Under What AUTHORITY Did Cheney Send Gonzales To Ashcrofts Room?

[kpete]

“Cheney sent Mr. Gonzales … “

This disclosure had not previously appeared anywhere else in print, including the news pages of the Times. Yet the Times’ editorial page published it as indisputable fact. On Tuesday, the guest on CNN’s “Larry King Live” was none other than Vice President Cheney. King asked Cheney about the Times’ report about his order to Gonzales. “I don’t recall,” replied Cheney in a classic nondenial denial. “That would be something you would recall,” King continued. “I would think so,” said Cheney. “But certainly I was involved because I was a big advocate of the Terrorist Surveillance Program.”

But under what authority did the vice president give this order to the then White House counsel? That is not a matter for editorial writers, but for Congress.

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Now, in light of the Times’ revelation of Cheney’s order to Gonzales, the relevant committees of Congress are justified in requesting or subpoenaing documents from the Justice Department about the intrusion of the Office of the Vice President into domestic legal matters. The trail of what happened from 2001 to the present will be visible, to the extent it remains a record, embedded in e-mail communications and memorandums from the OVP to the Justice Department or in internal memos referring to such communications. Requesting them from the department end rather than the White House makes any claim of executive privilege hollow regarding departments or agencies outside the White House itself. The Justice Department has already cooperated with Congress in turning over documents. Why would it suddenly now refuse?

If executive privilege were to be applied in this instance to the Justice Department, then the unitary theory of government in which all power resides in a single vessel, a great Decider, would render the Constitution’s grant of powers to three branches of government defunct.

more at:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/08/02/alberto_gonzales/?source=whitelist