Today on Face the Nation Alberto Gonzales made a rather startling admission. It started with todays
NY Times, when Frank Rich reminded people of Gonzales' role in Treasongate:
As White House counsel, he was the one first notified that the Justice Department, at the request of the C.I.A., had opened an investigation into the outing of Joseph Wilson's wife. That notification came at 8:30 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2003, but it took Mr. Gonzales 12 more hours to inform the White House staff that it must "preserve all materials" relevant to the investigation. This 12-hour delay, he has said, was sanctioned by the Justice Department, but since the department was then run by John Ashcroft, a Bush loyalist who refused to recuse himself from the Plame case, inquiring Senate Democrats would examine this 12-hour delay as closely as an 18½-minute tape gap. "Every good prosecutor knows that any delay could give a culprit time to destroy the evidence," said Senator Charles Schumer, correctly, back when the missing 12 hours was first revealed almost two years ago.
Big revelation below the fold.
Then today, Schieffer asked Gonzales about the 12 hours and
Gonzales admitted that he told Andrew Card about the investigation immediately! That night. Yet he waited until the next morning to give the official word. So basically Card knew that the next morning people were going to be told to keep anything related to the incident. I wonder how Card spent that evening? So, not only was there a 12 hour gap, the White House was given a heads up! AP story
here and video
here. Plus Schieffer follow up video available, also via (aptly named!)
Crooks and Liars.
Schieffer gets it! He points out that they could have done anything in that time.
This doesn't look good for the White House. Why would Gonzales even answer the question? No wonder Bush picked Roberts.
[update: edited to make it easier to read and fixed video links]