Fredo Gonzales' light touch. Paul Kiel highlights more evidence of Gonzales' casual attitude to putting people to death without much review, a stance revealed years ago by journalist Alan Berlow. It's worth rereading the Berlow piece as it speaks to so much about what we've recently learned about Gonzales' amiably enabling role in matters from rubberstamping warrantless domestic spying to politicizing the justice department to authorizing torture. As the Post Cheney series part I reveals, Gonzales was apparently content to sign off on whatever memo Addington put in front of him, and seemed glad not to have to do his own homework. He was a man who asked no questions of his political masters, who perfected a stance of going along to get along, which served him well career-promotion-wise in a Bush administration which prized loyalty and yes men above competence across the board. Indeed, it seems that Gonzales modeled himself in part on the governor and president he served, one never terribly concerned about the details, even though you might expect one's lawyer to be a bit more detail oriented. Harvard law degree notwithstanding, legal lightweight? Morally lazy? Without any apparent opinion or conviction on these matters that out of some circumstance ended up in his inbox, Gonzales lightly signed off on these grave issues of killing, torture and subverting the Constitution, perhaps out of no greater motivation than to please his bosses and advance his career.

Posted by Laura at June 28, 2007 09:58 AM