WASHINGTON — Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told investigators that he could not recall whether he took home notes regarding the government’s most sensitive national-security program and that he did not know they contained classified information, despite his own markings that they were “top secret,” according to a Justice Department report released Tuesday.
Gonzales improperly carried notes about the warrantless-wiretapping program in an unlocked briefcase and failed to keep them in a safe at his northern Virginia home three years ago because he “could not remember the combination,” the department’s inspector general reported.
A National Security Agency official who reviewed the notes said they contained references to operational aspects of the wiretapping initiative, including a top-secret code word for the program, information that had been “zealously protected” by the agency, the report said.
Gonzales brought the notes home with him on Feb. 3, 2005, the day he moved from his post as White House counsel to his new job as the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer, according to the report. They were at his home or in his briefcase for an “indeterminate” amount of time, investigators said. Ultimately, Gonzales stored them in a safe outside his Justice Department office that was accessible by people who lacked the requisite security clearances to see them.
Gonzales also stored 17 other classified documents on electronic surveillance and detainee-interrogation programs there. In one instance, employees searching for material related to a Freedom of Information Act request in 2006 sifted through the sensitive material in the safe “document by document,” the report said.
Mishandling classified material violates Justice Department polices and can result in criminal charges, but prosecutors in the department’s National Security Division declined to bring a case after reviewing the allegations and consulting with career officials, spokesman Dean Boyd said.
House Judiciary Committee chairman John Con yers Jr., D-Mich., on Tuesday called on Justice to “explain clearly why it declined to pursue charges against Mr. Gonzales.”
Through his lawyers and advisers, Gonzales characterized the amount of material he had as limited and said the lapses were unintentional.
Gonzales is not subject to department discipline because he resigned last year amid an uproar over his role in the firing of nine U.S. attorneys.
