Bush's Man From Humble

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"I think, in some ways, Gonzales is more dangerous than Ashcroft," declared Michael Ratner, head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is suing the Administration to grant due-process hearings to any foreigners at the U.S. detention center in Guantánamo Bay. "The person who really took the U.S. outside the law was Gonzales. He opened the door to inhumane treatment and military commissions."

In a rare interview in May, Gonzales told TIME that the word "quaint" in the January memo referred not to his attitude about the Geneva Convention itself but to a handful of ancillary guarantees, such as rules requiring captors to provide prisoners with scientific instruments, athletic uniforms and commissary privileges. The draft memo, he added, was not his work alone and in any case "does not reflect what ultimately went to the President." He would not discuss what did.

That kind of discretion probably comes naturally to a man who hails--in more ways than one--from Humble, Texas. Alberto Gonzales is the son of Mexican-American migrant workers who raised eight children in a two-bedroom house, set amid tall pines, that his mother still occupies. As a child, he would rise at dawn just to spend some time with his father, a construction worker with only a second-grade education. "Sometimes when I get tired and discouraged," Gonzales has said in speeches, "I think about my father and the burdens he had to carry."

Competitive and athletic, Gonzales played football and baseball in high school and on weekends sold cold drinks at sports events at nearby Rice University in Houston. He joined the Air Force after graduation, and was shipped north of the Arctic Circle as an enlisted Airman. There some officers recognized his potential and encouraged Gonzales to apply to the U.S. Air Force Academy. He enrolled in 1975, hoping to become a pilot, but poor eyesight ruled that out. He transferred two years later to Rice, closer to home. Next came Harvard Law School, and then it was back to Houston and a partner track at the prestigious firm Vinson & Elkins. He caught the eye of Bush-family scouts in the early 1990s, when he was helping out at political events in Texas.

Gonzales has been at Bush's side ever since. He served as legal counsel when Bush was Governor, as Texas secretary of state, then on the state supreme court. Bush calls him "Fredo," a nickname presumably derived from a mangling of his name from Alberto to Alfredo. In 1996 Gonzales saved Bush from a potentially embarrassing moment when he got the then Governor excused from jury duty in a drunk-driving case by arguing that Bush might someday be in a position to pardon the defendant. It was several years before Bush's own DUI record became public.

Gonzales is a modest and extremely hardworking man, traveling alone, flying coach, always keeping a low profile. Colleagues say his judgment is superb; friends say they have never seen him touch alcohol, not even to join in a toast. One co-worker believes Gonzales would be hell in a poker game--if he ever let himself play. "At meeting after meeting," he said, "nobody can read him." He reveals what he is thinking to only one man, which explains much of his value to the President.