title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Federal and state officials became concerned about ticket scalping and fraud related to sales of the tickets for the swearing-in ceremony. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, introduced legislation in mid-November 2008 to ban sales of tickets to the swearing-in ceremony. At the same time, the joint congressional committee contacted online auction operators, ticket resellers and classified listing services to block sales of the tickets. To address the committee's concerns, StubHub and eBay agreed to ban ticket sales for the swearing-in ceremony on all of its sites. Senator Feinstein re-introduced legislation in December 2008 to ban ticket sales for the swearing-in ceremony after amending the bill to exempt tickets issued by official presidential inaugural committees for inaugural event fundraising. The U.S. Senate failed to pass the final bill, which caused the bill to die in the closing days of the lame duck legislative session.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: On January 17, 2009, Obama hosted a whistle stop train tour in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth year of Abraham Lincoln. Obama reenacted the final part of Lincoln's 1861 train tour from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Washington, D.C. to capture the mood of the 1861 Springfield to Washington train tour traveled by Lincoln to his own inauguration. For his train ride to the nation's capital, Obama rode in the Georgia 300, a vintage railroad car used by past presidents and the same one he used for touring Pennsylvania during his presidential primary campaign. On the tour, Obama was accompanied by his wife Michelle, their daughters Malia and Sasha, and a host of friends and guests.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: For the train ride to Washington, Obama invited 41 "everyday Americans" that he met during his presidential campaign to accompany him on the tour and attend other inaugural events, including the swearing-in ceremony, the parade and an inaugural ball. The group of citizens who joined the tour had shared stories with then-candidate Obama about themselves and their families during the presidential campaign, and included Matt Kuntz and Lilly Ledbetter. Kuntz, who lost his step‑brother to suicide after returning home from the Gulf War, dedicated his efforts to improve mental health screening for Iraq War veterans. Ledbetter, who learned years later that her employer had discriminated against her in pay based on gender, lost her case before the Supreme Court because she did not file her claim within 180 days of the discriminatory act. Nine days after his inauguration, Obama as president signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, allowing claims filed against employers not only within 180 days of the pay discrimination, but also restarting the 180-day period for claims upon receiving any paycheck based on a discriminatory pay action.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Obama commenced the tour in Philadelphia by holding a town hall meeting at 30th Street Station with a few hundred supporters. At the first stop in Wilmington, Delaware Vice President‑elect Biden and his family joined the tour. Biden, dubbed "Amtrak Joe" for his daily commutes on Amtrak between Wilmington and Washington, built a reputation as a supporter of increased funding for U.S. commuter rail transportation. The train continued to Baltimore, Maryland, its second stop, where Obama spoke to a crowd of about 40,000 people.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: During his speeches to the crowds, he emphasized the theme "A New Birth of Freedom" using phrases associated with Lincoln such as "better angels" and "a new declaration of independence". Obama referred to patriotic forebearers in his speech when he reminded the crowds that "we should never forget that we are the heirs of that first band of patriots, ordinary men and women who refused to give up when it all seemed so improbable; and who somehow believed that they had the power to make the world anew." Thousands of well‑wishers gathered at various points along the train route taking pictures, cheering and waving American flags and homemade signs, with Obama reciting his trademark rejoinder "I love you back" to the enthusiastic crowds. The one-day train tour concluded at Union Station in Washington, D.C.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: On January 18, 2009, the day after Obama arrived in Washington, D.C., an inaugural concert, "We Are One", took place at the Lincoln Memorial. The concert featured performances and readings of historical passages by more than three dozen celebrities. Attendance at the concert was free to the public, and HBO broadcast the concert live on an open feed, enabling anyone with cable television to watch the event. An estimated 400,000 people attended the concert at the Lincoln Memorial. The Washington Metro recorded 616,324 passenger trips during the day, breaking the old Sunday ridership record of 540,945 passenger trips set on July 4, 1999.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: The eve of the Inauguration Day, January 19, 2009, fell on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a U.S. federal holiday in recognition of Dr. King's birthday. Obama called upon communities everywhere to observe the King Day of Service, a day of citizen volunteer service honoring the human rights leader. More than 13,000 community service events took place across the nation on the day, the largest participation in the 14 years since Congress passed the King Holiday and Service Act and more than double the previous year's events.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Obama spent an hour at Walter Reed Army Medical Center meeting privately with the families of troops who were recovering from wounds sustained in the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan. After visiting the medical center, he, along with Martin Luther King, III, headed to the Sasha Bruce House homeless shelter for teens to participate with others in service activities.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Joe Biden hung drywall at a Habitat for Humanity home in N.E. Washington, D.C. Biden's wife, Jill, their daughter, Ashley Biden, Michelle Obama and the Obamas' daughters, Malia and Sasha, spent the morning at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium where they helped thousands of volunteers prepare more than 85,000 care packages destined for U.S. troops overseas. Later that evening, Obama hosted three separate bipartisan dinners to honor the service of John McCain, Colin Powell and Joe Biden.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: On the evening of January 19, 2009, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden hosted the "Kids' Inaugural: We Are the Future" event at the Verizon Center. Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, and the Jonas Brothers honored military families in concert. The show was broadcast live on the Disney Channel and on Radio Disney. Other celebrity participants included Bow Wow, George Lopez, Corbin Bleu, Queen Latifah, Billy Ray Cyrus, Shaquille O'Neal and Jamie Foxx. In keeping with the service theme of the day, Michelle Obama issued a call for children to become engaged in public service by volunteering in homeless shelters, visiting elderly people or writing letters to U.S. troops.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: The Washington Metro recorded 866,681 passenger trips on January 19, breaking the single day ridership record of 854,638 passenger trips set on July 11, 2008.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: The inaugural ceremony took place at the West Front of the United States Capitol on January 20, 2009. The ceremony opened with the playing of pre‑recorded music and a live performance by "The President's Own" United States Marine Band, followed by live performances by the San Francisco Boys Chorus and San Francisco Girls Chorus. Courtney Williams, Senior Chief Musician and concert moderator for the U.S. Navy Concert Band, served as the platform announcer. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and the first woman to preside over a U.S. presidential inauguration, acted as the day's Master of Ceremonies.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Evangelical pastor Rick Warren delivered the invocation for the inaugural ceremony, followed by a performance by vocalist Aretha Franklin, who sang "My Country, 'Tis of Thee". The program featured a performance of John Williams' composition "Air and Simple Gifts", which was both pre-recorded and performed live synched with the recording by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Gabriela Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill. National Public Radio described the performance by the quartet as "a transporting moment that moved many with its beauty and calm", while "The New York Times" called it the "classical-music equivalent of lip-syncing". Aretha Franklin made a fashion statement by wearing a hat with a distinctive Swarovski crystal-studded bow.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Vice President‑elect Biden took his oath from Associate Justice John Paul Stevens. After he completed his oath of office, Biden received in his honor as the new vice president the first playing of four ruffles and flourishes and the march "Hail, Columbia" by members of the armed forces. After the performance of "Air and Simple Gifts", Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office to President‑elect Obama shortly after noon. The inaugural ceremony ran longer than scheduled, which delayed the administering of the oath so that it finished around 12:05 pm EST (17:05 UTC). However, Obama officially assumed the presidency at the expiration of President Bush's term at noon under the Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution. After he completed the presidential oath, Obama received in his honor as the new president the 21-gun salute, and the first playing of four ruffles and flourishes and the march "Hail to the Chief" by members of the armed forces.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Obama delivered his inaugural address to the crowds as the president of the United States following his swearing-in ceremony. Poet Elizabeth Alexander then delivered the inaugural poem, "Praise Song for the Day", and civil rights activist Joseph Lowery, minister of the United Methodist Church, delivered the benediction. The United States Navy Band "Sea Chanters" chorus concluded the ceremony with a performance of the United States national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner".


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office to Obama. Michelle Obama held the Bible, which was used by Abraham Lincoln at his 1861 inauguration, as Barack Obama placed his hand on the Bible and recited the presidential oath. Nearly four years earlier, then-Senator Obama had been one of 22 senators to vote against Roberts during Roberts' Supreme Court nomination; the inauguration marked the first time a chief justice administered the oath to a president-elect who had previously voted against the chief justice's confirmation.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Roberts and Obama made several mistakes as they recited the oath. The proper wording for the oath of office is prescribed in the Constitution:


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Roberts had practiced for the ceremony carefully. However, a memo noting his planned pauses in the recitation of the oath failed to reach Obama's staff before the swearing-in. As a result, Obama inadvertently interrupted Roberts during the first phrase, stating "I, Barack" while Roberts was finishing "do solemnly swear". Obama then correctly repeated the entire phrase "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear."


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Roberts, who was not using notes, rendered the next phrase as "that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully," misplacing the word "faithfully" and saying "president to" instead of "president of". Obama repeated, "that I will execute", then paused. Roberts attempted to correct the wording, but stumbled: "the off– faithfully the pres– the office of President of the United States." Obama then repeated Roberts' initial incorrect wording.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Roberts ended the presidential oath by appending the phrase "so help you God" to the end of the constitutionally prescribed oath, and Obama responded "so help me God" when he was prompted. Obama had asked previously to include "so help me God" after the oath. Roberts then congratulated Obama as the new president.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Much public discussion arose about the errors in administering and reciting the oath. Several constitutional scholars said that Obama should retake the oath. Boston University constitutional scholar Jack Beermann suggested that while the courts would likely never even consider a challenge, he would still advise Obama to retake the oath if he were his lawyer since "the Constitution says what he's supposed to say."


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Although Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, indicated at first that President Obama did not plan to retake the oath, Chief Justice Roberts agreed to re-administer the oath at the request of White House counsel Greg Craig. The second oath ceremony took place on the evening of January 21, 2009 in the Map Room of the White House before a small audience of presidential aides, reporters and a White House photographer. Craig said that the White House ultimately decided to re-administer the oath out of an abundance of caution. Craig added that "the oath of office was administered effectively and ... the President was sworn in appropriately ... But the oath appears in the Constitution itself." No Bible was present during the retake of the inauguration.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: The central theme of President Obama's inaugural address was a call to restore responsibility—both in terms of accountability in Washington and the responsibility of ordinary people to get involved. Obama's address did not have memorable sound bite phrases. Instead, he used traditional references to connect his new administration with the nation's history in a speech that was understated deliberately, according to rhetoric expert James Mackin.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Obama concluded the second paragraph of his address by saying, "we the people have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears and true to our founding documents." The speech reinforced words such as "legacy" and "heritage", as well as values such as "honesty", "courage", and "patriotism", which "are old" values. Near the end of the speech, Obama referred to words written by Thomas Paine in "The American Crisis", which were ordered by George Washington to be read to his troops: "Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive ... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]." Because Obama's campaign message focused on the need for change, Mackin noted that Obama sought to reassure Americans that he would operate as president within the margins of the nation's traditions.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Obama's goal for his Inaugural speech was to stir the following response among Americans: "This is why I want to go into public service and be a better politician. This is why I want to go home and be a better parent, better worker, better citizen."


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: As part of Obama's call for responsibility, he said, "what is required of us now is a new era of responsibility—a recognition, on the part of every American" and "those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account." Obama quoted the lyrics of the Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields song "Pick Yourself Up" from the musical comedy "Swing Time", saying that "starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America." In an article for "The New York Times", columnist and former drama critic Frank Rich noted the link to the lyric in Field's song from the movie, writing that Obama offered in his address "one subtle whiff of the Great Depression".


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Obama's speech contained several biblical references and was compared to the oratory of the "black church tradition". Obama also highlighted the United States' religious diversity, referring to the country's "patchwork heritage" as a strength and saying, "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers." This was the first time a United States president acknowledged American non-believers in an inaugural address.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Obama's inaugural address received mixed reviews, with some describing the tone of the speech a praiseworthy one of restraint and plain speaking, while others described the speech as low-brow and clichéd. Despite his optimism, Obama was critical of former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. David E. Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for "The New York Times", described the speech as the harshest rebuke of an outgoing president during an inaugural address since Franklin Roosevelt's call for restoration of American values. The Bush administration was upset about the tone of the speech, saying that the speech veered from that of a ritualistic but respectful thanks to that of a public diatribe. Members of the Republican party viewed the speech as a missed chance to seek unity, while Rahm Emanuel, Obama's White House Chief of Staff, described the speech as a reflection of the mandate of the people. In an analysis of the inaugural address, one reporter described the speech as one that emphasized the burdens of the moment and the cloudy future whose challenges may be met with the resolve that is part of our American heritage.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Obama's selections of Warren and Lowery to deliver prayers for the inaugural ceremony were controversial. Warren had a history of vocal opposition to same-sex marriage, and Lowery had a background as a civil rights activist. Neither Obama nor Warren made references during the inaugural program to issues of direct concern to the gay community. In the invocation, Warren asked for "forgiveness for Americans 'when we fight each other' and 'civility in our attitudes even when we differ.'" Warren mentioned Dr. Martin Luther King and Jesus in the invocation, and he concluded the invocation with the Lord's Prayer. Lowery used humor as he delivered the benediction. One of his messages was the statement that "as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family." Lowery concluded the benediction with a humorous message of anticipation for the day "when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead man and when white would embrace what is right".


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: After the inaugural ceremony on the west front of the U.S. Capitol, President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden escorted former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush to the honorary departure ceremony on the east side of the U.S. Capitol. Before the luncheon and in keeping with tradition, President Obama signed his first presidential orders in the President's Room at the Capitol, and then signed the guest book for the luncheon. The first order signed by Obama was a proclamation declaring his Inauguration Day a "National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation", in which he called "upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century". Next, Obama signed orders to officially present the nominations for his Cabinet and several sub‑Cabinet officials to the U.S. Congress for its approval. The Obamas and Bidens then attended an inaugural luncheon at the U.S. Capitol before traveling from there to the presidential reviewing stand at the White House to watch the parade.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: As former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush began their journey to their Texas home, the Obamas and Bidens joined several congressional guests for the inaugural luncheon in National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol. Guests included top Washington lawmakers as well as former presidents and vice presidents. Commemorating the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial, the red and white china used during the luncheon were replicas of those used in the Lincoln White House.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: A luncheon at the U.S. Capitol has been part of the inaugural program since 1953 (before that time, the luncheon was usually held at the White House and hosted by the outgoing president and first lady). The menu for the 2009 inaugural luncheon, which often features dishes representative of the home states of the new president and vice president, included seafood stew, duck and pheasant entrees with Pinot noir wine, and a dessert of apple cinnamon sponge cake with sweet cream glacé. Since 1985, a painting has served as a backdrop for the head table. For the 2009 inaugural luncheon, the featured painting was Thomas Hill's 1865 "View of the Yosemite Valley", a painting that commemorated Abraham Lincoln's 1864 signing of the Yosemite Grant, which was the first time the federal government protected park lands for public use.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: During the luncheon, Senator Ted Kennedy collapsed after suffering a seizure, and he was transported to a hospital for medical treatment. Early reports about the medical emergency suggested erroneously that Senator Robert Byrd, the oldest member of the Senate, also fell ill during the luncheon. These reports were later denied, and Byrd, a longtime friend of Kennedy, eventually explained that the Kennedy incident disturbed him and caused him to leave.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: The inaugural parade route ran along Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. from the U.S. Capitol, ending at the north face of the White House. During most of the parade, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama traveled in the new armored limousine because of potential security threats. The President and First Lady twice exited their limousine, walking on Pennsylvania Avenue for portions of the parade. Vice President Biden and his wife Jill walked the parade route at several points with their children Beau, Hunter and Ashley.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: The parade lasted more than two hours during the afternoon and early evening following the inaugural ceremony. Parade participants included 15,000 people, 240 horses, a mariachi band, dozens of marching bands, the Virginia Military Institute corps of cadets, and two drum and bugle corps: The Cadets and the Colts. Obama invited the marching band from Punahou School, his high school in Hawaii, to perform in the parade along with the marching unit of its Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Vice President Joe Biden invited several groups from Delaware to march in the parade. The Delaware section was led by the Delaware Volunteer Firemen's Association of which Biden is an honorary member, the Fightin' Blue Hen Marching Band, The Pride of Delaware, from Biden's alma mater, the University of Delaware, and the Delaware State University Hornets Approaching Storm marching band.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: NASA astronaut Rex J. Walheim marched in the parade carrying an American flag and wearing a prototype of NASA's next generation spacesuit. Astronaut Michael L. Gernhardt drove a prototype lunar rover in the parade. In addition to Astronauts Walheim and Gernhardt, the crew of the STS-126 Space Shuttle "Endeavour" mission also marched in the inaugural parade.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attended 10 official inaugural balls during the evening of January 20, 2009. Barack Obama wore a new tuxedo made by Hart Schaffner Marx, a Chicago-based menswear company. He also wore a white bow tie, instead of the conventional black. Traditionalists considered this a fashion faux pas, as a white tie is conventionally only worn with a white waistcoat and tails. Michelle Obama wore a white, one-shouldered, sleeveless gown designed by 26-year-old New York-based designer Jason Wu, breaking with the recent practice set by former first ladies Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton, who showcased designers from their hometowns.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: The Neighborhood Inaugural Ball, one of six balls held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, was the first stop of the evening for the President and First Lady. The Obamas danced their first song as Beyoncé Knowles serenaded them with her rendition of the Glenn Miller classic "At Last". According to the Presidential Inaugural Committee, the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball was the first ball with free or affordable tickets, a contrast to recent history in which "inaugural balls generally have been closed to everyday Americans, populated instead by an exclusive circle of dignitaries and donors." A portion of the tickets for the ball was reserved for Washington D.C. residents.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: President Obama and the First Lady also attended one inaugural ball during the evening of January 21, 2009.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: After they made their formal visits to the circuit of January 20 inaugural balls, the Obamas hosted an after-midnight gathering at the White House for 70 of their earliest supporters, close friends and family. Guests who attended the after hours celebration at the White House included Oprah Winfrey, Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Representatives Artur Davis of the state of Alabama and Neil Abercrombie of the state of Hawaii, and Michelle Obama's brother Craig Robinson. Members of the Illinois congressional delegation also attended the after hours event, including Senator Dick Durbin and Representatives Melissa Bean, Jan Schakowsky, Luis Gutierrez and Jerry Costello.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: On January 21, 2009, President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, gathered at the Washington National Cathedral for a national day of prayer. At the prayer service, the Obamas and Bidens were joined in the front pew by former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Clinton, who was sworn in as Secretary of State later that day. The prayer service was attended by about 3,200 other invited guests, including members of the U.S. Congress, diplomats and other dignitaries.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: The theme of the interfaith worship service reflected inclusiveness and religious diversity, with a mix of Protestant pastors, female Hindu and Muslim religious leaders, rabbis, and Catholic and Episcopal bishops who delivered scripture readings and prayers throughout the service. Prayers for the service drew from passages from the 1789 inauguration prayer service of George Washington and the 1865 inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, including phrases such as "with malice toward none, with charity for all". The featured sermon for the inaugural prayer service was delivered by Reverend Sharon E. Watkins, general minister and president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the first woman to deliver the sermon for the inaugural prayer service. In her sermon, Watkins integrated passages from a variety of sources, such as passages summoned from sources rooted in the Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Cherokee faiths.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: In addition to the official events, groups and supporters held an array of gatherings and celebrations throughout Washington, D.C., and the surrounding region in the days before and the evening following the inauguration. One such event, a newly created "People's Inaugural Ball" was held for economically and physically disadvantaged people from across the United States who otherwise would be unable to afford to attend the inaugural festivities. Earl W. Stafford, a businessman from Fairfax County, Virginia, spent an estimated $1.6 million through his family's foundation to bring approximately 300 guests to Washington, D.C., hosting the ball on January 19, 2009, for a total of about 450 people. Clothing, shoes, tuxedos and hotel rooms for attendees were provided as part of the invitation.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Outgoing President George W. Bush, outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney, former presidents Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, and former vice presidents Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle, and Al Gore, along with their respective wives, attended the inauguration, including Hillary Clinton (Obama's choice to succeed Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state), who had been Obama's main opponent in the Democratic primaries (Clinton was attending as a former First Lady, not as the losing candidate). Cheney was in a wheelchair because of an injury that he suffered while moving boxes.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Congressman John Lewis, the only living speaker from the historic 1963 rally at the March on Washington, was present on the stage during the inauguration. More than 180 of the Tuskegee Airmen attended as invited guests for the inauguration. The five-person crew of US Airways Flight 1549 attended the swearing-in ceremony, including Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who landed the aircraft in the Hudson River near Manhattan after losing both engines due to a bird strike just after departing LaGuardia Airport.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Eighty-seven-year-old Sarah Obama led a group of Obama's Kenyan relatives from his father's home village of Kogelo. Other relatives who traveled from Kenya as guests included Obama's aunt, Maggie Obama, his uncle, Sayid Obama, as well as his half-brother Malik Obama. Also, Kenya youth activist and Chair of the Martin Luther King, Jr Africa Foundation, Mwangi Mukami, attended the Inaugural events. Mukami had served as Chair of the Obama Worldwide Supporters Campaign though it was unrelated to the official campaign. Joe Biden's son, Beau, Attorney General for the state of Delaware and an officer and Judge Advocate in the Delaware Army National Guard, received a special furlough from serving in Iraq to participate in the ceremonies.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Celebrity guests included the actors Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, talk show host Oprah Winfrey, singer Beyoncé Knowles, director Steven Spielberg, Colombian singer Shakira, boxer Muhammad Ali, and golfer Tiger Woods.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: No official count was taken of the number of people attending the inaugural ceremony, although multiple sources concluded that the ceremony had the largest audience of any event ever held in Washington, D.C. Government agencies and federal officials, who coordinated security and traffic management, determined the attendance count to be 1.8 million people based on information collected by several cameras and individuals on the ground. "The Washington Post" reported the estimated crowd size for the inaugural ceremony, and the National Park Service said it did not contest the estimate.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Stephen Doig, a professor at Arizona State University, estimated that 1.1 million people attended the inauguration ceremony using the same satellite image. Although the image was taken a little less than 45 minutes before Obama's swearing-in ceremony, Doig adjusted his estimate to include people who were still arriving in the area before the event. Despite his crowd estimate, Doig stated that "if I had to bet, I would say the [Barack] Obama crowd is in fact bigger than those that showed up for [Johnson] or any of the other things ... I'm wholly prepared to think it was the largest crowd." Approximately 1.2 million people had attended the second inauguration of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Amid the massive crowds that arrived at the U.S. Capitol for the inauguration, about 4,000 ticket holders were unable to gain entry to reserved areas on the Capitol grounds after security personnel closed the gates at the start of the formal ceremony. Many ticket holders were stuck in tunnels where pedestrian traffic was directed to and from the National Mall. People dubbed one such tunnel "the Purple Tunnel of Doom", after the purple tickets that would-be viewers held. Others remained stuck in long lines as they waited to gain entry to the reserved areas. Senator Dianne Feinstein, in her capacity as chair of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, launched an investigation to address complaints by the affected ticket holders. The committee later announced that ticket holders who were unable to enter the Capitol grounds to view the ceremony would receive a copy of the swearing-in invitation and program, photos of President Obama and Vice President Biden and a color print of the inaugural ceremony.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Inauguration Day broke several records for the Washington Metropolitan Transit system. The 1,120,000 estimated Metrorail riders broke the record of 866,681 trips set the day before (which had broken the record set on July 11, 2008), and marked the first million-trip day in the system's history. Metro also provided 423,000 bus trips and 1,721 MetroAccess trips for a total of 1,544,721 trips, the highest ridership day ever in the transit authority's history. As of October 2018, the inauguration day crowd is still the largest in Metrorail history, but the 2017 Women's March has the highest counted, not estimated, single-day ridership of 1,001,613. In addition, the Sunday events helped Metro set a Sunday single-day record of 616,324 that is still the largest Sunday crowd.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: As with the 54th and 55th presidential inaugurations, in 2001 and 2005, respectively, the 56th presidential inauguration in 2009 was designated as a National Special Security Event (NSSE), resulting in the United States Secret Service being the lead Federal agency for the development and implementation of the overall security plan; the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) being the lead Federal agency for counter-terrorism, intelligence, and criminal investigation; and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) being the lead Federal agency for crisis management in the aftermath of any terrorist attack, natural disaster or other catastrophic incidents. The United States Capitol Police had primary responsibility for security and emergency response within the Capitol Complex to include the Inaugural Platform and the Inaugural Luncheon. The NSSE designation was made by Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security, on December 10, 2008. The inauguration took place in an era of enhanced security in the decade following the September 11 attacks. Because of the size of the crowds expected in Washington, D.C. for the inaugural activities, planners raised concerns about public safety and security. Army General Richard Rowe, head of the joint military task force for the Washington, D.C. area, explained that security forces had to stretch their imagination to anticipate previously unthinkable security threats, especially in light of the Mumbai attacks in India that occurred in November 2008. Attention was heightened by terrorist threats.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: The police presence in the District of Columbia temporarily doubled, augmented by the addition of 8,000 police officers from around the United States. The police force was assisted by 1,000 FBI agents to provide security for the event, and the Secret Service Countersniper team was assigned to hidden locations throughout the area. The Transportation Security Administration had over 300 officers from its National Deployment Force on hand to assist the Secret Service with security inspections of attendees entering the National Mall. Ten thousand National Guard troops were on site, with 5,000 troops providing security duty in a ceremonial capacity and 1,300 unarmed troops aiding Park Police in crowd control at the National Mall. C Company of the 1–175 Infantry provided security between the first and second public viewing areas of the National Mall at the 7th Street, N.W. intersection, while the remaining members performed other security functions. The Federal Aviation Administration implemented additional airspace restrictions over Washington, D.C. between 10:00 am and 6:00 pm on January 20, 2009. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was chosen as the designated survivor to ensure continuity of government in case of catastrophe, and he spent Inauguration Day at a U.S. military installation outside of the Washington, D.C. area.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: No one from the crowds at the swearing-in ceremony or parade was arrested on Inauguration Day. According to a senior federal agent associated with managing security, the fact that no arrests were made by any agency during the inaugural events was unheard of for a record crowd of nearly two million gathering in Washington, D.C. In the 2009 book "In the President's Secret Service", author and journalist Ronald Kessler said intelligence officials received information that individuals associated with Al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based Islamist insurgency group, might try to disrupt the inauguration. More than a dozen counter-sniper teams were stationed along the inauguration parade route in response. The criminal records of nearby employees and hotel guests were scrutinized, but no such attack took place. Kessler also reported some perceived inadequacies in the security during the inauguration, including an instance in which more than 100 major campaign donors and VIPs could board "secure" buses without being checked.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Nielsen television ratings indicated that 29.2% of televisions in the 56 largest media markets in the United States were tuned to the inauguration, the largest audience since Ronald Reagan's first inauguration in 1981 and nearly double the viewership of the 2005 inauguration of George W. Bush. The Raleigh-Durham market had the largest TV audience with more than 51% of households tuned into the day's events, a number attributed in part to a snowstorm that kept people inside and in part to the large African American population in that community. Of the top 10 media markets in terms of viewership, four were in North Carolina, two were in Virginia and one was in Maryland, with the Washington D.C. market ranking second highest in television viewership. In addition, schools and workplaces across the country allowed viewing of the inauguration because the event occurred on a weekday.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: As measured between 10:00 am and 5:00 pm EST, U.S. television viewership for the Obama inaugural events achieved an average of 37.8 million across 17 broadcast and cable channels, not including online viewers who watched live streaming video of the events. Although the Obama inaugural events achieved an average U.S. television viewership of 37.8 million across both broadcast networks and cable channels, viewership for the events was lower than the U.S. television viewership for the 1981 Reagan inaugural festivities, which averaged 41.8 million across the ABC, CBS and NBC broadcast networks alone.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Measurements of television viewership in Europe showed that Germany drew the largest audience for the Obama inauguration at 11 million viewers, followed by France at seven million and the United Kingdom at 5.1 million.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 6.5 million viewers in the United Kingdom watched highlights of the inauguration during its early evening news program.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: The Obama inauguration resulted in a surge of Internet traffic to news and social networking websites and a record number of video streams. CNN reported that it generated more than 21 million video streams by 3:30 pm EST that day—an all-time record, in addition to receiving 136 million page views that day. At one point during the surge of traffic to view the Obama inauguration, the BBC reported downtime during its own live video feed at its website. The heavy website traffic caused the BBC video feed to cut out for 30 minutes, with web visitors seeing the message "Please come back later" instead of the live video footage.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: The technology company Akamai reported that 5,401,250 web users logged on news sites in less than one minute, the fifth highest peak among news websites since the company started tracking data in 2005. During at-peak usage, news websites served seven million simultaneous video streams, which was the highest number of simultaneous video streams in Akamai's history. The Obama inaugural ceremony not only achieved the highest Internet viewership for a U.S. presidential inauguration, the inaugural event was the first to feature a live audio description of a swearing-in ceremony and the first to include closed captioning in the live webcast of the event.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: The international community paid unprecedented attention to the inauguration of Barack Obama. Millions of people, including citizens of numerous countries around the world and American expatriates living in those countries, watched the Obama inauguration live on television and on the Internet. In some countries, the Obama inauguration garnered as much viewership as the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Celebrations surrounding the inauguration, praise of the event's significance and congratulations to Obama on his inauguration were internationally diverse. In Kenya, the home country of Obama's father, people celebrated the inauguration as a public holiday. Indonesians and Americans in Jakarta watched the inauguration at a free midnight ball featuring performances by students from State Elementary School Menteng 01, the school that Obama attended as a child. The city of Obama in Japan celebrated the event with fireworks, bell-ringing and hula-dancing at the Hagaji Temple. Governor General Michaëlle Jean and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada extended congratulations on behalf of Canadians, while Mexican President Felipe Calderón wished Obama "great success in the work as the new President of the United States". Israeli President Shimon Peres described Obama's inauguration as a "great day" for the United States, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown noted that "The whole world is watching the inauguration of President Obama, witnessing a new chapter in both American history and the world's history."


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Leaders of some countries reserved enthusiasm for the Obama inauguration, with coverage of the event even muted in some places. Cuban President Raúl Castro, brother of former Cuban president Fidel Castro, declared that "[Obama] looks like a good man, I hope he is lucky", while Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban legislature, admitted in his comments about Obama that "the incoming [U.S.] president 'is a big question mark.'" Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki expressed hope for openness for a new direction, noting that "if Obama chooses the right path, compensates the past, lifts hostility and U.S. hegemony, and revises the previous political mistakes, we will have no hostility." State-owned Channel One Russia, Russia's flagship early evening news show, covered Obama's presidential inauguration as a minor news story, devoting much of the day's airtime instead to the gas war with Ukraine. The People's Republic of China covered the Obama inauguration live on its state‑controlled China Central Television, providing simultaneous translation into Mandarin Chinese with a brief delay to allow censoring of Obama's comments. When President Obama mentioned "earlier generations faced down fascism and communism", Chinese state television officials cut away abruptly from the televised speech and switched to a discussion in the studio. State-controlled print, radio and television media in North Korea provided no coverage or mention of the Obama inauguration in the hours after the event, opting instead to cover news about Equatorial Guinea welcoming the North Korean ambassador.


title: First inauguration of Barack Obama

text: Ordinary citizens in Iraq even viewed the new president with cautious optimism. One Iraqi citizen opined that "If [Obama] can do as well as he talks, then all our problems are over", adding a belief that "[Obama] is a good man, but many people in Iraq believe all American presidents are the same and that we are a playground for their interests." Another citizen noted that "Obama won't get the same treatment,' ... 'But he won't have too long to prove himself to us.'"


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Alberto R. Gonzales (born August 4, 1955) is an American lawyer who served as the 80th United States Attorney General, appointed in February 2005 by President George W. Bush, becoming the highest-ranking Hispanic American in executive government to date. He was the first Hispanic person to serve as White House Counsel. Earlier he had been Bush's General Counsel during the latter's governorship of Texas. Gonzales had also served as Secretary of State of Texas and then as a Texas Supreme Court Justice.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzales's tenure as U.S. Attorney General was marked by controversy regarding warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens and the legal authorization of enhanced interrogation techniques, later generally acknowledged as constituting torture, in the U.S. government's post-9/11 "War on Terror". Gonzales had also presided over the firings of several U.S. Attorneys who had refused back-channel White House directives to prosecute political enemies, allegedly causing the office of Attorney General to become improperly politicized. Following calls for his removal, Gonzales resigned from the office "in the best interests of the department," on August 27, 2007, effective September 17, 2007.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: In 2008, Gonzales began a mediation and consulting practice. Additionally, he taught a political science course and served as a diversity recruiter at Texas Tech University. Gonzales is currently the Dean of Belmont University College of Law, in Nashville, Tennessee, where he currently teaches National Security Law. He was formerly Of Counsel at a Nashville-based law firm, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, LLP where he advised clients on special matters, government investigations and regulatory matters. He often writes opinion pieces for national newspapers and appears on national news programs.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzales was born to a Catholic family in San Antonio, Texas, and raised in Humble, Texas, a town outside of Houston. Of Mexican descent, he was the second of eight children born to Maria (Rodriguez) and Pablo M. Gonzales. His father, who died in 1982, was a migrant worker and then a construction worker with a second grade education. His mother worked at home raising eight children and had a sixth grade education. Gonzales and his family of ten lived in a small, two-bedroom home built by his father and uncles with no telephone and no hot running water. According to Gonzales, he is unaware whether immigration documentation exists for three of his grandparents who were born in Mexico and may have entered and resided in the United States illegally.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: An honors student at MacArthur High School in unincorporated Harris County, Gonzales enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1973, for a four-year term of enlistment. He served one year at a remote radar site with 100 other GIs at Fort Yukon, Alaska. He was then released from active duty to attend the USAFA Prep School after which he received an appointment to the United States Air Force Academy. Prior to beginning his third year at the academy, which would have caused him to incur a further service obligation, he left the Academy and was released from the enlistment contract. He transferred to Rice University in Houston, where he was a resident of Lovett College. He went on to be selected as the Charles Parkhill Scholar of Political Science and was awarded a bachelor's degree with honors in political science in 1979. He then earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Harvard Law School in 1982.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzales has been married twice: he and his first wife, Diane Clemens, divorced in 1985; he and his second wife, Rebecca Turner Gonzales, have three sons.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzales was an attorney in private practice from 1982 until 1994 with the Houston law firm Vinson and Elkins, where he became a partner – one of the first Hispanic partners in its history – and where he worked primarily with corporate clients. In 1994, he was named general counsel to then-Texas Governor George W. Bush, rising to become Secretary of State of Texas in 1997 and subsequently named to the Texas Supreme Court in 1999, both appointments made by Governor Bush. Gonzales won his election bid to remain on the court in the Republican Primary in 2000, and was subsequently elected to a full six-year term on the State Supreme Court in the November 2000 general election.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzales has been active in the community, serving as board director or committee member for several non-profit organizations between 1985 and 1994.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: In the legal sphere Gonzales provided pro bono legal services to the Host Committee for the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston, acted as a board director for the State Bar of Texas from 1991 to 1994, and was board trustee of the Texas Bar Foundation from 1996 to 1999. He has received numerous professional honors, including the Presidential Citation from the State Bar of Texas in 1997 for his dedication to addressing basic legal needs of the indigent. In 1999, he was named Latino Lawyer of the Year by the Hispanic National Bar Association.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Between 2002 and 2003, Gonzales was recognized as a Distinguished Alumnus of Rice University and received the Harvard Law School Association Award, John Ben Shepperd Public Leadership Institute Outstanding Texas Leader Award, United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce President's Award, League of United Latin American Citizens President's Award, the Gary L. McPherson Distinguished Alumni Award from the American Council of Young Political Leaders, the Chairman's Leadership Award from the Texas Association of Mexican American Chamber of Commerce, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund's Truinfador Award, the Hispanic Hero Award from the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans, the Good Neighbor Award from the United States-Mexican Chamber of Commerce, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Travis County, Texas Republican Party. In 2004, Gonzales was honored with the Exemplary Leader Award by the Houston American Leadership Forum and in 2005 with the Hector Barreto, Sr. Award by the Latino Coalition and with a President's Award by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: As the son of former migrant workers, many recognized Gonzales's appointment as Attorney General of the United States as the embodiment of the American dream. His professional achievements and work in the Hispanic community earned him recognition as Hispanic American of the Year by "Hispanic" magazine in 2005 and one of the 25 Most Influential Hispanics in America by "Time" magazine. Gonzales was inducted into the Class of 2005 in the American Academy of Achievement. Gonzales received the Distinguished Leadership Award in 2006 from Leadership Houston. In 2007, as he left government service, he was honored with the Director's Award from the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: On May 20, 2006, Houston Mayor Bill White proclaimed "Alberto R. Gonzales Day" in Houston for his contributions to the betterment of the City of Houston. Academic institutions have also recognized Gonzales's achievements. He received an Honorary Doctor of Laws in 2002 from The Catholic University of America; an Honorary Degree in Arts and Letters in 2003 from Miami-Dade Community College; an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws in 2005 from the University of District of Columbia; an Honorary Degree in Associate of Arts in 2005 from the Houston Community College System; and an Honorary Alumnus Award in 2007 from Southern Methodist University.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: As counsel to Governor Bush, Gonzales helped advise Bush in connection with jury duty when he was called in a 1996 Travis County drunk driving case. The case led to controversy during Bush's 2000 presidential campaign because Bush's answers to the potential juror questionnaire did not disclose Bush's own 1976 misdemeanor drunk driving conviction. Gonzales made no formal request for Bush to be excused from jury duty but raised a possible conflict of interest because as the Governor, Bush might be called upon to pardon the accused party. Gonzales's work in this case has been described as "canny lawyering".


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: As Governor Bush's counsel in Texas, Gonzales also reviewed all clemency requests. A 2003 article in "The Atlantic Monthly" asserted that Gonzales gave insufficient counsel, and failed to second-guess convictions and failed appeals. Gonzales's deputy general counsel from 1995 to 1999, Pete Wassdorf, in turn sought to defend Gonzales from what he characterized as an inaccurate and incomplete picture of the clemency process under Bush. Under Section II, Article 4 of the Texas Constitution, the Governor cannot grant a pardon or commute a death sentence except with a majority vote recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, so Bush was constrained in granting clemency even if he had wanted to do so in a case. The fact remains that only one death sentence was overturned by Governor Bush, and the state of Texas executed more prisoners during Gonzales's term than any other state.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: As White House counsel, and later as attorney general, Gonzales served president George W. Bush through a period of escalating controversy over the legality of U.S. policies in the fight against terrorism. Gonzales approved the legal framework for the administration's anti-terrorism efforts and was a reliable advocate for White House policy. He supported positions that enlarged the power of the executive and diminished protections for interrogation subjects. These rulings were vocally challenged by many scholars and human-rights advocates and were partly overturned by the courts. He resigned following sharp criticism of his handling of the firing of nine U.S. attorneys and subsequent testimony during congressional hearings.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzalez was a supporter of the Bush administration's policy of torture of detainees, internally referred to as "Enhanced interrogation techniques".


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: In January 2002, Gonzales authored a memo that explored whether the Geneva Convention section III on the Treatment of Prisoners of War (GPW) applied to Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan and held in detention facilities around the world, including Camp X-Ray in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The memo made several arguments both for and against providing GPW protection to al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. The memo concluded that certain provisions of GPW were outdated and ill-suited for dealing with captured Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters: "[The war against terrorism] is not the traditional clash between nations adhering to the laws of war that formed the backdrop for GPW. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians, and the need to try terrorists for war crimes such as wantonly killing civilians."


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzales later explained, "The old ways may not work here. That's what the memo was intended to convey to the President. I never meant to convey to the President that the basic values in the Geneva Convention were outdated." He noted that a British parliamentary committee visiting Guantánamo, while horrified by conditions at the base, had reached a similar conclusion when it said, "the Geneva Conventions are failing to provide necessary protection because they lack clarity and are out of date". He argued that existing military regulations and instructions from the President were more than adequate to ensure that the principles of the Geneva Convention would be applied. He also expressed a concern that undefined language in Common Article III of GPW, such as "outrages upon personal dignity" and "inhuman treatment" could make officials and military leaders subject to the War Crimes Act of 1996 if actions were deemed to constitute violations of the Act. Attorney General John Ashcroft made a similar argument on behalf of the Justice Department by letter to the President dated February 1, 2002, writing that a presidential determination "against treaty application would provide the highest assurance that no court would subsequently entertain charges that American military officers, intelligence officials or law enforcement officials violated Geneva Convention rules relating to field conduct, detention conduct or interrogation of detainees. The War Crimes Act of 1996 makes violations of parts of the Geneva Convention a crime in the United States."


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzalez oversaw President Bush's Office of Legal Counsel on August 1, 2002, at which time the OLC produced the Bybee memo, a document that provided the legal framework by which previous interpretations of the Geneva Convention and the United Nations Convention Against Torture were modified to expand Presidential authority to enable so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques".


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: The memo was produced in response to a specific CIA request for clarification of the standards of interrogation under U.S. law, in the specific case of Abu Zabaydah, a man believed at the time to be a high-level al-Qaeda leader. In response, the Justice Department issued a classified August 1, 2002, memo to the CIA from Jay Bybee, the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, and an August 1, 2002, legal opinion to Gonzales from Jay Bybee defining torture as an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Journalists including Jane Mayer, Joby Warrick and Peter Finn, and Alex Koppelman have reported the CIA was already using these harsh tactics before the memo authorizing their use was written, and that it was used to provide after-the-fact legal support for harsh interrogation techniques. A Department of Justice 2009 report regarding prisoner abuses reportedly stated the memos were prepared one month after Abu Zubaydah had already been subjected to the specific techniques authorized in the August 1, 2002, memo. John Kiriakou stated in July 2009 that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded in the early summer of 2002, months before the August 1, 2002, memo was written.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: The memo described ten techniques that the interrogators wanted to use: "(1) attention grasp, (2) walling, (3) facial hold, (4) facial slap (insult slap), (5) cramped confinement, (6) wall standing, (7) stress positions, (8) sleep deprivation, (9) insects placed in a confinement box, and (10) the waterboard." Many of the techniques were, until then, generally considered illegal. Many other techniques developed by the CIA were held to constitute inhumane and degrading treatment and torture under the United Nations Convention against Torture and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. As reported later, many of these interrogation techniques were previously considered illegal under U.S. and international law and treaties at the time of Abu Zubaydah's capture. For instance, the United States had prosecuted Japanese military officials after World War II and American soldiers after the Vietnam War for waterboarding. Since 1930, the United States had defined sleep deprivation as an illegal form of torture. Many other techniques developed by the CIA constitute inhuman and degrading treatment and torture under the United Nations Convention against Torture, and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: In May 2005, three months after Gonzales became attorney general, Steven G. Bradbury of the Office of Legal Counsel issued a pair of classified opinions that, for the first time, provided Central Intelligence Agency explicit authorization to apply to terror suspects a variety of painful physical and psychological interrogation methods, either alone or in combination. The approved techniques included striking a prisoner, exposure to extreme temperatures, stress positions, walling, sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours ( days), and the simulated drowning procedure known as "waterboarding". These secret memos superseded a previous, unclassified legal opinion that declared torture "abhorrent." Nevertheless, the classified opinions claimed that their reasoning and conclusions were based upon and fully consistent with the previous legal opinion. Gonzales reportedly approved the May 10, 2005, classified legal memoranda over the policy objections of James B. Comey, the outgoing deputy attorney general, who told colleagues at the Justice Department that they would all be "ashamed" when the world eventually learned of it. Patrick Leahy and John Conyers, chairmen of the respective Senate and House Judiciary Committees, requested that the Justice Department turn over documents related to the classified 2005 legal opinions to their committees for review.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: In 2009, The Obama administration stated it would abide by the Geneva Convention and described some of the enhanced interrogation techniques established under Attorney General Gonzales's tenure as torture. On January 22, 2009, President Obama signed an executive order requiring the CIA to use only the 19 interrogation methods outlined in the United States Army Field Manual on interrogations "unless the Attorney General with appropriate consultation provides further guidance.") Bradbury's memoranda were publicly released by the Obama Administration on April 16, 2009.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzales had a long relationship with former president George W. Bush. Gonzales served as a general counsel when Bush was the governor of Texas. Such relationship made critics question whether he would maintain independence in his administration of the U.S. Department of Justice. Gonzales has been called Bush's "yes man." Even though the advice given by Gonzales was based and supported by other lawyers, specifically the Department of Justice, charged by statute to provide legal advice to the President, critics claim that Gonzales gave only the legal advice Bush wanted. Critics questioned Gonzales's ethics and professional conduct.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: "To his backers, Gonzales is a quiet, hardworking attorney general notable for his open management style and his commitment to the administration of justice and to the war on terrorism."


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: One publication reported, "Gonzales contends that his friendship with Bush makes him a better advocate for the rule of law within the executive branch." My responsibilities is to ensure that the laws are enforced, that everyone in the country receives justice under the law—independent of my relationship with the White House, independent of my relationship with the President of the United States," he told National Journal. Another report states that Gonzales has "a long history of dogged obedience to the President, which often has come at the cost of institutional independence and adherence to the rule of law."


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Executive Order 13233, drafted by Gonzales and issued by President George W. Bush on November 1, 2001, shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, attempted to place limitations on the Freedom of Information Act by restricting access to the records of former presidents. The order asserted the President's power to delay the release of presidential records longer than the congressionally mandated period of 12 years after the president leaves office. Executive Order 13233 revoked President Ronald Reagan's Executive Order 12667 on the same subject and had the effect of delaying the release of Reagan's papers, which were due to be made public when Bush took office in 2001. While the policy was being drawn up, Gonzales as Counsel to the President issued a series of orders to the U.S. Archivist to delay the release of Reagan's records. This order was the subject of a number of lawsuits and Congressional attempts to overturn it. In 2007, a D.C. district court ordered the Archivist not to obey this order, finding it to be "arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act." On January 21, 2009 (his first day in office), President Barack Obama revoked Executive Order 13233 by issuing , with wording largely matching Reagan's Executive Order 12667.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzales fought with Congress to keep Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force documents from being reviewed. His arguments were ultimately upheld by courts. On July 2, 2004, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Vice President, but remanded the case back to the D.C. Circuit. On May 11, 2005, the D.C. Circuit threw out the lawsuit and ruled the Vice President was free to meet in private with energy industry representatives in 2001 while drawing up the President's energy policy.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzales's name was sometimes floated as a possible nominee to the United States Supreme Court during Bush's first presidential term. On November 10, 2004, it was announced that he would be nominated to replace United States Attorney General John Ashcroft for Bush's second term. Gonzales was regarded as a moderate compared to Ashcroft because he was not seen as opposing abortion or affirmative action. Although he has never stated publicly his support for abortion and later as attorney general, was the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case Gonzales v. Carhart, which reinforced the ban on late-term abortion that was previously overturned, and had stated publicly his opposition to racial quotas, some people assumed Gonzales did not oppose abortion or affirmative action. According to a Texas Monthly article, Gonzales has never said he was pro-choice and he has publicly opposed racial quotas.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: The perceived departure from some conservative viewpoints elicited strong opposition to Gonzales that started during his Senate confirmation proceedings at the beginning of President Bush's second term. "The New York Times" quoted anonymous Republican officials as saying that Gonzales's appointment to attorney general was a way to "bolster Mr. Gonzales's credentials" en route to a later Supreme Court appointment.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzales enjoyed broad bipartisan support in connection with his nomination, including the support of former Democratic HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros and Colorado Democratic Senator Ken Salazar. One writer noted, "A senator from Pennsylvania said, 'I have always found him [Alberto Gonzales] to be completely forthright, brutally honest – in some cases telling me things I did not want to hear but always forthright, always honest, sincere, serious. This is a serious man who takes the responsibilities that have been given to him as a great privilege and a great honor which he holds very carefully and gently in his hands.' Said another senator, this one from Kentucky, 'Judge Gonzales is proof that in America, there are no artificial barriers to success. A man or woman can climb to any height that his or her talents can take them. For Judge Gonzales, that is a very high altitude indeed. And luckily for his country, he is not quite finished climbing yet.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: The nomination was approved on February 3, 2005, with the confirming vote largely split along party lines 60–36 (54 Republicans and 6 Democrats in favor, and 36 Democrats against, along with 4 abstentions: 3 Democrat and 1 Republican).


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzales helped draft the January 2002 Presidential Order that authorized the use of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects. The order provided the President the power to hold any non-citizen who he deemed a terrorist, or accessory to a terrorist, in military detention and subject to trial before a military commission. Subsequently the United States Department of Defense (DOD) organized military tribunals to judge charges against enemy combatant detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. In the early years, the camp authorities did not allow foreign detainees access to attorneys, or materials supporting their charges, and the executive branch declared them outside the reach of due process under "habeas corpus". In "Rasul v. Bush" (2004), the US Supreme Court ruled that they did have rights to habeas corpus and had to be provided access to legal counsel and an opportunity to challenge their detention before an impartial tribunal. Further, in 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in "Hamdan v. Rumsfeld" that trying Guantanamo Bay detainees under the existing Guantanamo military commission (known also as Military Tribunal) was illegal under US law, including the Geneva Conventions.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: The president requested and Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The bill was controversial for continuing to authorize the President to designate certain people as "unlawful enemy combatants," thus making them subject to military commissions, and depriving them of "habeas corpus". In "Boumediene v. Bush" (2008), the US Supreme Court ruled that foreign detainees held by the United States, including those at Guantanamo Bay detention camp, did have the right of "habeas corpus" under the US constitution, as the US had sole authority at the Guantanamo Bay base. It held that the 2006 Military Commissions Act was an unconstitutional suspension of that right.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: On January 18, 2007, Gonzales was invited to speak to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he shocked the committee's ranking member, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, with statements regarding the right of habeas corpus in the United States Constitution. An excerpt of the exchange follows:


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Senator Specter was referring to 2nd Clause of Section 9 of Article One of the Constitution of the United States, which reads: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." This passage has been historically interpreted to mean that the right of habeas corpus is inherently established. Gonzales dissents from the consensus view, siding with Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, who said "[a]though the Constitution prohibits Congress from suspending the writ of habeas corpus except during times of rebellion or invasion, this provision was probably meant to keep Congress from suspending the writ and preventing state courts from releasing individuals who were wrongfully imprisoned. The constitutional provision does not create a right to habeas corpus; rather federal statutes [do so]." Additionally, "the Constitutional Convention prevented Congress from obstructing the states courts' ability to grant the writ, but did not try to create a federal constitutional right to habeas corpus". "After all, if the suspension clause itself were an affirmative grant of procedural rights to those held in federal custody, there would have been little need for the first Congress to enact as it did, habeas corpus protections in the Judiciary Act of 1789." Chemerinsky's argument has been denied by Justice Paul Stevens in a 2001 opinion in an immigration case involving the issue, where Stevens touches upon what he believes the 'far more sensible view':


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Justice Steven's assertion is backed up by sentiments found in the Federalist No. 84, which enshrines the right to petition for habeas corpus as fundamental:


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: The Constitution presupposes that courts in the United States will have the authority to issue the writ as they historically did at common law. See, e.g., Immigration and Naturalization Service v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289 (2001); Felker v. Turpin, 518 U.S. 651, 666 (1996). The Suspension clause of the Constitution provides that "[t]he privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in case of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." As some commentators have noted, "the text does not explicitly confer a right to habeas relief, but merely sets forth when the Privilege of the Writ may be suspended".


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: By law, U.S. Attorneys are appointed for a term of four years, and each U.S. Attorney serves at the pleasure of the President and is subject to removal by the President for any reason, or no reason at all, barring only illegal and improper reasons. When Gonzales became attorney general in 2005, he ordered a performance review of all U.S. Attorneys. On December 7, 2006, seven United States attorneys were notified by the United States Department of Justice that they were being dismissed, after the George W. Bush administration sought their resignation. One more, Bud Cummins, who had been informed of his dismissal in June 2006, announced his resignation on December 15, 2006, effective December 20, 2006, upon being notified of Tim Griffin's appointment as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. In the subsequent congressional hearings and press reports, it was disclosed that additional U.S. attorneys were controversially dismissed without explanation to the dismissee in 2005 and 2006, and that at least 26 U.S. attorneys were at various times considered for dismissal.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Although U.S. attorneys can be dismissed at the discretion of the president, critics claimed that the dismissals were either motivated by desire to install attorneys more loyal to the Republican party ("loyal Bushies," in the words of Kyle Sampson, Gonzales's former chief of staff) or as retribution for actions or inactions damaging to the Republican party. At least six of the eight had received positive performance reviews at the Department of Justice. DOJ officials Will Moschella and Monica Goodling both testified under oath that EARS evaluations are office-wide reviews, they are not reviews of the U.S. Attorneys themselves. Gonzales testified under oath that EARS evaluations do not necessarily reflect on the U.S. Attorney. In other words, these reviews were not evaluations of the performance of the fired federal prosecutors.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: In a press conference given on March 13, Gonzales suggested that "incomplete information, was communicated or may have been communicated to the Congress" and he accepted full responsibility. Nonetheless, Gonzales avowed that his knowledge of the process to fire and select new US attorneys was limited to how the US attorneys may have been classified as "strong performers, not-as-strong performers, and weak performers." Gonzales also asserted that was all he knew of the process, saying that "[I] was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That's basically what I knew as the Attorney General."


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Department of Justice records released on March 23, however, appeared to contradict some of the Attorney General's assertions, indicating that on his Nov 27 schedule "he attended an hour-long meeting at which, aides said, he approved a detailed plan for executing the purge." Despite insisting that he was not involved in the "deliberations" leading up to the firing of the attorneys, newly released emails also suggest that he had indeed been notified and that he had given ultimate approval.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: In his prepared testimony to Congress on April 19, 2007, Gonzales insisted he left the decisions on the firings to his staff. ABC News, however, obtained an internal department email showing that Gonzales urged the ouster of Carol Lam, one of the fired attorneys, six months before she was asked to leave. During actual testimony on April 19, Gonzales stated at least 71 times that he couldn't recall events related to the controversy. Those dubious explanations led to diminished Senate support for his continued tenure, with even conservative Republicans Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma calling for his resignation.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: His responses frustrated the Democrats on the committee, as well as several Republicans. One example of such frustration came in an exchange between Sessions and Gonzales regarding a November 2006 meeting. Sessions was one of the most conservative members of the Senate, and was one of the Bush Administration's staunchest allies. At the meeting, the attorney firings were purportedly discussed, but Gonzales did not remember such discussion. As reported by the Washington Post, the dialogue went as follows:


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Another example came when Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who had been the first lawmaker to call for Gonzales's ouster, declined to ask his last round of questions. Instead, a visibly angry Schumer said there was no point to further questioning and reiterated his call for Gonzales to resign. By Schumer's count, Gonzales had stated "over a hundred times" that he didn't know or couldn't recall important details concerning the firings, and also didn't seem to know about the workings of his own department. Gonzales responded that the onus was on the committee to prove whether anything improper occurred. Schumer replied that Gonzales faced a higher standard, and that under this standard he had to give "a full, complete and convincing explanation" for why the eight attorneys were fired.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Both Democrats and Republicans were critical of Gonzales's testimony to congress, which was widely regarded as exhibiting greater loyalty to president Bush than to the truth. With increasing numbers of senators calling for him to go, Gonzales resigned as attorney general effective September 17, 2007.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: The Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility commenced an investigation into the removal of nine U.S. Attorneys and issued a report in September 2008. The report cited serious issues of accountability removing a few of the U.S. Attorneys, but there was no finding that the nine U.S. Attorneys were removed for illegal or improper reasons. To the contrary, the report concluded that Margaret Chiara and Kevin Ryan were removed appropriately for management issues. Paul Charlton was removed for his action relating to a death penalty case and unilateral implementation of an interrogation policy. The report found Carol Lam was removed because of the Justice Department's concerns about the low number of gun and immigration prosecutions in her district. The report concluded John McKay was asked to leave because of his disagreement with the Deputy Attorney General over an information-sharing program. The report could not cite to a reason Dan Bogden was asked to leave, but there was no finding that anything illegal or improper occurred with his removal. The report concluded Bud Cummins was asked to leave to make room for another political appointee that he himself conceded under oath was qualified to serve as a U.S. Attorney. These findings were consistent with testimony given by Gonzales. Politics was clearly involved.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: The report also concluded Todd Graves was removed to settle a political dispute in Missouri, which was motivated by politics. The report found that it could not conclude that David Iglesias was removed for an improper reason. Because the IG had no authority to investigate Congress or the White House, the IG asked Attorney General Mukasey to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Iglesias removal. This special prosecutor found no wrongdoing in the removal of Iglesias. The DOJ IG found no criminal wrongdoing in the records. As the Wall Street Journal reported "the Justice Department informed Congress on Wednesday that a special investigator in the case found no evidence of wrongdoing ... the investigator's final word is that no Administration official gave 'false statements' to Congress or to the DOJ Inspector General, which carried out their own investigation." In particular, the report found no evidence that Gonzales made false or misleading statements to Congress, thus clearing him of accusations of perjury.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: The IG report determined that some statements made by Gonzales at a March 13, 2007 press conference about his involvement were inaccurate. The report did not conclude that Gonzales deliberately provided false information. He acknowledged from the outset his misstatements, accepted responsibility, and attempted to set the record straight well before congressional testimony on April 19, 2007. Gonzales testified 18 months before the IG reports that statements he made at the March 13, 2007 press conference were misstatements and were overboard. Further, in his written statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, presented April 19, 2007, Gonzales wrote: "I misspoke at a press conference on March 13th when I said that I "was not involved in any discussions about what was going on." That statement was too broad. At that same press conference, I made clear that I was aware of the process; I said, "I knew my Chief of Staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers, where were the districts around the country where we could do better for the people in that district, and that's what I knew". Of course, I knew about the process because of, at a minimum, these discussions with Mr. Sampson. Thus, my statement about "discussions" was imprecise and overboard, but it certainly was not in any way an attempt to mislead the American people."


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: In August 2009, White House documents released showed that Rove raised concerns directly with Gonzales and that Domenici or an intermediary may have contacted the Justice Department as early as 2005 to complain. In contrast, Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2007: "I don't recall ... Senator Domenici ever requesting that Mr. Iglesias be removed." In July 2010, Department of Justice prosecutors closed the two-year investigation without filing charges after determining that the firings were not criminal, saying "Evidence did not demonstrate that any prosecutable criminal offense was committed with regard to the removal of David Iglesias. The investigative team also determined that the evidence did not warrant expanding the scope of the investigation beyond the removal of Iglesias."


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Gonzales was an early advocate of the controversial USA PATRIOT Act, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush on October 26, 2001. During Gonzales's tenure, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were accused of improperly, and perhaps illegally, using the USA PATRIOT Act to uncover personal information about U.S. citizens.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: In a December 2005 article in "The New York Times", it was revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without warrants in cases where (i) NSA intelligence agents had reason to believe at least one party to the call was a member of al Qaeda or a group affiliated with al Qaeda, and (ii) the call was international. "The New York Times" acknowledged that the activities had been classified, and that it had disclosed the activities over the Administration's objections. As such, Attorney General Gonzales threatened the "Times" with prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917, since knowing publication of classified information is a federal crime. Gonzales raised the possibility that "The New York Times" journalists could be prosecuted for publishing classified information based on the outcome of the criminal investigation underway into leaks to the "Times" of data about the National Security Agency's surveillance of terrorist-related calls between the United States and abroad. He said, "I understand very much the role that the press plays in our society, the protection under the First Amendment we want to protect and respect ..." As for the "Times", he said, "As we do in every case, it's a case-by-case evaluation about what the evidence shows us, our interpretation of the law. We have an obligation to enforce the law and to prosecute those who engage in criminal activity."


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: The publication led to an investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) over the role of Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers in giving legal advice to support various intelligence collection activities. OPR is responsible for investigating allegations of professional misconduct by DOJ attorneys. The objective of OPR is to ensure that DOJ attorneys perform their duties in accordance with the highest professional standards.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: The Bush Administration and Attorney General Gonzales believed that OPR did not have the authority to investigate Gonzales's role as White House Counsel in connection with certain intelligence activities authorized by the President. In response to suggestions that Gonzales blocked the investigation or that the President blocked the investigation to protect Gonzales, Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling informed Chairman John Conyers on March 22, 2007, that "the President made the decision not to grant the requested security clearances to" OPR staff. Judge Gonzales "was not told he was the subject or target of the OPR investigation, nor did he believe himself to be ..." Judge Gonzales "did not ask the President to shut down or otherwise impede the OPR investigation". Judge Gonzales "recommended to the President that OPR be granted security clearance."


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: In a letter to the Senate dated August 1, 2007, Gonzales disclosed that shortly after the September 11 attacks, the President authorized the NSA, under a single Presidential Authorization, to engage in a number of intelligence activities, which would later be collectively described as the "President's Surveillance Program" (PSP) by the DOJ Inspector General, Glenn A. Fine. Some of these authorized activities were described as the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" (TSP) by President Bush, in an address to the nation on December 16, 2005. As the August 1 letter indicates, the dispute between the President and James Comey that led to the hospital visit was not over TSP, it concerned other classified intelligence activities that are part of PSP and have not been disclosed. He defended his authorization of the program, asserting "if you are talking with al-Qaeda, we want to know why." In his letter, Gonzales wrote the Senate Judiciary Committee that he defined TSP as the program the President publicly confirmed, a program that targets communications where one party is outside the United States, and as to which the government had reason to believe at least one party to the communication is a member of al-Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organization. Indeed, prior to the 2007 letter, Gonzales provided the same definition of TSP in several public appearances leading up to a hearing in Congress on February 6, 2006.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: In March 2004, the TSP operations, (code-named Stellar Wind,) became the focal point for a dispute between the White House and then-acting-Attorney-General James B. Comey, resulting in a dramatic, late-night meeting between Gonzales, Comey, the bedridden AG John Ashcroft, and other DOJ officials, in a George Washington University Hospital room. According to initial statements by Gonzales, the disagreement was not over TSP; rather, he claimed it concerned other classified intelligence activities that fell under the PSP, which had not been disclosed. Comey contended that the incident, (which had culminated in a heated phone conversation following the hospital visit,) had indeed been over the activities comprising the TSP. Through a spokesperson, Gonzales later denied his original assertion that the dispute was over TSP, claiming that he had misspoken. The controversy over these conflicting statements led Senator Charles Schumer to request appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate if Gonzales had committed perjury.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: In testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 15, 2007, former Deputy Attorney General Comey was asked to recall the events of the evening of March 10, 2004, when, (at the behest of President Bush,) Gonzales and Bush's then-chief-of-staff Andrew H. Card Jr. sought to bypass Comey's refusal to authorize "a particular classified program," by appealing to the ailing John Ashcroft in a visit to his hospital bedside, as he recovered from surgery for pancreatitis. According to Comey, he had consulted with AG Ashcroft prior to his hospitalization and, (though Ashcroft had previously signed off on the program many times in previous years,) the two of them came to agree that there had arisen legitimate concerns, which interfered with the ability of the attorney general's office, "to certify (the program's) legality, which was our obligation for the program to be renewed." More than a week later, Comey continued, Ashcroft had become extremely ill and his wife had forbidden any visitors to his hospital room, so when he and the other officials met at his bedside on March 10, he was very concerned about General Ashcroft's ability to think clearly about the issue at hand.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Later testimony from Gonzales and others confirmed that Ashcroft did not seem disoriented, but in fact seemed lucid enough to describe to Card and Gonzales, in great detail, the basis of the Department's legal arguments, and even to complain about clearance decisions by the President relative to the TSP.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Comey also testified that there was significant dissent among top law enforcement officers over the program, although he did not specifically identify it in the hearing. Moreover, in light of the incident at the hospital, "top Justice Department officials were prepared to resign over it."


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, corroborates many of the details of Comey's Senate testimony regarding the March 10, 2004, hospital room visit, in a preview of his book "The Terror Presidency", which was to be published in Fall 2007. In the September 9, 2007, issue of "The New York Times Magazine" Jeffrey Rosen reports on an extended interview he had with Goldsmith, who was also in the hospital room that night.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Comey also testified that Ashcroft "expressed himself in very strong terms." Goldsmith testified that Ashcroft spoke at length about the legal issue. "Attorney General Ashcroft ... [gave] a couple of minutes' speech in which he said that he ... shared the Justice department's concerns." Although he was not present for the conversation between Gonzales and Ashcroft, FBI Director Bob Mueller testified, "Ashcroft complained to Judge Gonzales about White House compartmentalization rules preventing Ashcroft from getting the advice he needed." On July 24, 2007, Gonzales testified that he and Card were also concerned about Ashcroft's competency. "Obviously there was concern about General Ashcroft's condition. And we would not have sought nor did we intend to get any approval from General Ashcroft if in fact he wasn't fully competent to make the decision." In response to a question from Senator Hatch, Gonzales continued, "Obviously we were concerned about the condition of General Ashcroft. We obviously knew he had been ill and had surgery. And we never had any intent to ask anything of him if we did not feel that he was competent. When we got there, I will just say that Mr. Ashcroft did most of the talking. We were there maybe five minutes – five to six minutes. Mr. Ashcroft talked about the legal issues in a lucid form, as I've heard him talk about legal issues in the White House.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: During the July 24 hearing, Gonzales's testimony lasted for almost four hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He appeared to contradict the earlier statements made by James Comey regarding the hospital room meeting with John Ashcroft.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Senator Chuck Schumer confronted Gonzales over this statement: "That is not what Mr. Comey says; that is not what the people in the room say." Gonzales responded "That's how we clarify it." Nonetheless, the DOJ Inspector General's report concluded that there was nothing false or intentionally misleading in Gonzales's account.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: The Inspector General also concluded that the dispute between the White House and the DOJ concerned "Other Intelligence Activities," which, though they had been implemented through the same Presidential Authorization, were not the same as the communications interception activities that the President publicly identified as the Terrorist Surveillance Program. The DOJ Inspector General agreed with Gonzales noting in his report that the "dispute-which resulted in the visit to Attorney General Ashcroft's hospital room by Gonzales and Card and brought several senior DOJ and FBI officials to the brink of resignations – concerned certain of the Other Intelligence Activities that were different from the communication interception activities that the President later publicly acknowledged as the Terrorist Surveillance Program, but that had been implemented through the same Presidential Authorization. As the IG report confirms, the dispute involved Other Intelligence Activities, it was not about TSP.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: Through his testimony before Congress on issues ranging from the Patriot Act to U.S. Attorney firings, he commonly admitted ignorance. The response to Gonzales's testimony by those Senators serving on both the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees was one of disbelief. Russ Feingold, who is a member of both the Judiciary and Intelligence committees, said, "I believe your testimony is misleading at best," which Sheldon Whitehouse—also a member of both committees—concurred with, saying, "I have exactly the same perception." Chuck Schumer said Gonzales was "not being straightforward" with the committee. Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said, "I just don't trust you," and urged Gonzales to carefully review his testimony. The ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, said to Gonzales, "Your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable." Leahy and Specter's comments were interpreted as warnings that Gonzales might have been perjuring himself. After the meeting, Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller said Gonzales was being "untruthful." Rockefeller's sentiments were echoed by Jane Harman, a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, who accused Gonzales of "selectively declassifying information to defend his own conduct."


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: On July 26, 2007, the Associated Press obtained a four-page memorandum from the office of former Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte dated May 17, 2006, which appeared to contradict Gonzales's testimony the previous day regarding the subject of a March 10, 2004 emergency Congressional briefing that preceded his hospital room meeting with former attorney general John Ashcroft, James B. Comey and former White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. There was no contradiction, however, as the July 1, 2009 IG report confirms. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, the President authorized a number of intelligence activities reported by the IG on the President's Surveillance Program (PSP). One set of activities were TSP, but the dispute was about certain of the Other Intelligence Activities. The IG report is clear on p. 37 that the TSP "was not the subject of the hospital room confrontation or the threatened resignations." P. 36 of the Inspector General report goes on to say that the White House had a major disagreement related to PSP. The dispute that resulted in the visit to Attorney General Ashcroft's hospital room by Gonzales and Card and brought several senior DOJ and FBI officials to the brink of resignation-concerned certain of the Other Intelligence Activities that were different from the communications interception activities that the President later publicly acknowledged as the TSP, but that had been implemented through the same President Authorizations.


title: Alberto Gonzales

text: On that same day, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert S. Mueller III also seemed to dispute the accuracy of Gonzales's Senate Judiciary Committee testimony of the previous day regarding the events of March 10, 2004 in his own sworn testimony on that subject before the House Judiciary Committee.