Report: Gonzales mishandled sensitive data.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: UP FRONT - U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

Inspector General (IG) Glenn Fine said former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales mishandled 18 documents that were classified as sensitive compartmentalized information (SCI), a security category for documents considered more highly classified than top secret. The IG's report states that Gonzales kept classified material at his home and in an office safe that was not up to SCI security standards.

The most sensitive material among the documents was Gonzales' handwritten account of an emergency meeting at the White House in March 2004, regarding the expiration of the controversial National Security Agency (NSA) wiretapping program.

Gonzales, who was then White House counsel, called the meeting with the eight highest-ranking members of Congress after James Comey, then the deputy attorney general, refused to certify the legality of the NSA program. At the time, Attorney General John Ashcroft was in intensive care in the hospital after gallbladder surgery. Bush had secretly authorized the program, which authorized warrantless wiretapping by the government, after 9/11.

Fine said Gonzales' notes on the emergency meeting included "operational aspects of the program," along with its classified code name, and constituted a highly classified document that should have been stored in what is known as a SCIF, or a government storage area used to secure the most top-secret material.

Gonzales told investigators that he was so concerned about protecting his notes that he personally took them from his White House office to his new office at the Justice Department on the day he was sworn in as attorney general, February 3, 2005. The document, inside two envelopes, was the only one he took with him from the White House. The outer envelope was marked "AG--Eyes Only--Top Secret."

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Investigators concluded that Gonzales took the document home with him in his unsecured briefcase that night in violation of security procedures. The document remained at his home in Vienna, Va., for an indeterminate amount of time, the IG said. Gonzales later returned the document to the Justice Department and kept it in his personal office safe, rather than in a secure approved site, the IG added.

According to The Washington Post, Gonzales told investigators that he could not recall whether he took home notes regarding the NSA program and that he did not know they contained classified information.

The IG found that Gonzales had also mishandled 17 other highly...