Investigating Mr. Gonzales
The Justice Department's inspector general should take the lead.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

THE FUROR over whether Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales perjured himself in congressional testimony has prompted four Democratic senators to call for the appointment of a special prosecutor and a group of House members to propose impeachment. The legislators have reason to be perturbed. Mr. Gonzales, as we have said, has been less than forthcoming on a host of issues, including internal administration disputes over the president's Terrorist Surveillance Program. He bungled the handling of a number of Justice Department matters, most notable being the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. But a special prosecutor or an impeachment is not the answer -- at least not yet.

It's well known what can happen when special prosecutors with unlimited time and money are appointed. Years elapse, tens of millions of tax dollars evaporate, and dozens of people with tangential relationships to the matter at hand are dragged into the investigation at terrible financial and emotional cost. The allegations surrounding Mr. Gonzales's parsed statements about classified programs and personnel matters are just the kind of muddy circumstances that invite such excesses. Impeachment of Mr. Gonzales would be just as problematic; if an impeachment succeeded in the absence of proven criminal offenses, it would invite future Congresses to launch similar proceedings against unpopular Cabinet members on a regular basis.

In Mr. Gonzales's case, there's a good alternative to such extreme measures. The senators put their request for a special prosecutor to Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who is functioning as the acting attorney general on these issues because Mr. Gonzales is recused. Mr. Clement, in turn, has the option of referring the matter to Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, an independent watchdog who has not been afraid to take Justice officials to task on overzealous intelligence-gathering, among other things. Mr. Fine and the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility are already investigating apparent contradictions in the testimonies of Mr. Gonzales and former aide Monica M. Goodling over the U.S. attorney firings. And since at least last November, the inspector general has been examining Justice's use of the surveillance program. The investigation into whether Mr. Gonzales perjured himself about intelligence matters would dovetail nicely with work that the office is already doing.

If Mr. Fine concluded there wasn't enough evidence to suggest that Mr. Gonzales had violated the law, he would recommend that no special prosecutor be appointed, and his office would produce a report explaining its finding. If the inspector general concluded there was enough credible evidence suggesting that Mr. Gonzales had perjured himself -- an extremely difficult charge to prove -- he would return to Mr. Clement to recommend the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Either way, the public's need for more clarity would be better served. And a call for a special prosecutor -- should the matter come to that -- would have been made on the basis of fact-finding by a disciplined law enforcement professional and not at the request of understandably upset but very partisan lawmakers.