It seems Attorney General nominee and waterboarding aficionado Alberto Gonzales may have been instrumental in getting George Bush out of jury duty in 1996, thus avoiding any embarrassing revelation that Bush had been convicted for drunk driving in 1976.
Bush's summons to serve as a juror in the drunken-driving case was, in retrospect, a fateful moment in his political career: by getting excused from jury duty he was able to avoid questions that would have required him to disclose his own 1976 arrest and conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) in Kennebunkport, Maine--an incident that didn't become public until the closing days of the 2000 campaign.
One of the lawyers in the case insists there was a backroom deal with the judge to keep Bush off the jury while he publicly claimed he was "ready to serve." Gonzales, surprisingly, claims to not remember anything like that.
