Gonzales’ truthfulness defended

The president’s top intelligence adviser yesterday defended Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales from charges that he lied to Congress about disagreement within the Bush administration over intelligence-gathering activities by the U.S. government.

Senators have questioned whether Mr. Gonzales lied by saying that there was no disagreement about the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP), which seeks to track phone calls to and from the U.S. by suspected terrorists. Evidence of serious objections to intelligence activities, at the highest levels of the Justice Department, have come to light in recent months.

But yesterday’s letter to two high-ranking senators from Director of National Intelligence retired Adm. John M. “Mike” McConnell said that the National Security Agency has conducted a broad range of previously undisclosed “intelligence activities.”

A 2004 dispute within the administration was linked to one part of these previously undisclosed activities, Adm. McConnell’s letter implied. Mr. Gonzales has made statements consistent with these facts.

Mr. Gonzales has said that disagreement within the administration was not linked to intelligence activities made public by President Bush in December 2005. Mr. Bush acknowledged what has become known as the TSP after information was leaked to the New York Times.

The dispute over Mr. Gonzales’ testimony has forced the Bush administration to acknowledge publicly for the first time that the NSA is engaged in a wider range of intelligence-gathering activities.

But Democratic senators, led by Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, called last week for a special prosecutor to look into whether Mr. Gonzales perjured himself during recent testimony. Mr. Schumer says Mr. Gonzales lied to or deceived Congress in 2006 and again last week when he said that there was no disagreement over the government’s activities.

White House officials, in return, have accused Democrats of asking Mr. Gonzales questions about classified information that they knew he could not answer, in order to make it appear as if he were hiding something.

Mr. Gonzales did make a statement at a June press conference that would have contradicted his own statements. He said then that the 2004 dispute was related to the TSP.

But Mr. Gonzales then retracted that statement during his testimony last week.

Apart from that one misstep in June, the attorney general has consistently said that the 2004 disagreement was not related to “the Terrorist Surveillance Program that the president confirmed.”

Adm. McConnell’s letter, sent to Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, simply reiterated a position that has slowly trickled out from the Justice Department and White House over the last week, as administration officials grappled with how to talk about classified information.

Adm. McConnell sent a copy of the letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat.

Mr. Leahy and Mr. Specter, the ranking Judiciary Committee member, have questioned Mr. Gonzales about why in March 2004 he visited the hospital bed of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and asked him to override legal objections by then-acting Attorney General James Comey.

Mr. Ashcroft, who was in intensive care while recovering from emergency gallbladder surgery, rebuffed Mr. Gonzales, who was then White House counsel.

Although Mr. Gonzales went forward with the intelligence activities under dispute, despite objections from Mr. Comey and Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Bush ordered that these activities cease only a few days later.

Mr. Comey told Congress in May that he and Mr. Ashcroft were both prepared to resign if the disputed activities went forward and that Mr. Bush listened to his concerns and those of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.