Alberto Gonzales
Alberto R. Gonzales (born
August 4,
1955) is the 80th and current
Attorney General of the
United States, becoming the first
Hispanic to serve in the position. He formerly served under U.S. President
George W. Bush as
White House Counsel, and prior to that had been appointed by Bush to the
Texas Supreme Court.
Gonzales was born in
San Antonio, Texas and raised in
Humble, near
Houston. He was the second of eight children born to Pablos and Maria Gonzales. His father, who died in 1982, was a
construction worker. Both his parents were children of
immigrants from
Mexico with less than a high-school
education themselves; in the midst of a national debate in the US about immigration from Mexico, Gonzales told
Wolf Blitzer on
CNN that no immigration documentation exists for three of his grandparents and they may have entered and resided in the United States
illegally (
transcript).
An
honors student at MacArthur High School in Houston, Gonzales enlisted in the
United States Air Force in 1973, serving for two years at
Fort Yukon, Alaska before being accepted to the
United States Air Force Academy in 1975. In 1977, he transferred to
Rice University, where he was a member of
Lovett College and earned a degree in
political science in 1979; he then earned a
Juris Doctor (J.D) degree from
Harvard Law School in 1982. He was the only one of his siblings to finish college. He has been married twice: he and his first wife, Diane Clemens, divorced in 1985; he and his second wife, Rebecca Turner Gonzales, have three sons.
Despite keeping a low profile about his religious affiliation, Gonzales has described himself as a
Catholic.
Gonzales was an
attorney in private practice from 1982 until 1994 with the Houston law firm
Vinson and Elkins, where he became a partner. In 1994, he was named general counsel to then-
Texas Governor George W. Bush, rising to become Texas
Secretary of State in 1997 and finally to be named to the
Texas Supreme Court in 1999, both appointments made by Governor Bush.
Outside of his political and legal career, Gonzales was active in the community. He was a board director of the
United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast from 1993 to 1994, and President of Leadership Houston during this same period. In 1994, Gonzales served as Chair of the Commission for District Decentralization of the
Houston Independent School District, and as a member of the Committee on Undergraduate Admissions for Rice University. He was chosen as one of Five Outstanding Young Texans by the Texas
Jaycees in 1994. He was a member of delegations sent by the American Council of Young Political Leaders to
Mexico in 1996 and to the
People's Republic of China in 1995. He received the Presidential Citation from the
State Bar of Texas in 1997 for his dedication to addressing basic legal needs of the indigent. In 1999, he was named
Latino Lawyer of the Year by the
Hispanic National Bar Association.
As counsel to Governor Bush, Gonzales helped Bush be excused from
jury duty when he was called in a 1996
Travis County drunk driving case. The case led to controversy during Bush's
2000 presidential campaign because Bush's answers to the potential juror questionnaire did not disclose Bush's own 1976
misdemeanor drunk driving
conviction.
[George W. Bush DUI arrest record, The Smoking Gun.] Gonzales' formal request for Bush to be excused from jury duty hinged upon the fact that, as Governor of Texas, he might be called upon to pardon the accused in the case. Upon learning of the 1976 conviction, the prosecutor in the 1996 case (a
Democrat) felt he had been "directly deceived". The defense attorney in the case called Gonzales' arguments "laughable".
[Bryce, Robert. Prosecutor says Bush "directly deceived" him to avoid jury duty, Salon.com,November 5, 2000.]As Governor Bush's counsel in Texas, Gonzales also reviewed all
clemency requests. A
2003 article in
The Atlantic Monthly asserts that Gonzales gave insufficient counsel, failed to take into consideration a wide array of factors, and actively worked against clemency in a number of borderline cases. (The state of Texas
executed more prisoners during Gonzales' term, and still has more prisoners on death row, than any other state.)
[ Berlow, Alan. The Texas Clemency Memos, The Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2003. ] [Dean, John W. White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales's Texas Execution Memos: How They Reflect on the President, And May Affect Gonzales's Supreme Court Chances, FindLaw, June 20, 2003.]Gonzales had connections with the former energy company
Enron, which collapsed amid financial scandals in 2002; the law firm Gonzales worked for in Texas, Vinson and Elkins, represented
Enron, and the company gave Gonzales $6,500 in
campaign contributions for his 2000 run for re-election to the Texas Supreme Court, in which he defeated
Libertarian Lance Smith with 81% of the popular vote.
Those and other incidents have led many to questions Gonzales' integrity and his perception of justice. Many others, however, regard these accusations as politically motivated attacks.
When Bush was sworn in as President of the United States in 2001, he appointed Gonzales
White House Counsel. In this position, Gonzales has been already party to controversial legal matters involving the Bush administration. As a result, he has become a lightning rod for criticism of the administration's actions in these affairs.
During his January 2005 Attorney General Senate confirmation hearings, Gonzales apparently lied to Congress. Senator
Russ Feingold, in attempting to determine where Gonzales believed the president's authority ends, asked whether the president could act in contravention of existing criminal laws and spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant. Gonzales avoided answering the question by claiming that warrantless eavesdropping was a "hypothetical situation" and thus impossible to answer. He went on to add that it was "not the policy or the agenda of this president" to authorize actions that conflict with existing law. These statements were later proven false, when on
February 6,
2006, he testified before Congress to his knowledge of the U.S.
domestic spying program while he was White House Counsel.
Gonzales has avoided further investigation surrounding his testimony, partly because Republican Senator
Arlen Specter refused to swear in Gonzales, but also because confirmation hearings testimony was ruled as off limits as a precondition to questioning Gonzales.
List of Texas Supreme Court opinions, concurrences, and dissents by Gonzales
This is a list of cases in which Alberto Gonzales wrote the court opinion, wrote a concurring opinion, or wrote a dissent. Cases in which he joined in an opinion written by another justice are not included. The Texas Supreme Court issued 84 opinions during Gonzales's tenure on the court, according to
LexisNexis.
Court opinions
Fitzgerald v. Advanced Spine Fixation Systems (42 Tex. Sup. J. 985).
Texas Farmers Insurance Company v. Murphy (42 Tex. Sup. J. 998)
Mid-Century Insurance Company v. Kidd (42 Tex. Sup. J. 1007)
In re Missouri Pac. R.R. Co. (42 Tex. Sup. J. 1018)
General Motors Corporation v. Sanchez (42 Tex. Sup. J. 969)
Mallios v. Baker (43 Tex. Sup. J. 254)
Gulf Insurance Company v. Burns Motors (43 Tex. Sup. J. 647)
Southwestern Refining Co. v. Bernal (43 Tex. Sup. J. 706)
Golden Eagle Archery, Inc. v. Jackson (43 Tex. Sup. J. 989)
City of Fort Worth v. Zimlich (43 Tex. Sup. J. 972)
Prudential Insurance Company of America v. Financial Review Services, Inc. (43 Tex. Sup. J. 980)
Texas Department of Transportation v. Able (43 Tex. Sup. J. 1055)
Pustejovsky v. Rapid-American Corp. (44 Tex. Sup. J. 89)
John G. & Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation v. Dewhurst (44 Tex. Sup. J. 268) (Opinion has been withdrawn by the court).
Concurring opinions
In re Dallas Morning News (43 Tex. Sup. J. 192)
Osterberg v. Peca (43 Tex. Sup. J. 380)
In re Jane Doe 3 (43 Tex. Sup. J. 508)
Lopez v. Munoz, Hockema, & Reed (43 Tex. Sup. J. 806) (Partial concurrence)
In re Doe (43 Tex. Sup. J. 910) (This case is popularly referred to as "In re Jane Doe 5")
Grapevine Excavation, Inc. v. Maryland Lloyds (43 Tex. Sup. J. 1086)
Dissenting opinions
Lopez v. Munoz, Hockema, & Reed (43 Tex. Sup. J. 806) (Partial dissent)
The
Executive Order 13233, drafted by Gonzales and issued by George W. Bush on
November 1,
2001 shortly after the
September 11, 2001 attacks, attempted to place limitations on the
Freedom of Information Act by restricting access to the records of former presidents.
Gonzales authored a controversial memo in January of 2002 that explored whether Article III of the
Geneva Convention even applied to Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan and held in concentration facilities around the world, including
Camp X-Ray in
Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba. The memo made several arguments both for and against providing Article III protection to Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. He concluded that Article III was outdated and ill-suited for dealing with captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. He described as "quaint" the provisions that require providing captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters "commissary privileges, scrip, athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments". He also argued that existing military regulations and instructions from the President were more than adequate to ensure that the principles of the Geneva Convention would be applied. He also argued that undefined language in the
Geneva Convention, such as "outrages upon personal dignity" and "inhuman treatment", could make officials and military leaders subject to the
War Crimes Act of 1996 if mistreatment was discovered.
[Gonzales, Alberto. Decision Re Application of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War to the Conflict with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, Memorandum for the President, January 25, 2002. (PDF file provided by MSNBC/Newsweek)]A secret 2002
Justice Department memorandum cleared by Gonzales argued that laws prohibiting
torture do "not apply to the president's detention and interrogation of
enemy combatants", and that the pain caused by interrogation must include "injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions — in order to constitute torture".
In 2004, when this memo was leaked to the press, Gonzales said about the memo in Senate confirmation hearings that "...I don't recall today whether or not I was in agreement with all of the analysis, but I don't have a disagreement with the conclusions then reached by the department." This indicates that, despite the Bush administration's withdrawal from the memo, Gonzales still believes that the Justice Department was correct in its reasoning about torture.
Gonzales faced further controversy when he authored the Presidential Order which authorized the use of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects. He fought with Congress to keep vice-president
Dick Cheney's
Energy task force documents from being reviewed. Gonzales was also an early advocate of the controversial
USA PATRIOT Act. He is also accused of being involved in the decision to allow foreign combatants in U.S. custody to be deported to nations that allow torture, in order to extract further information from them; despite the mounting evidence, he denies that he has ever supported this measure.
On
June 23,
2006 Gonzales, along with Deputy Director of the
FBI John S. Pistole gave a high level press briefing involving the
Miami bomb plot to attack the Sears Tower.
Gonzales' name was sometimes floated as a possible nominee to the
United States Supreme Court during Bush's first presidential term. On
November 10,
2004, it was announced that he would be nominated to replace
United States Attorney General John Ashcroft for Bush's second term. Gonzales was once regarded as moderate compared to Ashcroft since, unlike many in the Bush administration, he did not oppose
abortion or
affirmative action.
These controversies were the grounds for a strong degree of opposition to Gonzales that started during his
Senate confirmation proceedings at the beginning of President Bush's second term.
The New York Times quoted anonymous Republican officials as saying that Gonzales's appointment to Attorney General was a way to "bolster Mr. Gonzales's credentials" en route to a later Supreme Court appointment. The appointment to Attorney General, in a maneuver designed by
Karl Rove, would "get out of the way" the above controversies and allow Gonzales to demonstrate his positions on issues such as
affirmative action and
abortion. Others believe that Bush chose him as Attorney General because the pro-life base of the party would never allow a pro-choice Republican to be appointed to the Supreme Court.
[Bumiller, Elisabeth and Neil A. Lewis. Choice of Gonzales May Blaze a Trail for the High Court, New York Times, November 12, 2004.]Gonzales was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 60-36 on
February 3,
2005. He was sworn in on
February 14,
2005, becoming the highest-placed Hispanic ever in the U.S. Government.
In late June 2005, Gonzales approved the removal of the drapery from the partially nude statues in the Great Hall of the Justice Department; Ashcroft had authorized the drapery three years earlier.
O'Connor vacancy
Shortly before the
July 1,
2005 retirement of
Associate Justice of the
Supreme Court of the United States Sandra Day O'Connor, rumors started circulating that a memo had leaked from the White House stating that upon the retirement of either O'Connor or
Chief Justice of the United States William Rehnquist, that Gonzales would be the first
Bush nominee for a vacancy on the Court.
Quickly, conservative stalwarts
[ In Their Own Words: "Do As We Say, Not As We Do" Says the Right Wing on Judicial Nominees, Right Wing Watch, People for the American Way, July 6, 2005.] such as
National Review magazine
[Editorial: No to Justice Gonzales, National Review, June 28, 2005.] and
Focus on the Family, among other socially conservative groups, stated they would oppose a Gonzales nomination.
[Howard Fineman, Howard and Debra Rosenberg. The Holy War Begins: Bush must choose between the big tent or the revival tent. Inside his Supreme Machine, Newsweek, July 11, 2005.] Much of their opposition to Gonzales was based on his perceived support of
abortion rights; typically, they cited his place in the majority opinions of various Texas Supreme Court rulings in a series of
In re Jane Doe cases from
2000 that ordered lower courts to reconsider
minor women's requests for a "judicial bypass" provided in a provision of Texas' parental notification law, and in one case (43 Tex. Sup. J. 910), granted the bypass that allowed the girl to obtain an abortion without notifying her parents. Gonzales wrote concurring opinions in two of these cases: In re Jane Doe 3 (43 Tex. Sup. J. 508) and In re Jane Doe 5 (43 Tex. Sup. J. 910). For In re Jane Doe 3 he concurred, on the legal grounds that the lower court had issued its ruling only one business day after the Texas Supreme Court had issued guidance on what the applicant for a judicial bypass must prove, with the differently reasoned majority opinion to remand the case to the lower courts. For In re Jane Doe 5 his concurring opinion began with the sentence, "I fully join in the Court's judgment and opinion." He went on, though, to address the three dissenting opinions, primarily one by Nathan L. Hecht alleging that the court majority's members had disregarded legislative intent in favor of their personal ideologies. Gonzales's opinion dealt mostly with how to establish legislative intent. He wrote, "We take the words of the statute as the surest guide to legislative intent. Once we discern the Legislature's intent we must put it into effect, even if we ourselves might have made different policy choices." He added, "[T]o construe the Parental Notification Act so narrowly as to eliminate bypasses, or to create hurdles that simply are not to be found in the words of the statute, would be an unconscionable act of
judicial activism" and "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."
Political commentators had suggested that Bush forecast the selection of Gonzales with his comments defending the Attorney General made on
July 6,
2005 in
Copenhagen, Denmark. Bush stated, "I don't like it when a friend gets criticized. I'm loyal to my friends. All of a sudden this fellow, who is a good public servant and a really fine person, is under fire. And so, do I like it? No, I don't like it, at all." However, this speculation proved to be incorrect, as Bush nominated
D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge
John Roberts to the Supreme Court.
Rehnquist vacancy
After the death of
Chief Justice William Rehnquist on
September 3,
2005, creating another vacancy, speculation resumed that
President Bush may nominate Gonzales to the Court. This again proved to be incorrect, as Bush decided to nominate Roberts to the
Chief Justice position, and on
October 3,
2005, nominated
Harriet Miers as Associate Justice, to replace
Justice O'Connor. On
October 27,
2005, Miers withdrew her nomination, again renewing speculation about a possible Gonzales nomination. This was laid to rest when Judge
Samuel Alito received the nomination and subsequent confirmation.
On
September 11,
2005,
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary chairman
Arlen Specter was quoted as saying that it was "a little too soon" after Gonzales' appointment as
Attorney General for him to be appointed to another position, and that such an appointment would require a new series of confirmation hearings.
[1]"I would respectfully disagree with your statement that we're becoming more like our enemy. We are nothing like our enemy, Senator. While we are struggling, mightily, trying to find out what happened at
Abu Ghraib, they are beheading people like
Danny Pearl and
Nick Berg. We are nothing like our enemies, Senator."– Alberto Gonzales, to U.S. Senator
Lindsey Graham, during confirmation hearings before the
U.S. Senate,
January 6,
2005"President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale..."
Testimony before Senate Judiciary Committee,
February 6,
2006* "If you can't handle the criticism then you shouldn't be in government."
* "My father had a second grade education and my mother had a sixth grade education. There really wasn't any talk about going to college in my family. Their goal was to try to get me through high school."
*
Official biography from
whitehouse.gov*
Announcement of his nomination on
CNN*
Current Law Office in
Thomson Legal Record* Academy of Achievement Profile http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gon0pro-1
* Academy of Achievement Biography http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gon0bio-1
* Academy of Achievement Interview http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gon0int-1
* Academy of Achievement Photo Gallery http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gon0gal-1
*
Vinson and Elkins, Lawyers
*
A second biography from
ABC News*
"Death in Texas" by Sister
Helen Prejean in
The New York Review of Books*
"A Poor Choice" —
Human Rights Watch*
Letter to 9/11 Commission from
FindLaw*
The Geneva Convention is "obsolete" memo in PDF from
Washington in Depth, AP*
Bush Admin. policy memos re: torture, interrogations, and POW status from
FindLaw*
Progression of memos and decisions from
lawofwar.org*
Alberto R. Gonzales from
Disinfopedia.org*
Dear Mr. Gonzales from
truthout.org*
Kennedy urges Senate to deny Gonzales nomination over torture policies from
Senator Edward M. Kennedy,
February 1,
2005.
*
"Torture and Gonzales: An Exchange" from
The New York Review of Books*
Bush Pick of Gonzales Signals His Abandoment of Conservatives*
Serious Questions Need to Be Answered About Gonzales*
Gonzales Grilled Over Drowning Torture *
LaRaza Confirms Gonzales Is a Member*
Support of Torture Not Gonzales' Greatest Sin
