“…Recommended removing; weak U.S. Attorneys who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration policies, etc…”

-Kyle Sampson, Recently canned Chief of Staff to Attorney General Al Gonzales.

From Think Progress:

Earlier this year, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), which is charged with investigating attorney misconduct, announced that it could not pursue an investigation into the role of Justice lawyers in crafting the NSA warrantless wiretapping program because it was denied security clearance.

Previously, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would not explain why the security clearances had been denied, saying he did not want to “get into internal discussions.” But in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning, Gonzales said President Bush personally blocked Justice Department lawyers from pursuing an investigation of the warrantless eavesdropping program.

This is not good, not good at all. Bush is Nixon.

Think Progress has the video from the Alberto Gonzales hearing. Check it out.

I wasn’t even a zygote yet when Watergate went down. But, thankfully I get to re-live those days right now in 2006!

That’s right, today’s hearings into the controversial eavesdropping program undertaken by the Bush Administration is revealing some very interesting glimpses into the mind of George W. Bush.

From the AP:

Under sharp questioning from Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, Gonzales said that Bush would not grant the access needed to allow the probe to move forward.

“It was highly classified, very important and many other lawyers had access. Why not OPR?” asked Specter, R-Pa.

“The president of the United States makes the decision,” Gonzales told the committee hearing, during which he was strongly criticized on a range of national security issues by Specter and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), the panel’s senior Democrat.

You can listen to the hearings live on C-Span.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez sent the Senate Judiciary Committe a letter yesterday to “clarify” his testimony — you remember, when the committee’s Republicans voted not to swear him in — from last month. It’s a fantastic legalistic way of lying to Congress and the American people.

Gonzales appeared to suggest yesterday that the Bush administration’s warrantless domestic surveillance operations may extend beyond the outlines that the president acknowledged in mid-December.

In a letter yesterday to senators in which he asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration’s original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated three weeks ago.

…

At least one constitutional scholar who testified before the committee yesterday said in an interview that Gonzales appeared to be hinting that the operation disclosed by the New York Times in mid-December is not the full extent of eavesdropping on U.S. residents conducted without court warrants.

Let’s say it all again: Gonzales is a liar. George W. Bush is a liar.

Glenn Greenwald lays it all out: “The NSA scandal now clearly includes interception of domestic communications, perjury and presidential lying.”

Read It.