March 20, 2007
Now that Democrats control both branches of Congress and can launch investigations with shotgun subpoenas it can be expected that every week or two one member of the Bush administration will be tried by the media and found guilty. Last week it was Libby. Next week it will be Karl Rove. Now it is Alberto Gonzales. Soon it will be Dick Cheney.
During the 2000 election I saw Alberto Gonzales campaigning in La Grange, Fayette County, for reelection to the Texas Supreme Court. He had no Democrat opponent in November. Naturally I asked him why he was campaigning. His sensible answer was that as a Judge he could not speak out on issues and this election would be his only chance to meet with grass roots voters, make personal contacts and build good will for the next six years.
A lot has happened since then. It was originally assumed that President Bush would appoint him to be the first Hispanic Justice on the U. S. Supreme Court. Because of the War on Terror (and opposition of some conservative groups) such was not to be. He has served President Bush well in Texas as Counsel to the Governor and then Secretary of State. Because of the War on Terror, Alberto was the President’s point man for many controversial legal rulings he made as White House Counsel and now as U. S. Attorney General.
Conservative talk show hosts and news outlets like FOX will attempt to defend General Gonzales and point out the Clinton’s did much worse on their watch. But of course the mainstream media will ignore all this. They will shout how the Attorney General is supposed to be independent of the President and is undermining civil rights, paramount which is the media’s right to know and report everything.
Does anyone remember the name Robert Kennedy?
Robert Kennedy was appointed by his brother John to be U. S. Attorney General. If George Bush had appointed Jeb as AG the media would have screamed bloody murder, that this was a great conflict of interest and a virulently corrupt form of nepotism. Obviously Robert Kennedy’s main job was to protect his brother’s back.
My father was a lifelong FBI agent. When Robert first became AG my father loved him and said Bobby was very popular in the New York office because he would go with the agents when they conducted illegal wiretaps. As a naïve teenager I was shocked when Kennedy denied having knowledge of illegal wiretaps (the most famous being those of MLK) and placed all the blame on J. Edgar Hoover. I knew he was lying because my father had told me about these wiretaps long before it became a controversy. I always knew politicians stretched the truth but until this happened I really didn’t believe our national leaders could tell bald faced lies. I was doubly shocked at how the national media, and especially the New York Times, believed everything the Kennedy’s said and piled on Hoover making him the symbol of evil. Much is made in retrospect of the fact that Hoover didn’t fight the mafia or local crime. But of course at the time federal criminal law was extremely limited and the FBI only had jurisdiction to investigate spies, bank robbers and kidnappers. 
The original love the FBI had for Robert Kennedy quickly dissipated. My father was told that Hoover clashed with Robert when Bobby would drink a lot of beer in his office and throw beer cans out the window. This was verified by many people my father knew. It was just understood that the AG was a spoiled rich kid whose brother was President. My father was never an anti-JFK person. He felt that as an FBI special agent he had to be nonpartisan and nonpolitical. Boy have things changed! Now every disgruntled employee can write columns for the New York Times or if not important enough, leak dirt to Woodward and other “public interest” bottom dwellers. (If Valerie Plame was a dedicated secret agent why did she marry an Ambassador? Spying is a major part of every ambassador’s job description.)
Before my father died he told me that Robert Kennedy as AG has given him pre-signed arrest warrants during the Cuban Missile Crisis. My father could fill in whatever names he wanted. At the time it seemed to me to be no big thing. If you are at war you do whatever is necessary to win. But my father clearly thought it was illegal and he burned every warrant he had. In fifty years Bobby will be remembered as a great civil rights AG and Alberto will probably be remembered as one of the worst. The truth is exactly the opposite.
Royal Masset is one of a handful of people who built the Republican Party of Texas, Royal continues to serve Texas as a successful political consultant, author and speaker on policy issue
|
