Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy has invited Buttercheeks to revise his suspect testimony:

Leahy (D-Vt.) told reporters he is giving Gonzales until late next week to revise his testimony about the surveillance program or he will ask Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine to conduct a perjury inquiry: “I’ll ask the inspector general to determine who’s telling the truth.”

I think the chance of Buttercheeks accepting this invitation is exactly zero.

As Gonzales has gone his merry way, serially contradicting himself, he has been careful to ensure that his sworn testimony does not contradict his own previous sworn testimony.

He testified in 2006 that “the deep doubts (which) almost led to the resignations of Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and others” were not about the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program that the President had confirmed, but some other program.

He flatly contradicted that during a press conference in June this year:

Mr. Comey’s testimony related to a highly classified program which the president confirmed to the American people sometime ago.

In his sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Gonzales baldly went back to his previous sworn statement:

“The dissent related to other intelligence activities,” Gonzales testified at Tuesday’s hearing. “The dissent was not about the terrorist surveillance program.”

“Not the TSP?” responded Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. “Come on. If you say it’s about other, that implies not. Now say it or not.”

“It was not,” Gonzales answered. “It was about other intelligence activities.”

If dear old Buttercheeks now accepts Leahy’s invitation to revise Tuesday’s testimony, then his new sworn testimony flatly contradicts his own previous sworn testimony, and he has a much harder time wriggling out of perjury charges. ( I use the word “charges” loosely, of course, to indicate allegations made by offended parties rather than legal proceedings initiated.)

As things stand, his sworn testimony seems to conflict with John Negroponte‘s May 17, 2006 memo, but that is almost surely going to be explained away by tortured parsing. As I argued on May 17 this year (nice date coincidence right there!):

Comey’s testimony is that there was a NSA wiretapping program in place before March 2004 that the Justice Department came to feel was illegal. As a result of the hospital-bed events of March 10 2004, the Justice Department was eventually authorized by the President to revise the program, to bring it into compliance with the law. These changes were made, resulting in what the Justice Department regarded as a legal wiretapping program.

You don’t have to be a graduate of the George Bush School of Deliberate Miscommunication to realize what Gonzales plans to shelter behind:

Comey’s and Ashcroft’s objections were to the earlier program, the one they viewed as illegal.

Gonzales’ February 2006 testimony was about the then-existing program, the revised one that Comey and Ashcroft had no objections to.

That may strike you or me as a flimsy legal veil. But that hardly matters, does it? Can there be any doubt how it will strike those who control the means of production, as it were, those who have to make the oh-so-difficult decision whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should be prosecuted for perjury?

(See also: Shame On You, Alberto!)