White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales's Texas Execution Memos

John Dean -- White House counsel Alberto Gonzales is said to be on President Bush's short list of potential nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court. Unlike other nominees, such as D.C. Circuit nominee Miguel Estrada, it turns out that Gonzales has left quite a paper trail - in the form of fifty-seven death-penalty memoranda he prepared for then-Texas Governor George Bush.

The memos were initially confidential, meant for the Governor alone. They have not themselves been published. But they have been reviewed by writer Alan Berlow of The Atlantic Monthly, and his report on their contents is disturbing indeed.

The Gonzales execution memos raise serious - and, unfortunately ugly - questions, not because of what they say, rather because of what they fail to say. They also suggest that President Bush's earlier claims about how he, in fact, handled clemency requests as Governor of Texas are less than accurate. (No surprise - EL)

Bush claims that he "review[ed] every death penalty case thoroughly," meeting with his legal counsel on the morning of every execution. And according to Bush, "In every case, I would ask: Is there any doubt about this individual's guilt or innocence? And have the courts had ample opportunity to review all the legal issues in this case?"

Troublingly, the two fundamental questions upon which Bush says he exclusively focused, were also the very questions that, according to Berlow, Gonzales routinely declined to address in his memos to Bush.

It's hard to reach any conclusion, after reading Berlow's account of the memos, except the obvious one: Bush considered only the narrow factors included in the memos, and not the two more expansive questions he claims in his autobiography to have raised. And in fact, the Texas clemency proceedings under Bush were even worse than previously believed.