IG report: Gonzo did not intend to mislead Congress

A little nugget from IG Glenn Fine's report released yesterday on the IG website of the Terrorist Surveillance program investigation.

p. 41:

In addition, the DOJ OIG concluded that Gonzales's testimony that DOJ attorneys did not have "reservations" or "concerns" about the program the "President has confirmed" (the Terrorist Surveillance Program) was incomplete and confusing. As detailed in Chapter Four of the DOJ OIG report, there also was a dispute about this portion of the program. Although this dispute was not the subject of the hospital room confrontation or the threatened resignations, DOJ's concerns over this issue were communicated to the White House in several meetings over a period of months prior to and including March 2004 before the issue was resolved.


The DOJ OIG recognized that Attorney General Gonzales was in the difficult position of testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about a highly classified program in an open forum. However, the DOJ OIG concluded that Gonzales, as a participant in the March 2004 dispute between the White House and DOJ and, more importantly, as the nation's chief law enforcement officer, had a duty to balance his obligation not to disclose classified information with the need not to be misleading in his testimony about the events that nearly led to resignations of several senior officials at DOJ and the FBI. The DOJ OIG concluded that Gonzales did not intend to mislead Congress, but it found that his testimony was confusing, inaccurate, and had the effect of misleading those who were not knowledgeable about the program.