convention this week yet, united republicans for california, and air freight dozen copies so i took them down to the airport and sent them there be had statewide traction in california, and the california primary was in the first week in june, and we sold over a half million copies between the first of may and the first of june in california. ...

time as attorney general and counsel to the president during the george bush administration. his new book is called true faith and allegiance, story of service and sacrifice in war and peace and he's interviewed by brent kendall of the wall street journal. >> host: alberto gonzález, currently law school dean, former attorney general, former counsel to george w. bush, texas state supreme court justice and now author of a new book, memoir recounting his life both in texas and working for governor bush in texas and a time here in washington. welcome. >> guest: thank you, it's good to be here. >> host: let's start with why the book, why now, what motivated you to write it. i know that several of your colleagues that you worked with in the administration have written books about their time there. you know, what prompted the book? >> guest: well, you know, it's

something that i have been working on for many years that obviously had several distractions in the interim i thought coming up in the 15th anniversary a marker to try to hit. you're right, there have been several memoirs written, people's perspectives have been out there and i thought it would be important to add mine for my son's sake, there's been a written and said about me, some of it true and some of it not true and i wanted them to get the perspective about the events that shaked me and really affected their lives as well. >> host: certainly an action packed time when you served in texas and in washington. briefly before we get into some of that, the first part of your book you talk about your unlikely path to service, both in texas and in washington and that law and politics have been -- were an acquired taste for you, you know, it would be

thought if you can just talk people through briefly, you know, where you came from and how you got yourself in the position to serve. >> sure. i grew up in texas, i grewed up in a town called humbled, texas.

>> well, quite frankly this is where president bush was in terms of, i think, his view was that it's probably okay given the circumstances to have

desk. there's several we can dive to i suppose, the first is, you know, let's talk about the capture of detainees after military operation started in afghanistan and where -- where to put them when they were captured and not surprisingly there's a good bit in your book about the decision to house detainees at guantanamo bay and it was the best of not very good options of what we could do. obviously this is a complicated issue and you point out that president obama defense his

pledge to close gitmo still has not, i wonder if you could speak to the decision-making process there and, you know, as time has gone on and you had more time to think about it what your reflections are on it at this point? >> guest: we considered a number of options outlined and we conclude that had the best option was guantanamo. that was the recommendation for the security counsel. that was presented to the president and president bush accept it had recommendation. one thing that's very important to emphasize, president bush does not want to be the world's jailers. he wanted guantanamo closed as well. the problem is we couldn't give him the viable alternative and we kept capturing people, we had to keep somewhere and so when his term ended, the obama administration came in with that pledge to close guantanamo but

he was apparently never presented also with good options and for that reason guantanamo remains open today. it's a decision that both bush and president obama have struggled with because of the very nature of the type of people these people are and the very nature of the war on terror. >> host: the decision to not find a way to house them here, do you feel at the end of the day that that was -- legal considerations or political considerations were the primary driver there? >> guest: i would say they were both very important. politically, again, we are talking about -- we are still in 2001, early 2002 when we are capturing people. we felt that the american people would not stand for bringing the terrorists. once they set foot on american

soil, we were unclear, the lawyers were unclear about what constitutional rights were attached based upon president and without having that kind of clarification from the courts, we just felt that a safer course would be to house them at guantanamo bay. >> host: in addition to where to house them, there was obviously heated and important ways to interrogate them and so the question becomes, you know, how to try to get them to divulge things they don't want to divulge. the cia did interrogations at this time and there were difficult debates on some of that and you say, sort of rightly or wrongly you've become

the public face for a lot of the doj recommendations there. can you walk us through a little bit about what some of the crux of some of these debates were? >> guest: former senator -- current senator schumer has public said in committee hearing that there would be instances where he felt it would be appropriate to torture someone in order to get information if that person -- a bomb that was about to go in new york city in an hour, for example. president bush took a different avoid. we are not going to engage in torture. we have an antitorture statute. that statute says it would be unlawful to intentionally inflict severe, physical or mental pain or suffering, that's all the statute says. it doesn't outlaw specific techniques, i just quoted to you what the law says and it was a job of the lawyers to try to -- try to take that language and provide guidelines for the

interrogators at the cia and took us about four months. i mean, there was a lot of debate, a lot of discussion about how much the law would allow. what most people don't understand is when the united states entered into the convention against torture we agree today criminalized conduct that was -- that constituted torture. the convention against torture also talks about cruel and humane treatment and cruel and humane treatment is different, meaning that we could do something that maybe cruel, it may be inhumane and that's sort of the context that we had to deal with in trying to provide guidance to interrogators. i don't mean by writing this book to try to convince anyone that what we did was not torture. many people have made up their

mind and i get that, i understand that. i merely meant to describe our efforts to try to get it right. sometimes we got it right, maybe sometimes we didn't get it right but we always tried our best to meet the requirements of the constitution and the laws passed by congress. >> host: at the end of the day looking at international law, the administration decided that the bar under international law was lower than what you all thought it should be in terms of some of the types of enhanced techniques that were permissible, correct? >> guest: the bar was lowered to cruel and inhumane treatments. if you put someone in the cell that had an open bathroom or didn't have a window to the outside that that would

constitute cruel and inhumane treatment. the language would mean only that conduct which shocks the conscious under the circumstances. and so there we took -- we did, the united states did take a different position with respect to legal obligations as to constitute cruel and inhumane treatment. >> host: you say in the book that protect president bush you made the decision not to inform him on some of the details of the interrogation techniques that were being contemplated and used, and why is that? >> guest: andy, first chief of staff, his job as chief of staff which was to keep things that might damage the presidency or the president out of the white house unless it was absolutely necessary to come into the white house. typically he would want cabinet, secretaries to take the lead, quite frankly take the heat on

some controversial issues. what would really be important in the mind of the president would be whether or not is it necessary and effective and is it lawful and when i spoke to the president about this, yes, i did have a conversation, i told him in my judgment, you know, all i'm going to tell you that it's lawful and effective and that it is, in fact, necessary and he was fine with that. he could have asked for that information, of course, we would have given it to him. he felt comfortable with the outset simply knowing that we were engaging in this kind of conduct, that it had been care fully by the lawyers and department of justice and the interrogators at the cia were confident that these were going have been individuals of high value, that had information, no other way to get the information, it was information about pending attack, with these

parameters in place the decision was made to go ahead and move forward with thissing into ration without providing information with specific details to the president. >> host: you say in the book that after months of deliberation on what types of techniques permissible, when the cia began interrogations -- >> guest: sometimes you have questions or concerns about that policy, my job as a lawyer, however, was to not let my own moral views influence my legal interpretation of the law. for example, let's say the president is contemplating immigration policy as a hispanic from a border state i might have strong policy views relating to that decision and i might convey those policy views to the

decision but i would make it clear to me this is a view as a matter of policy, al, i appreciate your views, you're a valuable member of our team and i want to know what you think, al, you're elect today tell me what the law is and so i always -- you know, i sometimes i struggled with these very difficult policy decisions that i worried about, i worried about how it might affect the long-term reputation of the presidency, the long-term reputation of george w. bush, but again, my job as the lawyer, my permanent responsibility was to tell him what i thought the law required and what the law allowed. >> host: despite some of those concerns, you know, from reading the book, it seems that at the end of the day that you decided that these -- these techniques were effective and the endeavor was effective and, you know, some of the memos that provided

a legal basis for doing these things became highly controversial after they became public, that those may have had some damage to the reputation of the department. at the end of the day you feel that the interrogations were legal and veit tale to protecting the nation, is that a fair conclusion to draw from the book? >> guest: yeah, i think so. you know, in terms of whether or not they're effective, i think there were others who have testified under oath as to their effectiveness and their value in keeping america safe and in terms of whether or not they were lawful, again, the senior leadership at the department of justice, i was in the white house at the time but i remember having conversations with the attorney general john who assured me this had been reviewed by the senior leadership at the department and so that was enough for me -- wasn't -- was it an easy call,

absolutely no. there was heated debate about the legal justification for some of these techniques and i accepted that they were controversial but given the circumstances and at the time decisions were being made, yes, i standby what the administration did. >> host: another one of the things that comes particularly on this issue in the book is you being frustrated at times with what you felt was second-guessing of justice department leadership in a time of national security, security crisis. do you feel like the second-guessing was at its appex on interrogation or across an array of issues? >> guest: well, i think it is important to ensure that the lawyers at the department of justice that were advising the

executive branch are providing advice consistent with their professional and ethical obligations as lawyers. so i have no problem with that. but i think sometimes people question the rationale or motivation by the -- of the advice given by the lawyers and so that to me, i think, can be dangerous because the criticism of lawyers, the notion that a lawyer is going to be investigated or prosecuted is detrimental and discourages lawyers from doing their job and exercising their best judgment. i mean, who is going to want to provide legal advice if they think is solid because -- for fear they're going to be investigated. you accept the fact that you're going to be criticize and critical of the decision made by

the administration. the notion because of advice you've given you're going to be prosecuted. >> host: another is surveillance services that the program moved to enact after 9/11. there are large chunks of the book that goes into that. basically you explained that now declassified portions of this that there were three baskets of information that the administration elected and tried to better keep an eye on potential terrorist during the time and a little bit about what

the three baskets were and why they were important and then we will talk about the one basket that became something of a flash point when some doj officials, when officials came in. >> guest: took almost two months because of the chapters relating to the terrorist program. i want to be careful about what i say here about these activities and i don't want -- what we did or where we are currently doing, i can't say that -- because of that reason it may not be as clear and i was very clear in the initial drafting of the book but obviously a requested by the government, things became less clear and they may be pushing in

particular areas and i really don't understand what happened here, i can say that there were activity that is the president authorized, phone conversations that were international and intelligence officer at the nsa believed one person was a member of al-qaeda. that's the only basket that was exposed and everything else took a numbers of years. the second basket e-mail data and all been disclosed and the dispute between the white house and the department of justice did not have to deal with content collection. so we weren't listening in on innocent american phone calls.

it had to do with something completely different and i want to branch out to other questions what you might have on this particular subject. >> host: sure. obviously as i understand it the meta data becomes part of disagreement and we can talk in extent what meta data is, you use information to help you target where you actually needed to be looking for specifically for communication involving central terrorist? >> guest: meta data is not collection u, for example, you take telephone bills u the phone numbers you've called and the date and time, that is considered meta data and the supreme court has said that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy and it's not protected by the fourth amendment, it's not a constitutional issue. the question is whether or not in meta data you're violating a

statute which outlines how certain electronic communications can be captured, can be collected by the government and that was really the source of the dispute between the white house and the department of justice, i might mention, this is a very important point that the dispute centered over the activity which attorney general had approved for two and a half years and so we were doing fine and then in march of 2004 he gets ill and goes to the hospital. the program is reauthorized by the president every 45 days or so and in connection with that reauthorization is a signature by the attorney general saying that the program is lawful, there's no legal impediments to moving forward with the program and so the program is about to expire, we are coming to this 45-day window and general becomes sick and goes to the hospital and the duties with

respect to the department of justice and running the department and the authorization of the program going forward falls to the deputy attorney general james comey and -- >> host: at this time we had new people in the justice department's office of legal counsel, correct, who had different opinions on the legal justification for parts of this program than the earlier opinions that -- >> guest: yes. yes. when i look back at the disagreements that existed amongst the lawyers on various issues relating to terrorism, they all related to the scope of the president's inherent authority under the constitution. the president has three sources, primary sources of authority to take action, one is expressed constitutional authority, for example, the constitution says the president can pardon someone. the second is statutory authority, you can do this. the third is the president's inherent constitutional authority. some people believe that

inherent constitutional authority should be rather limited, others have a more expansive view of that authority. as commander in chief during the time of war, for example, and so the source of the disagreement really centered on differences of opinion on the scope of the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief in a time of war. >> host: you mentioned deputy attorney general comey who is now the fbi director, deputy attorney general was sort of stepping into his shoes and there were heated discussions between him and some people in the white house and you have a whole chapter on this called the infamous hospital visit and i will let you walk us through that and then just read -- walk us through the visit and i will note that you have a section in the book where you say that

virtually every description of this event has been inaccurate or skewed. so if you can tell us a little bit about the event and why you think -- what and why it haven't been portrayed correctly from your viewpoint? >> guest: now the depo attorney general james comey and the folks at oic believe -- we have one activity that the general has signed off for two and a half years, they believe they cannot find legal basis for it and we are coming up to the end of the 45 days. president bush makes a decision, he's going to accept the recommendation of the department of justice and shut it down but wants to tell congressional leadership and that's what he wants to do. we invite the congressional leadership to the situation room, they receive a briefing from the vice president about the program and they basically advise congressional leadership,

we have a problem with the department of justice and we want your help, can we get legislation and they all say, no, we can't give you legislation without compromising the existence of this program informing us to go forward. there was a consensus that we should continue what we are doing. after the meeting, dick cheney and myself and andy, we go to the residence and meet with the president and we tell the president about the meeting and we -- there's a decision that's made that andy and i should go to the hospital and inform general ashcroft of the results of this meeting, being a former senator the feeling was that that would carry weight and continue the program additional 45 days until we got all of the mess sorted out. and so andy and i are directed by the president to meet with the attorney general, we had heard he just had surgery, it

was a serious illness, we heard he had been walking around that day. notheless andy and i on two occasions both as we walked to the residents and the rose garden and in sedan all the way to the hospital, we both talked about concerns we had about general ashcroft not being confident. so we arrived at the hospital, we introduced ourselves and say, we are here to talk about something important and basically general ashcroft spoke for about ten minutes about his understanding of what the problem was and, you know, what he had been advised and ultimately he said, but all of this doesn't matter because i'm no longer the attorney general and so at that point there was additional conversation and andy and i left without ever having asked the attorney general to do anything and without even having

the opportunity to even tell the attorney general about the meeting with the congressional leadership. so, you know, i have testified about this under oath and i've also testified to the inspector general about what happened here so if anyone wants to question my varsity about what actually happened in the hospital room, i mean, there's no basis to question it because i've testified to it under oath. you know, we were there at the direction of the president and we were there to inform the attorney general of the meeting with congressional leadership and ask whether or not he would be willing to continue to sign off for another 45 days and as soon as we learned that he was no longer the attorney general because of his illness -- >> host: which you did not know at the time you went to the hospital room? >> guest: did not know and obviously when we got back to the white house and informed the president that his attorney general during the time was not in command of the department of

justice, he was understandably very upset and so, you know, do i wish that that incident had never happened, yes. andy and i -- i think it has hurt both andy and i professionally. the stories -- the story, of course, the legend, the myth is that andy and ii went to the hospital room to take advantage of a sick man, you know u it's just not true. we went there with directions from the president and as soon as we learned he was no longer the attorney general, we left. >> host: one of the things about the account that i find pretty remarkable is you say in the book that you were so focused on general ashcroft that you didn't realize that james comey was in the room at the time. >> guest: i know that it's hard for people to understand. the room was dark. you're used to people being around, cabinet officials and being around the president, members to have security detail and maybe i just assumed it was part of security detail and i

didn't pay attention to it. i focused on general ashcroft. janet ashcroft was at his bedside and that's all i focused on. i had no idea until we got back to the white house that james comey were also in the room. quite frankly, if i had known kn that i probably would have stopped outside the hospital room and we wanted to talk to them, but, you know, it just didn't happen. i just didn't know that. .. carriers

and without that signature from the department of justice more likely they would not cooperate and it was important to get that signature. going to general ashcroft was an extraordinary act to visit someone in the hospital. there was reporting and we all woke up in america, 200 spaniards had been killed and we were worried what was going on at the time. that is why we went to the

hospital. >> host: in the book, there was the impression you were hard on director comey and the testimony he gave before the senate, the hospital room incident. you say the way it has been told damaged your standing and your career. do you still have frustrations about this? do you feel the director has done you a disservice? >> guest: i will say this about director comey. i honor his sacrifice and the sacrifice of the family, and fbi director. i honor that sacrifice. we had a difference of opinion. i had a hard time understanding given the circumstances, the general ashcroft approved this

for 21/2 years, to review the legal issues, a time of high threat reporting, renew for 5 days, general ashcroft would be covered and it would be easy to accept general ashcroft's view given he authorized this for 21/2 years, hard to understand what was motivating the deputy attorney general. i have every reason to believe -- i was hard on him, i tried to be as factual as i could. >> host: i was thinking there was a passage when you discussed his testimony before the senate judiciary committee. >> guest: i was going to address that. you are going to testify about something from previous service

particularly on an sensitive subject like the high school visit, you have a high-ranking official like the attorney general you notify the department of justice or the white house and it was disappointing. disappointing to me that he wouldn't have the courtesy to do that. i read newspaper accounts, the concern was we try to do something to stop him. why would we try to stop him? to me that was foolish and sophomoric to stop the testimony. that is why we were not told about it in advance. i disagree with that. >> host: this shows you how remarkable it was when we are 45 minutes into this conversation and haven't talked about iraq yet. the administration's decision to

engage militarily, what we thought we knew and what we didn't know years later but i want to focus for you the conversation on a debate about legal authority for taking action in iraq. there is discussion of the evolution of the concept of anticipatory self-defense, when it is okay for a country to take military action against another one, not necessarily when an attack is imminent towards you. you talk about a debate whether you literally needed to be in a situation when the gun was cocked by your adversary or taking a broader view in terms of given potential heightened threat down the road. very briefly through that section in your book where 7 to

10 days before military action starts the president is asking what about my legal authorities, are they airtight? after months debate, very close to the run-up of military action, those questions are still being asked which means a pretty remarkable thing. >> guest: it reflects that president bush wanted to abide by the constitution and international and domestic obligations. i don't find that remarkable at all other than these were difficult issues and we worked hard to get them right. lawyers worked many hours, a lot of discussion and debate about legal authorities domestically and internationally. we got the authorization to use military force giving the president clear legal authority to the question we wrestled with a lot, whether or not under

international law we had clear legal authority, the un resolutions were constantly violated but in the end we had several countries that joined us in this coalition believing that, taking military action in iraq. i talk about this, going into iraq was a mistake, i think the problem we have asking that question, all of us ask that question, we began looking at the threat of iraq in 2002, within a year of the 9/11 attacks, president bush was in the white house, he did not want a similar attack to happen again. once we learned iraq had a relationship with al qaeda, weapons of mass destruction, might share those weapons with al qaeda it became a serious

issue. he was not going to allow another attack to happen again. sitting here in the 2016 mindset we can't appreciate the pressure president bush felt in 2002-2003 about potentially al qaeda getting weapons of mass destruction from saddam hussein. that drove this. i don't think the mistake was in going into iraq based on the information he had. it was in the intelligence, the degree of weapons of mass destruction saddam hussein had and the relationship saddam hussein had with al qaeda. that is where the mistake was. >> on the legal side of things you were comfortable the us views in terms of longer-term threat from iraq were well

supported to justify international law taking action as we did. >> it wasn't just us. the lawyers and the united states advising the government. also the uk and around the world joined the coalition and i have to concede there was disagreement, it was not international legal authority. obviously there were lawyers in various countries who had a different view about that. >> host: we are getting close to the end of time. your book is about your service in the white house as counsel, transitioning briefly the president asked you to doj nominating you to be attorney general and that is a difficult time. we get 350 pages into your book

before we start discussing your doj tenure. it was dominated by the discussions over the removal of several us attorneys. of all the things in the book that you portray as areas where you feel there has been a misunderstanding of your actions, near the top of the list if we could talk briefly you said there may have been mistakes in the way the whole issue was handled but nothing improper ever took place. >> we do terrible job communicating what we did and why, no question about that and i have to accept blame for that. at the end of the day it was fully investigated by congress and the department of justice, there was nothing improper about his removal. these appointments are very political, they really are.

the removals are sometimes political and that is okay as long as the removal is not in order to have an ongoing investigation. special prosecutor appointed by general khazei, the inspector general and congress all looked at this and concluded there was nothing improper about these removals. >> we get to 2007 from senate democrats on this issue and you weathered a good bit of that and director comey's testimony got to be late summer of 2007, the decision was made, got to the point of having difficulty being effective and you talk about shock to the system of leaving

after being involved and a few years afterwards those were difficult because it was radioactive given the decisions, talk us through that for a few minutes. >> guest: that came from head hunters, those with the terms that were used. it was a tense time, it was going from 100 miles an hour to zero. being involved in these issues, to not be in the cabinet and the attorney general of the united states, it was a tough time trying to find legal work, meaningful legal work. i went to my old farm in houston. i taught to several firms around the country about joining them and as i talk about in the book a harvard law degree, attorney general of the united states, counsel to the president and the

time wasn't right, the timing is just not right. these stories about taking advantage of john ashcroft in the hospital room, decisions relating to torture and improper filings of us attorney. all these things combined create this image that i was radioactive, too much baggage, the fact that they would think about hiring me, the thing about it, i mention my family. it is important to understand how difficult these jobs are to the family in particular. i tried not to read any of the native press conferences, my wife read every word. it really hurt her so it is fair to say she is bitter about the

experiences, bitter toward certain people and the way they mistreated me. public service shouldn't be that hard. >> host: do you think she has taken it harder in some ways than you have? >> guest: no question. she read it all and she knows how critical, how mean, how cool it was. i know it was criticism. i have been criticized but i wasn't aware of some of the things that were said of being abandoned by certain so-called friends. early on, wanted me to leave but president bush told me to hang in there, even though it was hard i did this because i knew i had done nothing wrong but the same thing, hang in there, so that is what i tried to do.

it was hard to leave after going through that criticism. in late 2007 the decision was made, president bush when i met with him basically said they are going after you again. you don't want it to happen again. i think he was tired of it and didn't want me to go through it again. >> one of the storylines post administration, one of the last ones here is alberto gonzales was too close to president bush, one of the lessons, you can't have somebody in that role who has that perfect time with the president and you reject this. >> guest: i really do. that relationship gives you freedom and power to tell the president you cannot do this, this is wrong.