Alberto 'Fredo' Gonzales, the former attorney general, is now contentedly ensconced in his poli-sci teaching gig at Texas Tech in Lubbock. Gonzales is one of about 20 people -- including former U.N. nuke inspector in chief Mohamed ElBaradei, Yao Ming, Robert Caro and Jerry Lee Lewis -- who help us reflect on weighty matters in Esquire's ninth annual Meaning of Life issue, the January edition, out next week. 'I guess I would use my son's word: cool. It was cool to work in the White House,' he says. 'I really enjoyed my time in state government. ... I had a different experience in Washington.' Much of that experience involved investigations into torture of terrorists and the firing of several U.S. attorneys. 'The notion that what happened at Abu Ghraib was a result of the policies of the Bush administration I just think is totally ridiculous,' Gonzales says. 'You do the best you can, looking at precedent, in trying to anticipate where the Supreme Court is going to draw the balance between the protection of civil liberties and protecting the national security, and in some cases we guessed wrong.' Has he heard from former President George W. Bush? 'He called me my first day of class here. First thing he said: `Hello, Professor.' ' On life: 'This may sound egotistical, but to me it is important that when I leave this Earth, I would have made a difference -- that people would know Al Gonzales lived, he touched lives, he made a difference, he left a mark.' On the fired prosecutors: 'Of course the White House was consulted about these decisions (on the firings), because these were presidential appointees, and of course Karl (Rove) would have some kind of role in that. But the decision was made on what I believed to be the consensus recommendation of the department leadership.' 'The media will say' that in his sworn Hill testimony, ' `Al Gonzales said he didn't know 120 times,' ' Gonzales told Esquire. That was because he often got 'asked the same question and the reason you get asked the question is because these senators are so busy -- I guess they're busy -- and they leave the hearing room, so they don't know the question has been asked.' (And we're not going to speculate about what's apparently been keeping some of them so busy.) 'We should have,' Gonzales says in hindsight, 'abandoned the idea of removing the U.S. attorneys once the Democrats took the Senate. Because at that point we could really not count on Republicans to cut off investigations or help us at all with investigations. We didn't see that at the Department of Justice. Nor did the White House see that. Karl didn't see it. If we could do something over again, that would be it.' So remember that lesson learned: Before you do something really cool, make sure no one can investigate you. Especially useful advice in this town. 