[Infowarrior] - Lawyers: Gonzales mishandled classified data

[Richard Forno]

Lawyers: Gonzales mishandled classified data
Associated Press
Published: Monday September 1, 2008

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Lawyers_Gonzales_mishandled_classified_data_0901.html

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales mishandled  
highly classified notes about a secret counterterror program, but not  
on purpose, according to a memo by his legal team.

The memo, obtained by The Associated Press, acknowledges that Gonzales  
improperly stored notes about the program and might have taken them  
home at one point.

Removing secret documents from specially secured rooms violates  
government policy.

Gonzales' lawyers wrote in their memo that there is no evidence the  
security breach resulted in secret information being viewed or  
otherwise exposed to anyone who was not authorized.

The classified notes focus on a March 2004 meeting with congressional  
leaders about a national security program that was about to expire.  
Efforts to renew the program sparked an intense Bush administration  
debate that played out at the hospital bedside of then-Attorney  
General John Ashcroft.

The memo was prepared by Gonzales' legal team as a response to a  
report being finalized by the Justice Department's inspector general.  
The report, which could be released as early as Tuesday, is expected  
to criticize Gonzales' handling of sensitive compartmentalized  
information, or SCI, according to the memo.

Gonzales agrees with inspector general's findings that his handling of  
notes and other SCI documents "was not consistent with the  
department's regulations governing the proper storage and handling of  
information classified as SCI," concluded the legal team's memo.  
"Judge Gonzales regrets this lapse."

Sensitive compartmentalized information is one of the highest and most  
sensitive levels of classified documents and is deemed top secret. It  
usually relates to national security cases.

Gonzales' lawyers acknowledge that he kept the notes in a safe in his  
fifth-floor office at the Justice Department, along with a small  
number of other highly classified papers, instead of in the special  
facilities accessible only by certain people with top secret security  
clearances.

He also may have taken the notes home at one point in 2005 as he was  
moving out of the White House counsel's office, where he served until  
he was sworn in as attorney general at the start of President Bush's  
second term, the memo says.

The inspector general's report will be the latest in a series taking  
Gonzales to task for his management of the Justice Department. He  
resigned under fire in September 2007. At least two more reports,  
including one looking at Gonzales' role in the ouster of nine U.S.  
attorneys, are expected in coming months.

It also could re-ignite a simmering controversy about Gonzales' role  
in urging an ailing Ashcroft to continue a national security program  
the Justice Department had deemed illegal.

Preparing for the criticism, Gonzales' legal team fired back with the  
12-page memo and a three-page addendum accompanying it. The documents  
indicate the attorney general was merely forgetful or unaware of the  
proper way to handle the top secret papers.

Both documents were written by Gonzales attorney George Terwilliger,  
who served as the Justice Department's No. 2 official between 1991 and  
1992.

The classified notes, according to the lawyers' memo, focus on a March  
10, 2004 emergency meeting in the White House Situation Room with  
Gonzales, other high-ranking Bush administration officials and the  
eight House and Senate leaders and intelligence committee chairmen. It  
was held to brief the bipartisan group of lawmakers about a sensitive  
counterterror program that was set to expire the next day.

Then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who was running the Justice  
Department while Ashcroft was hospitalized for pancreatitis, had  
refused to sign off on the program because he questioned whether parts  
of it were legal. At the Situation Room meeting, administration  
officials asked the congressional leaders to consider creating  
legislation to let the program continue, according to the memo.

The exact nature of the counterterror program is not clear. FBI  
Director Robert Mueller has said it was a terrorist surveillance  
program that allowed the government to conduct electronic surveillance  
on people in the United States without court oversight until 2007.  
Gonzales has denied that and maintains it involved other intelligence  
activities.

Gonzales' classified notes themselves remain classified and have not  
been released. Gonzales took the notes of the meeting at President  
Bush's request, and kept them in a safe in his White House counsel's  
office, which is a secure SCI facility, according to his lawyers.

Once he moved to the Justice Department, however, the memo says  
Gonzales kept the notes in a safe a few steps away from his desk in  
the attorney general's office — which is not considered a secure  
facility for SCI data.

Gonzales' "best recollection is that he always placed the notes in the  
most secure place over which he had immediate personal control," the  
memo states.

He apparently was advised that his office safe was not proper storage  
for the notes or other highly classified material, the memo shows.  
However, there's no proof that Gonzales intentionally defied that  
guidance, the memo states, arguing he acted "without conscious  
disregard" for the rules.

The memo also takes a shot a Comey, who in Senate testimony last year  
described the hospital visit as an attempt by Gonzales and then-White  
House Chief of Staff Andy Card "to take advantage of a very sick man."

In the memo, Terwilliger calls such criticism "demonstrably hyper- 
inflated rhetoric without basis in fact." He says during the hospital  
visit Comey was "seeking to interpose himself between the president  
and a high-level official communication to his attorney general on a  
vital matter of national security."