Or was it perjury?

Ok... Maybe number two is out, and it's back to either number one or number three. Hmmm...

[L]awmakers who were not at the hearing but who attended the meeting on March 10, 2004 at the White House...challenged Mr. Gonzales’s account. Mr. Rockefeller and Representative Jane Harman of California, who in 2004 was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, insisted that there was only one N.S.A. program, making Mr. Gonzales’s assertions inaccurate.

“The program had different parts, but there was only one program,” Ms. Harman said, adding that Mr. Gonzales was “selectively declassifying information to defend his own conduct,” which she called improper.

But another member of the Gang of Eight — the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House and of the two Intelligence Committees _— supported Mr. Gonzales’s version. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he confirmed the attorney general’s testimony that the group reached a “consensus” that the disputed intelligence activity should continue and that passing emergency legislation would risk revealing secrets.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who attended the 2004 White House meeting as House Democratic minority leader, said through a spokesman that she did not dispute that the majority of those present supported continuing the intelligence activity. But Ms. Pelosi said she dissented and supported Mr. Comey’s objections at the meeting, said the spokesman, Brendan Daly.

So did Comey object to specific parts of the TSP? Did Gonzales get completely tripped up in a web of lies? Or did he accidently divulge a surveillance activity that wasn't reported to the Intel committees? I almost feel silly asking that third question, but with this administration, I see no reason to rule it out.

Comments

Eyewitness testimony is increasingly under attack in criminal trials, since memory under a traumatizing incident turns out to not be so good. I guess what was said at the Gang of Eight meeting on the TSP (or TSP+, or TSP plus unknown) seems to fit this dilemma.

But Gonzales had to be lying, since he always does.

I'm not feeling good that Congress criters agree on an intelligence program not authorized by law and advise against a new law on security grounds, if that happened.

The road to hell really is paved with good intentions (sometimes). But engraving these words somewhere prominently doesn't somehow ring true: "We are a nation of men and women, not of laws".

Posted by: JimPortlandOR on July 25, 2007 01:30 PM

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