Obfuscation and Omerta

The moral turpitude of this Administration defies description. Here we have the nation's top law enforcement officer acting like a Mafia Don doing his damndest to avoid self-incrimination.

The Art of Saying Nothing - New York Times

We thought President Bush's two recent Supreme Court nominees set new lows when it came to giving vague and meaningless answers to legitimate questions, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made them look like models of openness when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday about domestic spying. Mr. Gonzales seems to have forgotten the promise he made to the same panel last year when it voted to promote him from White House counsel to attorney general: that he would serve the public interest and stop acting like a hired gun helping a client figure out how to evade the law.

The hearing got off to a bad start when Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican who leads the committee, refused to have Mr. Gonzales testify under oath. Mr. Gonzales repaid this favor with a daylong display of cynical hair-splitting, obfuscation, disinformation and stonewalling. He would not tell the senators how many wiretaps had been conducted without warrants since 2002, when Mr. Bush authorized the program. He would not even say why he was withholding the information.

Some additional snippets from the piece that capture the essence of Gonzo's performance:

"absurd pretext"
"ludicrous arguments"
"just defies logic and plain English"

Not since the penetrating mind of Admiral Poindexter went suddenly blank ("I cannot recall") in the Iran Contra hearings has a government official spent so much time and taxpayer money saying absolutely nothing. And these same Senators confirmed this guy as Attorney General? What in hell were they thinking? If questioned, I bet they would answer, "I cannot recall."

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