Alberto Gonzales

White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales

Alberto R. "Al" Gonzales (born August 4, 1955) is a U.S. attorney and politician from the state of Texas. He is currently U.S. President George W. Bush's White House Counsel, and is Bush's nominee to replace John Ashcroft as United States Attorney General.

Born in San Antonio, Texas, Gonzales was raised in Houston, the second of eight children born to Pablo and Maria Gonzales. His father, who died in 1982, was a construction worker, and both his parents were children of immigrants from Mexico with less than a high school education themselves. An honor student at MacArthur High School in Houston, Gonzales enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1973, where he served for two years, stationed 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 earned a degree in political science in 1979 and then a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1982. He has been married twice: he and his first wife, Diane Clemens, divorced in 1985; he and his wife, Rebecca Turner, have three sons.

Texas Career

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 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.

As counsel to Governor Bush, Gonzales helped Bush be excused from jury duty when he was called in a 1996 Travis County case, an action which was involved in a minor controversy during Bush's 2000 presidential campaign because Bush's answers to the potential juror questionnaire did not disclose Bush's 1976 drunk driving conviction. 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; some legal critics have suggested that Gonzales' actions in this matter were deceptive.

As Governor Bush's counsel in Texas, Gonzales reviewed all clemency requests, and it has been alleged that Gonzales gave woefully insufficient counsel, failed to take into consideration a wide array of factors, and actively worked against clemency in a number of border-line cases. (Governor Bush executed more prisoners in his term than any other governor in modern history.)[1]

Gonzales has been also accused of having 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. During that same campaign, Gonzales recieved a $1,000 campaign contribution from Halliburton during the time when that company had a case come before the Texas Supreme Court; the case was decided in Halliburton's favor.

Washington Career

The controversies listed below are widely anticipated to be the grounds for a strong degree of opposition to Gonzales during his Senate confirmation proceedings.

Gonzales has faced a great deal of controversy while serving as White House Counsel.

When Bush was elected President of the United States in 2001, Gonzales was named White House Counsel. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, he has been criticized by some for being culpable of the mistreatment of detainees captured during the War on Terror, authoring a February 2002 memo[2] suggesting that the Geneva Conventions, parts of which he described as "obsolete" and "quaint," and therefore did not apply to "enemy combatants" captured in Afghanistan. (The term "enemy combatant" was a resurrected legal term from WWII.) He pointed out that if detainees were not exempted from the Conventions, and mistreatment were to be alleged, officials and military leaders could be prosecuted under the War Crimes Act of 1996. Because of this memo, Gonzales among others has received criticism for "creating a climate" in the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison took place, in what is claimed by critics to have been under some sanction by the President. In the memo, Gonzales claimed that the value of intelligence which could be obtained during interrogation "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners." This advice faced strong dissent from Secretary of State Colin Powell, who felt that all captives should be considered prisoners of war.[3]

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 USA PATRIOT Act, and was apparently 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. Gonzales denies that he supported this measure, however.

Gonzales' name was sometimes floated as a potential appointment to the United States Supreme Court during Bush's second presidential term. However, on November 10, 2004, he was nominated [4] to replace United States Attorney General John Ashcroft. While often regarded as moderate compared to Ashcroft -- unlike many in the Bush administration, Gonzales does not oppose abortion or affirmative action.

Gonzales, if confirmed as Attorney General, would become the highest-placed Hispanic ever in the U.S. Government.

External links

• Official biography
• Vinson and Elkins, Lawyers
• A second biography from ABC News

Preceded by: John Ashcroft

Attorney General of the United States

Succeeded by: Nominee