Selective Memory

Does everyone in the Bush administration have amnesia?

Alberto Gonzales kept saying he wasn't involved in any discussions about the firing of U.S. attorneys, but according to his former chief of staff yesterday, he was -- several times over.

Gonzales couldn't even recall a conversation with the president involving GOP complaints about some U.S. attorneys, although Bush remembered it.

In his Senate appearance yesterday, Kyle Sampson flatly contradicted his ex-boss's denials. As for himself, Sampson said that, whaddya know, he had forgotten some of the e-mails he sent and received when briefing the deputy attorney general about his appearance before Congress. At one point, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) said: "We're trying to find out what in heaven's name he does remember."

GSA chief Lurita Doan, who testified Wednesday about a January videoconference in which a White House official briefed the agency about targeting congressional Democrats, said: "I'm a little bit embarrassed to admit this, but I can say that I honestly don't have recollection of the presentation at all."

She kept repeating the "do not recollect" defense until a Democratic congressman likened her to Sergeant Shultz, the see-nothing dufus Nazi guard on "Hogan's Heroes."

Scooter Libby is facing the prospect of jail because he told a grand jury he couldn't remember leaking Valerie Plame's identity to some reporters.

Is it something in the water over there?

Sampson said the famous e-mail about keeping the U.S. attorneys who were "loyal Bushies," that didn't mean political loyalty--ha ha ha, why would anyone think that?--but nonpartisan loyalty to President Bush's policies.

"The former chief of staff to Alberto R. Gonzales testified Thursday that he had consulted regularly with the attorney general about dismissing United States attorneys, disputing Mr. Gonzales's public account of his role as very limited," says the New York Times.

"The former aide, D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned two weeks ago, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Mr. Gonzales's statements about the prosecutors' dismissals were inaccurate and that the attorney general had been repeatedly advised of the planning for them.

The two men talked about the dismissal plans over a two-year period, Mr. Sampson said, beginning in early 2005 when Mr. Gonzales was still the White House counsel. Mr. Sampson said he had briefed his boss at least five times before December 2006, when seven of the eight prosecutors were ousted."