Gonzales Pushed Ailing Ashcroft On Spying
Ex-Official Says Gonzales Pressured Ashcroft In Hospital To Reauthorize Wiretapping
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U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, left, and his predecessor, John Ashcroft. (AP)
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Interactive Domestic Surveillance The debate over the Bush administration's controversial wiretapping program.
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Interactive The Bush Cabinet A look at departures, new nominees and long-standing members of the president's staff.
Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he refused to recertify the program because Attorney General John Ashcroft had reservations about its legality just before falling ill with pancreatitis in March 2004.
The White House, Comey said, recertified the program without the Justice Department's signoff, allowing it to operate for about three weeks without concurrence on whether it was legal. Comey, Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and other Justice Department officials at one point considered resigning, Comey said.
"I couldn't stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis," Comey told the panel.
A day after the March 10, 2004, incident at Ashcroft's hospital bedside, President Bush ordered changes to the program to accommodate the department's concerns. Ashcroft signed the presidential order to recertify the program about three weeks later.
The dramatic hospital confrontation involved Comey, the acting attorney general during Ashcroft's absence, and a White House team that included Bush's then-counsel, Alberto Gonzales, and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, Comey said. Gonzales later succeeded Ashcroft as attorney general.
Comey said after one of Ashcroft's top aides told him about the pending visit, he rushed to the hospital with emergency lights flashing and a siren blaring, to intercept Gonzales and Card, the New York Times reported.
Comey said he called Mueller, who agreed to meet him at the hospital. Comey said he "literally ran up the stairs" once he arrived. Mueller then ordered FBI agents guarding Ashcroft not to make Comey leave the room if Gonzales and Card asked for his removal, the Times reported.
Senior government officials had expressed concerns about whether the National Security Agency, which administered the warrantless eavesdropping program, had the proper oversight in place. Other concerns included whether any president possessed the legal and constitutional authority to authorize the program as it operated at the time.
Comey testified Tuesday that when he refused to certify the program, Gonzales and Card headed to Ashcroft's sick bed in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital.
When Gonzales appealed to Ashcroft, the ailing attorney general lifted his head off the pillow and in straightforward terms described his views of the program, Comey said. Then he pointed out that Comey, not Ashcroft, held the powers of the attorney general at that moment.
Gonzales and Card then left the hospital room, Comey said.
"I was angry," Comey told the panel. "I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man who did not have the powers of the attorney general."
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Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.





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See all 106 CommentsDo you suppose that Republicans are EVER going to get tired of being the party of thugs and goons?
No, not really. I believe they have increased (at least outside of the main media reports.
Oh my gosh! Why would you say that? I can see the corrupted wheels turning already on this idea.
1.20.09 or sooner please.
Posted by incog-nito"
I was just about to type that. Great minds, I guess.
Whatever wire-tapping program it was that Gonzo was trying to get authorized by a comatose Ashcroft must have been really really bad and really really illegal if Ashcroft, both half dazed and about as conservative as they come, wouldn't sign off on it.
Pray for Peace, God Bless.
Sleepwalking?
I'd say he, and his administration, have grabbed the golden ring multiple times for the "Exceeding Nixon Reward". In fact they have taken the world record for sprinting like banshees toward a finish line that will leave us ashamed, and leave a very interesting chapter in foreign history textbooks.
What's even more interesting is tha carping I see on these blogs about the "left". For pete's sake- at least half of the American public is left of center... if you consider someone like Al Gore on the "left"- he did get about 50% of the votes after all.
But the thing about this administration's attitude that is so dangerous is this: Somehow this administration and a good number of their supporters do not care that the other half of the country doesn't agree and has an outlook not based in conservative Christianity.
That appears to me to be the problem. And those who still think highly of this administration do so from a standpoint of actually believing that they are so "correct" that others must pay with the sacrifice of rights or disenfranchisement.
The government cannot serve just one view of reality- it has to serve all Americans. Period.
The sad part of it is that Nixon, for all his illegality, wasn't evil- he was wrong. There's a distinction here. That distinction should scare the heck out of people.
He did convict William Krar, of Noonday, Texas, for terrorist activities. You didn't hear about that because Krar didn't fit the profile of a radical islamist terrorist and Ashcroft kept it quit.
It's in the politics section. You can also find old stories by using CBS' search box.
It always cracks me up when I find myself rooting for folks like Batiste, Ashcroft, Comey, Iglesias, etc. It reminds me that there are decent, honorable Republicans out there. Let's all of us, Republicans and Democrats, get together and dump these insane Neocons and get back to arguing about how much money to give to social programs and what kinds of tax breaks to give corporations, you know, the good old days.
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