Leahy, Specter demand more answers from Gonzales

The leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a bipartisan letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, indicated that they were displeased with his performance at a panel hearing last week and demanded additional answers.

Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and ranking Republican Arlen Specter (Pa.) chastised Gonzales for failing to answer questions that “should not have been a surprise,” noting that the attorney general rigorously prepared for the April 19 hearing.

{mosads}“By some counts you failed to answer more than 100 questions, by other counts more than 70, but the most conservative count had you failing to provide answers well over 60 times,” the senators said.

As a result, Leahy and Specter say, their probe into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys “has been hampered.”

Specifically, the senators note that Gonzales was not prepared to answer questions about information he had derived from staff interviews, even though he was alerted prior to the hearing that such questions would be asked.

In addition, Leahy and Specter lament that the attorney general did not provide “a full and complete account of the development of the plan to replace Untied States Attorneys,” even though that information had been requested beforehand.

“We believe the Committee and our investigation would benefit from you searching and refreshing your recollection and your supplementing your testimony by next Friday to provide the answers to the questions you could not recall last Thursday,” the senators wrote.