Alberto F. Gonzales, White House counsel to President George W. Bush, has been nominated to become the next attorney general of the United States – and he’s bringing along a ton of baggage
While San Antonio-born Gonzales, the second of eight children, does not appear to have spoken publicly about any aspect of the Adult industry, his views have never been those of a civil libertarian.
For instance, it was Gonzales who was instrumental in ending the American Bar Association's official role in judicial nominations. The ABA will still weigh in on nominations once they are sent to the Senate, but the administration, in a letter penned by Gonzales to the ABA, made it clear that the administration plans to pay little official attention to the liberal legal establishment.
Some experts have opined that giving the brush-off to the ABA will make it harder for Gonzales to be confirmed as attorney general, but First Amendment attorney Jeffrey Douglas believes that Gonzales’ Hispanic heritage will probably help him – and may even be used as a weapon by supporters.
“Gonzales will be the first Hispanic ever nominated to the attorney general position,” Douglas noted, “and though there are many good arguments why he would not be a good choice, it’s likely that his supporters will try to brand anyone who speaks out against him as a racist.”
First Amendment lawyer Clyde DeWitt points out that while Gonzales appears to lack the ties to the religious right, that doesn’t mean he’s likely to unravel the groundwork established by Ashcroft during his tenure.
DeWitt offers a historical precedent: anti-porn crusader Edwin Meese III, President Ronald Reagan's attorney general from 1985 to 1988, was succeeded by Richard Thornburg, who was never a vocal opponent of adult entertainment, but did nothing to derail Meese's designs.
“The result was the federal pillage of the adult mail-order and video industries in the late 1980s and early 1990s,” Dewitt notes.
“While Judge Gonzales apparently never has been a vocal supporter of the Religious Right or opponent of erotica, his record is clear that he has never been a advocate of the Bill of Rights and, therefore, like Thornburg, is not likely to disturb what is already in motion with respect to obscenity enforcement and government regulation of erotica.”
Gonzales was also the administration’s point man for selecting nominees to fill openings on the federal district court and appeals court benches. Among Gonzales’ recommendations who became Bush nominees were University of Utah professor Michael McConnell, a leading critic of church-state separation; conservative congressman Chris Cox; and Federalist Society favorites Jeff Sutton and Peter Keisler, most of whom were approved for judicial positions by the Senate.
Gonzales has also reportedly drawn up a list of potential nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court when the expected vacancies arise – and as attorney general, it will be his job to make those recommendations official, and it’s unquestioned that Bush will support Gonzales’ picks.
In a 2003 article in The Atlantic Monthly, writer Alan Berlow gained access to 57 confidential “death-penalty memoranda” Gonzales prepared between 1995 and 1997 as legal counsel for then-Texas Governor George Bush.
According to Berlow, Gonzales "repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence," and demonstrated "an extraordinarily narrow notion of clemency."
"I have found no evidence that Gonzales ever sent Bush a clemency petition or any document that summarized in a concise and coherent fashion a condemned defendant's best argument against execution in a case involving serious questions of innocence," Berlow wrote.
During Bush’s tenure as governor, 152 Texas inmates were executed, including at least one mentally retarded man – and after Gonzales completed his term as Bush’s legal counsel, Bush appointed him to the Texas Supreme Court. He served in that capacity for two years until Bush was sworn in as president, and appointed Gonzales as White House counsel.
While on the Texas Supreme Court, Gonzales was part of the majority opinion in a case that gutted a state law provision that allowed abused minors to avoid having to get parental permission for an abortion.
On the other hand, as a Texas Supreme Court Justice Gonzales earned the ire of the right-wing conservative Christian movement in a case where a 17-year-old girl sought to exploit an exemption in the Parental Notification Act.
Underage girls could have the parental consent requirement waived if they were able to prove that they are mature and "well-informed" enough to make the decision themselves or would be subject to parental abuse.
Gonzales wrote in a concurring opinion that he had no choice but to approve the request, as the law allowed it: "While the ramifications of such a law and the results of the court's decision here may be personally troubling to me as a parent, it is my obligation as a judge to impartially apply the laws of this state without imposing my moral view on the decisions of the legislature," he wrote.
While not naming names, Gonzalez suggested that the two dissenting judges in the case, one of which was ultraconservative judge Priscilla Owens, were “judicial activists.”
That concurring opinion was instrumental in blocking the adamantly anti-abortion judge’s nomination to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals during Bush’s first term – even though Gonzalez fought for her confirmation.
One of Gonzales’ first major controversies as White House counsel was his defense of Vice-President Dick Cheney’s refusal to provide to Congress details of Cheney’s energy commission meetings despite charges that energy corporation executives such as Enron’s Ken Lay had heavily influenced the administration’s energy policy – if not written it outright. In early 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Cheney’s refusal did not violate the Federal Advisory Committee Act’s restrictions on secrecy, but further legal challenges to Cheney’s position are expected.
Even more controversial, however, was Gonzales’ January, 2002 advisory memo to Bush supporting the administration’s claim that the Geneva Conventions and even a U.S. anti-war crimes act did not apply to certain prisoners taken as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after September 11, 2001.
“As you [Bush] have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war,” Gonzales wrote on January 25, 2002. “The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians, and the need to try terrorists for war crimes such as wantonly killing civilians. In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms and scientific instruments.”
The opinion that the Geneva Convention’s “strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners” was “obsolete” essentially gave U.S. military commanders and intelligence agents carte blanche to deprive prisoners in both Abu Graib and Guantanamo of food, water and sleep for extended periods, and to subject them to a wide variety of physical and mental tortures.
Courts martial are still in progress for some of the accused perpetrators of these acts, though many sources believe that those issuing the orders for the torture will never be prosecuted.
Gonzales also wrote the text of the presidential order authorizing the use of military tribunals to try the Guantanamo inmates; a process, which U.S. District Judge James Robinson recently found to be in violation of both the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Code of Military Conduct.
It was also Gonzales who bitterly fought to keep top administration officials, including Bush, Cheney and national security advisor Condoleeza Rice, from being forced to testify before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, better known as the 9/11 Commission, and only after a torrent of adverse publicity, relented but placed great restrictions on their testimony, including a ban on any recording or transcript of it.
Yet Bush did not shy away from Gonzales connection with issues even conservatives disapprove of, highlighting his role in the ‘war on terror’ when announcing the nomination Wednesday afternoon at the White House.
"His [Gonzales'] sharp intellect and sound judgment have helped shape our policies in the war on terror," Bush said.
Bush also made a few comments on Ashcroft's service during his tenure as attorney general, praising him for his role in the war on terror and for combating child pornography. "And thanks to John Ashcroft's leadership, America has stepped up its efforts to prosecute the cruel exploitation of children by Internet pornographers."
Yet whether Gonzales’ is a moderate Republican or allied to the far right isn’t the real issue for First Amendment lawyer Paul Cambria, who argues that prosecuting Adult videos can hardly be a priority during a time when the nation still seeks to secure itself against the international threat of terrorism.
“No doubt he’s a conservative individual and that’s his reputation. My feeling is that the attorney general is someone who has to responsible to the entire population, including for example, all the Democrats who didn’t vote for the President. As a result they have to concentrate on the priorities,” Cambria told AVN.com.
“We only have so many FBI agent, so customs agents, and so many postal inspectors and right now the most important thing to the majority of the country is the safety of the country and the attorney general is saddled by those priorities,” Cambria said, adding, “It would be irresponsible to divert those resources to prosecutions of movies made for adults by adults.
The American Civil Liberties Union has called for a close examination of Gonzales’ record during the Senate’s confirmation hearings, but prominent Democrats have already suggested it was unlikely Gonzales’ nomination would be blocked.
For more on Gonzales' nomination and how it may affect the Adult Industry, click here.
