Here is more:
#------------------------------
Mr. Comey's Tale
A standoff at a hospital bedside speaks volumes about Attorney
General Gonzales.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007; Page A14
JAMES B. COMEY, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the
Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an
account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have
been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source. The episode
involved a 2004 nighttime visit to the hospital room of then-Attorney
General John D. Ashcroft by Alberto Gonzales, then the White House
counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff.
Only the broadest outlines of this visit were previously known: that Mr.
Comey, who was acting as attorney general during Mr. Ashcroft's illness,
had refused to recertify the legality of the administration's
warrantless wiretapping program; that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card had
tried to do an end-run around Mr. Comey; that Mr. Ashcroft had rebuffed
them.
Mr. Comey's vivid depiction, worthy of a Hollywood script, showed the
lengths to which the administration and the man who is now attorney
general were willing to go to pursue the surveillance program. First,
they tried to coerce a man in intensive care -- a man so sick he had
transferred the reins of power to Mr. Comey -- to grant them legal
approval. Having failed, they were willing to defy the conclusions of
the nation's chief law enforcement officer and pursue the surveillance
without Justice's authorization. Only in the face of the prospect of
mass resignations -- Mr. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and
most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself -- did the president back down.
As Mr. Comey testified, "I couldn't stay, if the administration was
going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had
no legal basis." The crisis was averted only when, the morning after the
program was reauthorized without Justice's approval, President Bush
agreed to fix whatever problem Justice had with it (the details remain
classified). "We had the president's direction to do . . . what the
Justice Department believed was necessary to put this matter on a
footing where we could certify to its legality," Mr. Comey said.
The dramatic details should not obscure the bottom line: the
administration's alarming willingness, championed by, among others, Vice
President Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, to ignore its own
lawyers. Remember, this was a Justice Department that had embraced an
expansive view of the president's inherent constitutional powers,
allowing the administration to dispense with following the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act. Justice's conclusions are supposed to be
the final word in the executive branch about what is lawful or not, and
the administration has emphasized since the warrantless wiretapping
story broke that it was being done under the department's supervision.
Now, it emerges, they were willing to override Justice if need be. That
Mr. Gonzales is now in charge of the department he tried to steamroll
may be most disturbing of all.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051501945.html?referrer=email
or
http://tinyurl.com/355z6n
#--------------------------------------
Regards,
LelandJ
Leland F. Jackson, CPA wrote:
> The below article regarding the Bush Administration's handling of the
> Justice Department is chilling. Based on the article, it seem Attorney
> General John Ashcroft was forced out of the Justice Department because
> he refused to re-authorize the illegal wire tapping being done by NSA.
> Then president Bush Administration put his long time comrade Alberto R.
> Gonzales in the Justice Department to run things. With Alberto R.
> Gonzales appointment to Attorney General, the Bush White house had the
> entire Justice Department pretty well in their pocket, and could do
> whatever they liked, legal or illegal, knowing that Attorney General
> Gonzales would rule on any legal issue in favor of President Bush.
>
> #----------------------------------------
>
>
> Gonzales Hospital Episode Detailed
>
>
> Ailing Ashcroft Pressured on Spy Program, Former Deputy Says
>
> By Dan Eggen and Paul Kane
> <http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/dan+eggen+and+paul+kane/>
> Washington Post Staff Writers
> Wednesday, May 16, 2007; Page A01
>
> On the night of March 10, 2004, as Attorney General John D. Ashcroft
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/John+Ashcroft?tid=informline>
>
> lay ill in an intensive-care unit, his deputy, James B. Comey, received
> an urgent call.
>
> White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and President Bush
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/George+W.+Bush?tid=informline>'s
>
> chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., were on their way to the hospital to
> persuade Ashcroft to reauthorize Bush's domestic surveillance program,
> which the Justice Department
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/U.S.+Department+of+Justice?tid=informline>
>
> had just determined was illegal.
>
> In vivid testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/U.S.+Senate+Committee+on+the+Judiciary?tid=informline>
>
> yesterday, Comey said he alerted FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and
> raced, sirens blaring, to join Ashcroft in his hospital room, arriving
> minutes before Gonzales and Card. Ashcroft, summoning the strength to
> lift his head and speak, refused to sign the papers they had brought.
> Gonzales and Card, who had never acknowledged Comey's presence in the
> room, turned and left.
>
> The sickbed visit was the start of a dramatic showdown between the White
> House
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/The+White+House?tid=informline>
>
> and the Justice Department in early 2004 that, according to Comey, was
> resolved only when Bush overruled Gonzales and Card. But that was not
> before Ashcroft, Comey, Mueller and their aides prepared a mass
> resignation, Comey said. The domestic spying by the National Security
> Agency
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/National+Security+Agency?tid=informline>
>
> continued for several weeks without Justice approval, he said.
>
> "I was angry," Comey testified. "I thought I just witnessed an effort to
> take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the
> attorney general because they had been transferred to me."
>
> The broad outlines of the hospital-room conflict have been reported
> previously, but without Comey's gripping detail of efforts by Card, who
> has left the White House, and Gonzales, now the attorney general. His
> account appears to present yet another challenge to the embattled
> Gonzales, who has strongly defended the surveillance program's legality
> and is embroiled in a battle with Congress over the dismissals of nine
> U.S. attorneys last year.
>
> It also marks the first public acknowledgment that the Justice
> Department found the original surveillance program illegal, more than
> two years after it began.
>
> Gonzales, who has rejected lawmakers' call for his resignation,
> continued yesterday to play down his own role in the dismissals. He
> identified his deputy, Paul J. McNulty
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/Paul+McNulty?tid=informline>,
>
> who announced his resignation Monday, as the aide most responsible for
> the firings.
>
> "You have to remember, at the end of the day, the recommendations
> reflected the views of the deputy attorney general," Gonzales said at
> the National Press Club
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/National+Press+Club?tid=informline>.
>
> "The deputy attorney general would know best about the qualifications
> and the experiences of the United States
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/United+States?tid=informline>
>
> attorneys community, and he signed off on the names," he added.
>
> Those comments appear to differ, at least in emphasis, from earlier
> remarks by Gonzales, who has previously laid much of the responsibility
> for the dismissals on his ex-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/Kyle+Sampson?tid=informline>.
>
> They stand in contrast to testimony and statements from McNulty, who has
> acknowledged signing off on the firings but has told Congress he was
> surprised when he heard about the effort.
>
> The Justice Department and White House declined to comment in detail on
> Comey's testimony, citing internal discussions of classified activities.
>
> The warrantless eavesdropping program was approved by Bush after the
> Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It allowed the NSA to monitor e-mails and
> telephone calls between the United States and overseas if one party was
> believed linked to terrorist groups. The program was revealed in late
> 2005; Gonzales announced in January that it had been replaced with an
> effort that would be supervised by a secret intelligence court.
>
> The crisis in March 2004 stemmed from a review of the program by the
> Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which raised "concerns as
> to our ability to certify its legality," according to Comey's testimony.
> Ashcroft was briefed on the findings on March 4 and agreed that changes
> needed to be made, Comey said.
>
> That afternoon, Ashcroft was rushed to George Washington University
> Hospital with a severe case of gallstone pancreatitis; on March 9, his
> gallbladder was removed. The standoff between Justice and White House
> officials came the next night, after Comey had refused to certify the
> surveillance program on the eve of its 45-day reauthorization deadline,
> he testified.
>
> About 8 p.m. on March 10, Comey said that his security detail was
> driving him home when he received an urgent call from Ashcroft's chief
> of staff, David Ayres, who had just received an anxious call from
> Ashcroft's wife, Janet. The White House -- possibly the president -- had
> called, and Card and Gonzales were on their way.
>
> Furious, Comey said he ordered his security detail to turn the car
> toward the hospital, careening down Constitution Avenue. Comey said he
> raced up the stairs of the hospital with his staff, beating Card and
> Gonzales to Ashcroft's room.
>
> "I was concerned that, given how ill I knew the attorney general was,
> that there might be an effort to ask him to overrule me when he was in
> no condition to do that," Comey said, saying that Ashcroft "seemed
> pretty bad off."
>
> Mueller, who also was rushing to the hospital, spoke by phone to the
> security detail protecting Ashcroft, ordering them not to allow Card or
> Gonzales to eject Comey from the hospital room.
>
> Card and Gonzales arrived a few minutes later, with Gonzales holding an
> envelope that contained the executive order for the program. Comey said
> that, after listening to their entreaties, Ashcroft rebuffed the White
> House aides.
>
> "He lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed
> his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned
> me," Comey said. Then, he said, Ashcroft added: "But that doesn't
> matter, because I'm not the attorney general. There is the attorney
> general," and pointed at Comey, who was appointed acting attorney
> general when Ashcroft fell ill.
>
> Later, Card ordered an 11 p.m. meeting at the White House. But Comey
> said he told Card that he would not go on his own, pulling
> then-Solicitor General Theodore Olson from a dinner party to serve as
> witness to anything Card or Gonzales told him. "After the conduct I had
> just witnessed, I would not meet with him without a witness present,"
> Comey testified. "He replied, 'What conduct? We were just there to wish
> him well.' "
>
> The next day, as terrorist bombs killed more than 200 commuters on rail
> lines in Madrid
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/Madrid?tid=informline>,
>
> the White House approved the executive order without any signature from
> the Justice Department certifying its legality. Comey responded by
> drafting his letter of resignation, effective the next day, March 12.
>
> "I couldn't stay if the administration was going to engage in conduct
> that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis," he said. "I
> just simply couldn't stay." Comey testified he was going to be joined in
> a mass resignation by some of the nation's top law enforcement officers:
> Ashcroft, Mueller, Ayres and Comey's own chief of staff.
>
> Ayres persuaded Comey to delay his resignation, Comey testified. "Mr.
> Ashcroft's chief of staff asked me something that meant a great deal to
> him, and that is that I not resign until Mr. Ashcroft was well enough to
> resign with me," he said.
>
> The threat became moot after an Oval Office meeting March 12 with Bush,
> Comey said. After meeting separately with Comey and Mueller, Bush gave
> his support to making changes in the program, Comey testified. The
> administration has never disclosed what those changes were.
>
> /Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
> /
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500864.html?referrer=email
>
> or
>
> http://tinyurl.com/2lfjap
>
> #----------------------------------------
>
> Regards,
>
> LelandJ
>
>
>
>
>
[excessive quoting removed by server]
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