Gonzales won't face charges

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department refused to prosecute former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for improperly storing in his office and home classified information about two of the Bush administration's most sensitive counterterrorism efforts.

Mishandling classified materials violates Justice Department regulations, and removing them from special secure facilities without proper authorization is a misdemeanor.

A report issued Tuesday by the Justice Department's inspector general says the agency decided not to press charges against Gonzales, who resigned under fire last year.

The report by Inspector General Glenn Fine found that Gonzales risked exposing at least some parts of the National Security Agency's (NSA) warrantless-wiretapping program and interrogations of terrorist detainees. Some aspects of the surveillance program explicitly referred to in the documents were "zealously protected" by the NSA, the report found.

Fine referred the case to the Justice Department's National Security Division to see if charges should be brought against Gonzales. But prosecutors dropped the case after an internal review, said Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd.

The lack of charges against the nation's former top law-enforcement officer infuriated the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, D-Mich., who called on the Justice Department to "explain clearly why it declined to pursue charges against Mr. Gonzales and what actions it intends to take in response to the report."

Lawyers for Gonzales acknowledged he did not store or protect the top-secret papers — a set of handwritten notes about the surveillance program and 17 other documents — as he should have. But they said he did not intend to risk letting unauthorized people see them.

Among other things, according to the report, Gonzales told investigators he could not recall whether he took home notes regarding the warrantless-wiretapping program and he did not know they contained classified information, despite his own markings that they were "top secret — eyes only."

Gonzales improperly carried notes about the 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 report said.

The report is the latest to take Gonzales to task for mismanagement at the department during his 31 months as attorney general. Fine's office is still investigating Gonzales' role in the 2006 firings of nine U.S. attorneys, including Seattle's John McKay. That inquiry is expected to be finished within months.

"Our investigation found that Gonzales ... mishandled highly classified documents about the NSA surveillance program and a detainee interrogation program," Fine's report said.

In a response to the report, Gonzales' lawyers indicated the former attorney general was merely forgetful or unaware of the proper way to handle the top-secret papers.

However, Tuesday's report showed Gonzales was briefed on how to properly handle sensitive compartmentalized information, or SCI, material while at the White House and at the Justice Department.

Information from

The Washington Post is included in this report.