Editorial: Gonzales should start packing

Friday, April 20, 2007 | 7:21 a.m.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' testimony Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which he asserted that he played only a minor role in the firing of eight federal prosecutors, was beyond belief. Gonzales came across as someone who was simply covering his hide.

It was telling that Republican senators, members of his own party, grilled Gonzales and were left scratching their heads. Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a former Philadelphia district attorney, suggested that Gonzales was not candid when the attorney general said he didn't participate in discussing which U.S. attorneys would be terminated.

It is unfathomable to think that the man who runs the Justice Department, the most powerful law enforcement position in the United States, would simply allow underlings to select prosecutors to be fired and then rubber-stamp those recommendations without offering his input. Even if one buys Gonzales' implausible explanation, then he was derelict in carrying out his job.

Gonzales has already been caught in at least one lie. He said at a March news conference that he hadn't participated in meetings to discuss the prosecutors to be fired, including Daniel Bogden of Nevada. But Congress has been given evidence that Gonzales attended a November meeting with other Justice Department officials to finalize the plans that led to the firings.

Let's not also forget the mysterious missing e-mails of White House aides who used e-mail accounts sponsored by the Republican National Committee to communicate about official government business, including the plan to dump the eight prosecutors.

There still hasn't been a reasonable explanation given for Bogden's firing, just plenty of embarrassing details, such as a couple of nuggets disclosed this week by Sun reporter Lisa Mascaro. We now know that 18 months before Bogden was ousted he was praised for his "outstanding work" by Mary Beth Buchanan, former director of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys in the Justice Department. We also know that the department took all of 90 seconds to conclude that he should be fired. Go figure.

Incompetence and deception have infected the highest levels of the nation's top law enforcement agency, something that is intolerable. As we have written previously, we believe the attorney general should resign.