Why the light treatment?

Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008 | 2:08 a.m.

A document so sensitive it had a security classification above top secret was illegally taken home by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a Justice Department report revealed this week.

Gonzales also violated security procedures by storing the document in his office safe.

The document contained handwritten notes that Gonzales, then the White House counsel, had taken March 10, 2004, during a meeting with high-ranking members of Congress.

The notes contained information about the secret and warrantless wiretapping program President Bush had authorized after 9/11.

Although the program would not be publicly disclosed (by The New York Times) until December 2005, it was already controversial at the Justice Department. The deputy attorney general, filling in for ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft, was refusing to declare the program legal.

During the meeting with members of Congress, Gonzales led a briefing on the program and discussed emergency legislation that would authorize it despite the Justice Department’s position.

Gonzales’ notes on this meeting were classified as “sensitive compartmentalized information,” a classification requiring that their storage follow procedures even more tightly controlled than those for top-secret documents. Yet when he left his White House job to become attorney general, he inexplicably took his notes with him, storing them at home and in his office safe.

Altogether, the Justice Department found that Gonzales had mishandled 18 documents with this classification, even though he had been briefed on the proper procedure at the White House and at the Justice Department.

Nevertheless, the department’s inspector general, without explanation, declined to press charges against Gonzales, who, under pressure from Congress, resigned last September. Questions about his role in the wiretapping program and in the 2006 firings of nine U.S. attorneys remain unanswered.

Now remaining unanswered is why Gonzales was not charged in the mishandling of classified material, a serious federal offense. Congress should demand that the Justice Department explain itself.