Things are not looking good for former embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and after all the trouble he’s having trying to find a job.  According to documents obtained by the ACLU, Gonzales approved use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” against Abu Zubaydah as White House Counsel four months prior to a request to the Justice department for its opinion.  Zubaydah was captured at the end of March in 2002 but the first memo from DOJ is dated August 1, 2002.  Gonzales has cockily said that he does not believe that Attorney General Eric Holder will prosecute him.  Take a look at his justification.

“I don’t think that there’s going to be a prosecution, quite frankly.” Gonzales said. “Because again, these activities … They were authorized, they were supported by legal opinions at the Department of Justice.”

Holder “will have to make a decision as to whether or not move forward with an investigation or a prosecution,” Gonzales said. “But under those circumstances, I find it hard to believe.”

Well there goes his defense that he was just following DOJ’s advice.  One would guess that when Gonzales made the above statement back in January he was not counting on public discovery that he authorized the use of torture techniques months before the DOJ opinions were rendered.  Very interesting.

So instead of following legal opinion Gonzales was relying on his political bosses and his own warped beyond recognition interpretation of the Convention Against Torture.  Considering the fact that disbarment is on the table for attorneys involved in the authorization of torture, Gonzalez’s employment prospects just dropped significantly.  See more of the story regarding the secret authorizations from the Bush White House below.

One source with knowledge of Zubaydah’s interrogations agreed to describe the legal guidance process, on the condition of anonymity.

The source says nearly every day, Mitchell would sit at his computer and write a top-secret cable to the CIA’s counterterrorism center. Each day, Mitchell would request permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques on Zubaydah. The source says the CIA would then forward the request to the White House, where White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would sign off on the technique. That would provide the administration’s legal blessing for Mitchell to increase the pressure on Zubaydah in the next interrogation.

A new document is consistent with the source’s account.

The CIA sent the ACLU a spreadsheet late Tuesday as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. The log shows the number of top-secret cables that went from Zubaydah’s black site prison to CIA headquarters each day. Through the spring and summer of 2002, the log shows, someone sent headquarters several cables a day.

See full article at NPR here