Gonzo's law school classmates to Gonzo: 'Stop subverting the rules of law.'

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Gonzo’s Harvard Law School classmates of 1982 took out an ad on Washington Post asking Gonzo to stop subverting the rules of law.

Here is the ad:

AN OPEN LETTER TO ATTORNEY GENERAL ALBERTO GONZALES

May 15, 2007

Dear Attorney General Gonzales:

Twenty-five years ago we, like you, graduated from Harvard Law School. While we arrived via many
different paths and held many different views, we were united in our deep respect for the Constitution and the
rights it guaranteed. As members of the post-Watergate generation who chose careers in law, we understood
the strong connection between our liberties as Americans and the adherence of public offi cials to the law
of the land. We knew that the choice to abide by the law was even more critical when public offi cials were
tempted to take legal shortcuts. Nowhere were we taught that the ends justifi ed the means, or that freedoms
for which Americans had fought and died should be set aside when inconvenient or challenging. To the
contrary: our most precious freedoms, we learned, need defending most in times of crisis.
So it has been with dismay that we have watched your cavalier handling of our freedoms time and
again. When it has been important that legal boundaries hold unbridled government power in check, you
have instead used pretextual rationales and strained readings to justify an ever-expanding executive authority.

Witness your White House memos sweeping aside the Geneva Conventions to justify torture, endangering
our own servicemen and women; witness your advice to the President effectively reading Habeas Corpus
out of our constitutional protections; witness your support of presidential statements claiming inherent
power to wiretap American citizens without warrants (and the Administration’s stepped-up wiretapping
campaign, taking advantage of those statements, which continues on your watch to this day); and witness
your dismissive explanation of the troubling fi rings of numerous U.S. Attorneys, and their replacement with
others more “loyal” to the President’s politics, as merely “an overblown personnel matter.” In these and other
actions, we see a pattern. As a recent editorial put it, your approach has come to symbolize “disdain for the
separation of powers, civil liberties and the rule of law.”
As lawyers, and as a matter of principle, we can no longer be silent about this Administration’s
consistent disdain for the liberties we hold dear. Your failure to stand for the rule of law, particularly when
faced with a President who makes the aggrandized claim of being a unitary executive, takes this country down a dangerous path.

Your country and your President are in dire need of an attorney who will do the tough job of
providing independent counsel, especially when the advice runs counter to political expediency. Now more
than ever, our country needs a President, and an Attorney General, who remember the apt observation
attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” We call on you and the President to relent from this reckless path, and begin to restore respect for the rule of law we all learned to love many years ago.

Yours truly,
THE SIGNATORIES ARE ALL MEMBERS OF THE HARVARD LAW SCHOOL CLASS OF 1982

Here is the full page ad.