US attorney general Gonzales resigns

Mark Tran
Monday August 27, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Alberto Gonzales had worked with George Bush since the 1990s. Photograph: Ron Edmonds/AP
 

The embattled US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, today announced his resignation, joining an exodus of top-level officials from the White House.”It has been one of my greatest privileges to lead the department of justice,” Mr Gonzales said in a perfunctory statement, without taking questions from reporters. He will step down on September17.

“I have lived the American dream,” the son of migrant workers said. “Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father’s best days.”

The 51-year-old Bush loyalist served more than two years as America’s first Hispanic attorney general. In recent months he came under intense pressure to quit in a political row over the sacking of eight federal prosecutors that congressional Democrats have said was politically motivated. Mr Gonzales did not help his case with unconvincing appearances on Capitol Hill.

Mr Gonzales worked for Mr Bush when he was governor of Texas in the 1990s and served as a White House lawyer in Mr Bush’s first term before becoming the attorney general in February 2005.

Mr Bush said he had reluctantly accepted the resignation of a trusted adviser and good friend and rebuked detractors of Mr Gonzales, saying: “His good name has been dragged through the mud for political reasons”.

Mr Gonzales outraged civil liberties groups by stating in January 2002 that parts of the half-century-old Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war were “obsolete” and some provisions were “quaint.”

He also came under fire for Mr Bush’s decision to forego the use of warrants in America’s domestic spying programme adopted after the September 11 2001 attacks. In January, Mr Gonzales backtracked and said the programme would be subject to court approval.

Mr Gonzales is the latest in a string of top officials who have left the administration, from the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Karl Rove, the president’s closest confidant and the man credited with Mr Bush’s two presidential victories.

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