A Candid Conversation With Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
August 26, 2009
This month marked former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' formal return to Texas, when he officially began his tenure as a visiting professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.
On Aug. 6, Gonzales launched his university career when he moved into a bare-walled office in the Tech president's wing of the school administration building. He will teach his first class -- "Contemporary Issues in the Executive Branch" -- on Aug. 27. When it comes to his students, all topics are open for discussion, he says, including his time as former President George W. Bush's White House counsel and as AG, as well as the controversies that arose as a result of his eight years in those jobs.
Gonzales was born in San Antonio. In 1995, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush hired Gonzales, a former Vinson & Elkins transactional lawyer and a 1982 Harvard Law School graduate, to be general counsel at the Governor's Office. In 1997, Gov. Bush made Gonzales secretary of state, and a year later Bush appointed him to the Texas Supreme Court. In 2001, Gonzales left Austin to become President George W. Bush's White House counsel in Washington, D.C. Gonzales became U.S. attorney general in 2005, and he resigned that post in 2007.