Bubbles Bubbles Toiling Troubles for Rove and Gonzo

The conflicting accounts have spurred congressional investigators to cry cover-up. Democrats are now pushing to get White House officials, especially Rove, on the witness stand. The White House will probably argue that it would set a bad precedent to allow congressmen to grill the president's personal advisers and rummage through their files. But since the White House has already started releasing confidential e-mails, it will have more difficulty making the familiar case for Executive Privilege.

The man chosen by the president to handle this delicate task - Fred Fielding, who replaced Miers as White House counsel last month - has plenty of experience. He was a young White House lawyer during Watergate in the Nixon administration and counsel to President Reagan during the Iran-contra scandal. Fielding, 67, is regarded as a savvy lawyer who believes in getting out ahead of a scandal. Fielding is also seen as a Washington establishment figure brought in to rescue Bush from the mistakes of his old Texas cronies, Rove, Miers and Gonzales.

One of Fielding's tougher tasks may be to push out Gonzales. It is doubtful that Bush himself will have the stomach for it. (According to the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, voters are evenly divided: about a third think Gonzales should resign, a third say he should stay on and a third are undecided.) As governor of Texas, Bush appointed Gonzales to be his counsel and then elevated him to become Texas secretary of State and then justice of the state Supreme Court. Bush sees Gonzales as a classic American success story, the son of Mexican immigrants who overcame childhood poverty. The president is personally close to Gonzales and his family.

And he owes Gonzales a debt of gratitude: in 1996, Gonzales pulled off a skillful courtroom maneuver to allow Bush to escape jury duty in a drunken-driving case. Bush's lawyer made the clever argument that the governor had a conflict of interest, since he might be called on one day to pardon the defendant (a dancer at a local strip club). Had Bush gone through the normal jury voir dire, he might have had to disclose a 1976 DUI arrest, thereby jeopardizing his presidential ambitions.

There is one more catch to shoving out Gonzales: finding a replacement who can be confirmed by the Democratic-controlled Senate may be difficult. A former senior White House aide who is knowledgeable about current thinking inside the White House (but did not wish to be quoted discussing it) says that one of the few possible contenders is Bill Barr, who was attorney general in the Bush 41 administration. But any contender would have to want the job - in the last two years of a weakened administration - and President Bush can be touchy about any suggestion that he needs to be rescued by his father's former aides.

Recently, a trio of senators - Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy; Arlen Specter, the senior Republican on the committee, and Democrat Charles Schumer - sat down with Gonzales in his wood-paneled conference room to discuss the firings of the U.S. attorneys. Gonzales was initially combative and defensive. "Why do I have to prove anything to you?" he demanded at one point, according to a source who was in the room but does not wish to be identified revealing a private conversation. He insisted that only poor performers had been fired. "Everyone was in the bottom tier," he said. "Everyone?" asked Schumer. What about David Iglesias of New Mexico? (The department's internal evaluations had given Iglesias glowing marks.) Gonzales hesitated. "I believe so," he said, but he seemed uncertain. As the meeting was breaking up, Gonzales suddenly switched tacks and seemed to want to be cooperative. "How can we make this better?" he asked. "What can we do?"

According to this source, the attorney general seemed to some in the room to be genuinely befuddled.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031807A.shtml