Ethics? Are You Kidding? By: Mark W Adams

So what's more troubling? Hearing that Alberto Gonzales, a former judge for Pete's sake, was up to his neck in the leak investigation of subordinates who would likely be testifying against him in other investigations -- a clear conflict of interest if ever there was one?

As a result of the briefings that Gonzales received during the leak probe, he now has an advantage that no private citizen under investigation could conceivably have: access to government records about his accusers even while investigations of him are ongoing.

OR, learning that one of the few people in the Justice Department that went toe-to-toe with Gonzales when he was White House Counsel over the legality of the illegal domestic spying program that was leaked to the press was issued a Grand Jury subpoena by then Attorney General Gonzales' Justice Department.

Jack Goldsmith, who, as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, questioned the legality of some aspects of the warrantless surveillance program, and directly clashed with Gonzales over the program when Gonzales was White House counsel.

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What angered me most about the subpoena I received," Goldsmith wrote, was "the fact that it was Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department that had issued it... I had spent hundreds of very difficult hours at OLC, in he face of extraordinary White House resistance, trying to clean up the legal mess that then-White House counsel Gonzales, David Addington [Vice President Cheney's then-counsel], and others had created in designing the foundations of the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

Oh Hell. It's all such a sorted mess. You might have heard about another DoJ investigation that was shut down when the White House refused to provide security clearances for the Office of Professional Responsibility -- the folks in charge of that "quaint" little idea called ethics.

It goes on. The scene at Ashcroft's hospital room was just the most dramatic.

Look, Fredo lied, flat out perjured himself before Congress when he said there was no "serious disagreement about the program." The proof that there was considerable dissent lies the memories people Gonzo was intimidating/investigating, and who his boss would not allow any other other investigators to interview. Justice is dead as long as the Executive Branch is run like a Mafia fiefdom.

How would you feel? What would you do? You object to the President doing an illegal thing. The illegal thing gets leaked to the press. You're put under investigation as a leak suspect and the guy you fought with over the illegal program in the first place runs the investigation against you and has the full power of the Department of Justice at his beck and call. AND when someday, somehow the investigation turns on the little twerp pulling the strings, he can tell his attorney everything he knows -- all the stuff he kept from all the other investigators.

Gonzo's attorney, also an insider who knows where some skeleton's are buried, doesn't have an ethical problem hearing what his client knows -- all of which gives him an unheard of advantage in any future legal squabbles. The one who has the ethical dilemma is JUDGE Gonzales, who shouldn't tell anyone what hasn't been declassified for the Office of Professional Responsibility, or what he learned from the leak investigation about any of his accusers.

But, fortunately for Abu Gitmo, he doesn't even know how to spell ethics. These people know one thing, power, and how to destroy people while saving their own miserable asses. The whole bunch of them should be disbarred, then turned over to the Hague. But alas, justice died the day Alberto Gonzales was approved by the Senate to be Attorney General.