Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

Bushies circle the wagons around AG pick Gonzales

BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK and KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Originally published on December 16, 2004

WASHINGTON - Even though critics say he flubbed the vetting of Bernie Kerik, Team Bush yesterday absolved White House Counsel and attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzales.
Often mentioned as an eventual Supreme Court pick, Gonzales still is sure to be questioned about what went wrong in tapping Kerik for the homeland security post when he faces his own Senate confirmation hearing early next year, congressional sources told the Daily News.

The White House insists the process worked and that the problem was Kerik's failure to be forthright about hiring a nanny who was an illegal immigrant and failing to pay taxes.

"Rest assured, we did significant due diligence," said White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, who, without specifying, claimed the administration knew about some of Kerik's other black marks.

"We were aware of many of the issues that have been reported," Bartlett insisted, except for the hiring of the nanny.

That has been the White House message since Saturday, the day after Kerik called the administration to withdraw his name.

"We're not hearing anything about Al Gonzalez around here. ... Nobody has said a thing about him being the blame," said a senior Bush administration official.

Still, experts in background checks for presidential nominees described the White House's screening as a lazy process that only involved questioning Kerik.

"It doesn't mean the vetting process is broken - it just means they didn't vet him," said former federal prosecutor Melanie Sloan, who heads the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

"They didn't do any of the basic searches or they would have found the warrant, the fines or even using police to search for the alleged girlfriend's cell phone," Sloan added, ticking off the list of Kerik's problems.

© 2004 Daily News, L.P.

http://www.nydailynews.com/12-16-2004/news/story/262634p-224881c.html

[F6 note -- in addition to the post to which this post is a reply and preceding (in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4531093 and the posts re Gonzales linked there), see also (of course) http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4856290 and the many preceding]