1115.org

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has been doing an awful lot of eating-his-own-words lately. And it obviously doesn’t sit too well with him.

Two weeks ago he ate his (and Bush’s) oft-repeated words that the NSA domestic surveillance program simply couldn’t operate if it was subjected to the supervision of the FISA court. At the time he was asked by the Senate Judiciary Committee to provide details of the new arrangement under which the program would now function, and he flatly refused. Today he suddenly and abruptly backed down from that position. Not only will the government provide copies of relevant documents – including the orders of the FISA court and the government applications that led to those orders – to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy and ranking Republican member Arlen Specter, but “some members and staff on the House and Senate Intelligence committees also will have access to the records, authorities said”.

These documents, which two weeks ago couldn’t even be provided to the chairman of the committee can now be passed out to staff? That’s a pretty super-sized version of eating your words.

So when the General announced that he was backing down from the position he had taken just two weeks ago, first he tried to pretend – with his mouth full, mind you – that he wasn’t eating his own words:

“It’s never been the case where we said we would never provide the access,” Gonzales said.

(It is not known at this time whether he plans to shelter behind “Only I said that, there was no “we”.)

Then he launched into what has to be the Stupidest Attempt to Save Face by a current member of the administration:

Gonzales said the orders will not be released publicly, however, because the subject matter is “highly classified.”

I hope it gave him much satisfaction to declare that he’s absolutely not going to do what nobody has really asked for. The only thing funnier than his statement would be if the government actually turns around and publicly releases the orders two weeks from now. And the way things have been going lately, who would rule that out?

How the mighty have fallen, huh?