Report: Gonzales Mishandled Top Secret Data

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: September 2, 2008
WASHINGTON — Former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales mishandled highly classified information relating to the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program and the administration’s prisoner interrogation program, an internal report concluded Tuesday.

The Justice Department inspector general, who investigated Mr. Gonzales’s handling of the documents, said he kept classified material at his home and in an office safe in violation of security procedures. The inspector general referred the matter to the national security division of the Justice Department for possible criminal action, but officials there declined to prosecute Mr. Gonzales.
Mr. Gonzales’s mishandling of the classified documents adds a new embarrassment to the long list of problems that tainted his tenure as attorney general. He resigned one year ago, after two and a half years in the job, in the face of growing criticism from lawmakers over his role in the N.S.A. wiretapping program and in the dismissals of nine United States attorneys.

The office of Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said in its report that Mr. Gonzales had mishandled 18 documents that were considered S.C.I. classification, or sensitive compartmentalized information, a security category for documents considered more tightly controlled than top secret.
The most sensitive material among the documents was Mr. Gonzales’s handwritten account of an emergency meeting at the White House on March 10, 2004, regarding the N.S.A. wiretapping program.
Mr. Gonzales, who was then White House counsel, called the meeting with the eight highest-ranking members of Congress after James Comey, then the deputy attorney general, refused to certify the legality of the agency’s program. At the time, Attorney General John Ashcroft was in intensive care in the hospital after gallbladder surgery.
President Bush had secretly authorized the wiretapping program in October 2001, three weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, to allow the N.S.A. to eavesdrop on the international communications of Americans suspected of terrorism ties without getting a court order normally required in such circumstances. The Federal Bureau of Investigation began conducting an inquiry into the possible unauthorized disclosure of classified information after a New York Times article on the program in December 2005.

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