Gonzales' Short Lived Moment Of Courage.

On Monday, the Washington Times reported that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales expressed support for Eric Holder's limited torture probe, saying, "I think it is legitimate to question and examine that conduct to ensure people are held accountable for their actions, even if it's action in prosecuting the war on terror and trying to protect America."

Well, he's changed his mind:

"Contrary to press reporting and based on the information that's available to me," Mr. Gonzales said during an interview Thursday with The Washington Times, "I don't support the investigation by the department because this is a matter that has already been reviewed thoroughly and because I believe that another investigation is going to harm our intelligence gathering capabilities and that's a concern that's shared by career intelligence officials and so for those reasons I respectfully disagree with the decision."

Daphne Eviatar thinks Holder's narrow investigation could eventually implicate the higher ups who were involved in legalizing the policy in the first place. Maybe someone explained that to Gonzales?

This would be of course, the second time in the past week that a prominent Bush administration official has backed off a controversial statement. After saying that he thought the color-coded terror alert system was politicized by the administration, former head of Homeland Security Tom Ridge walked it back. 

-- A. Serwer