Sampson: Gonzales Not Telling Whole Truth (The Nation)

[marmar]

BLOG | Posted 03/29/2007 @ 12:44pm
Sampson: Gonzales Not Telling Whole Truth

Ari Berman

Kyle Sampson resigned as a loyal servant. Now the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is taking issue with some of the key statements his boss has recently made.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, Sampson contradicted Gonzales's claims that he was not directly involved in the firing of eight US attorneys.

"(I) was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on," Gonzales told reporters on March 13.

Not true, Sampson says. "The Attorney General was aware of this process from the beginning," Sampson testified. "I don't think is entirely accurate...We did discuss it when he was Attorney-General designate...and when the process came to the conclusion in the fall of 2006."
...snip...

A third bone of contention: In his March press conference, Gonzales claimed that "information that he had not was shared with individuals within the department who would then be providing testimony and information to the Congress." But Sampson says he did fully brief Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and Assistant Attorney General William Moschella, who now stand accused of misleading Congress for claiming that the Attorney firings were "performance-related."

Clearly there are major discrepancies here. Gonzales will have a lot of explaining to do when he testifies before Congress on April 17--if he lasts that long. ..........

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15