Gonzales-Bush Loyalty a Two-Way Street

Justice Department investigators disclosed in June that they were examining whether Gonzales sought to improperly influence the testimony about the prosecutor firings of a former senior aide, Monica M. Goodling, shortly before she left the Justice Department. Such an inquiry could lead to a criminal referral if there was evidence of a crime, such as obstruction of justice.

Conservatives were always wary of Gonzales because of his moderate positions on divisive social issues such as abortion and affirmative action. When Gonzales surfaced as a possible candidate for the Supreme Court in 2005, some said the president could make history and expand the reach of the Republican Party by appointing the first Hispanic to the court. But right-wing activists made it clear they would oppose him.

Liberals, meanwhile, were skeptical of Gonzales for his role in crafting legal memos that some human rights advocates say allowed the torture of terrorism suspects and created the atmosphere for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

While Gonzales has been a trailblazer among Hispanics, he was not a national figure until the controversy over the prosecutor dismissals and enjoyed at best tepid support from most major Latino organizations.

"He is the most powerful Latino to ever serve in the Cabinet," said Fernando Guerra, a political scientist at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. "But he doesn't have very high name recognition."

Described by friends and former colleagues as reserved and often inscrutable in meetings, Gonzales preferred to operate in private. "He liked to hear debate between different sides before coming to his own decision," said John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer who worked closely with Gonzales in shaping legal strategy following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "He would listen and ask just a few questions. Usually, you would go to a meeting with him and not know where he stood."

But the same qualities evidently helped forge his close relationship with Bush. "If other Bush advisers are predisposed to discretion, Gonzales was discreet squared," said Bill Minutaglio, author of "The President's Counselor," a biography of Gonzales. "As a personality he exhibits almost a mortician's calm. He is emotionally flat-lined."

The son of migrant workers who raised their eight children in a two-bedroom house in Humble, Texas, Gonzales has lived the kind of Horatio Alger story that touches Bush. Gonzales played both baseball and football in high school and worked weekends with a neighbor serving cold drinks at Rice University football games in nearby Houston. He enlisted in the Air Force and was stationed near the Artic Circle, where some of his superior officers urged him to apply to the U.S. Air Force Academy. He spent two years there before transferring to Rice.

After graduating, he went on to Harvard Law School and from there, he was recruited to Vinson & Elkins, a high-powered Houston law firm, where he specialized in large real estate deals. He became general counsel for then-Gov. Bush in 1995, before becoming Texas secretary of state and being named by Bush to the state Supreme Court in 1999.

On the court, Gonzales was a moderate. Lacking a litigation background, Gonzales had to work hard to keep up. He often arrived at work early and stayed late, reading cases that some other justices knew just from their citations, a former colleague said.

But Tom Phillips , who served as chief justice while Gonzales was on the court, said: "He more than held is own."

As White House counsel beginning in 2001, Gonzales surrounded himself with bright, highly conservative lawyers who subscribed to controversial legal theories that the constitution gives the president much more authority than the Congress or the judiciary, and international treaties are subject to "situational" adherence rather than strict compliance.