adviser maybe didn't translate very well in running a giant government agency with thousands of moving parts.
"Perhaps it's possible that the talent required to be (White House) counsel also resides in someone who has the talent to be a good leader — but not necessarily," O'Connor said.
Whether anyone believes Gonzales' memory lapses is almost besides the point. It's one of the oldest lawyer tricks in the book: If you don't fully remember the details, don't say anything that might later land you in trouble.
"It's like punching at marshmallows with him," said Paul F. Rothstein, a professor of legal and government ethics at Georgetown Law School.
"When anything comes up at that might at all be shady or improper, it's 'Oh, I didn't know, I wasn't riding herd on it, it was going on without me,'" Rothstein said. "I think at the least it means he was incompetent."
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EDITOR'S NOTE — Lara Jakes Jordan covers the Justice Department for The Associated Press.
