Gonzales pressed ailing Ashcroft on domestic spying plan, official testifies

International Herald Tribune ^ | Tuesday, May 15 2007 | David Stout

[James W. Fannin]

WASHINGTON: On the night of March 10, 2004, a high-ranking Justice Department official rushed to a Washington hospital to prevent two White House aides from taking advantage of the critically ill Attorney General, John Ashcroft, the official testified on Tuesday.

One of those aides was Alberto Gonzales, who was then White House counsel and eventually succeeded Ashcroft as Attorney General.

"I was very upset," said James Comey, who was deputy Attorney General at the time, in his testimony Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I was angry. 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 because they had been transferred to me."

The hospital visit by Gonzales and Andrew Card Jr., who was then White House chief of staff, has been disclosed before, but never in such dramatic, personal detail. Comey's account offered a rare and titillating glimpse of a Washington power struggle, complete with a late-night showdown in the White House after a dramatic encounter in a darkened hospital room.

[James W. Fannin]

The word is that President Bush supported staff who opposed Gonzales, encouraging them to obey their consciences. The transcripts of this testimony will be especially interesting.

[James W. Fannin]

Fascinating audio should be available here later: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10192754

[jrooney]

This is old news. Comey is a hack that was anti-adminstration. Comey is the one that appointed Fitzgerald and gave him far reaching illegal powers. Comey also is a close associate of McNulty that was just ousted at DOJ. Comey has been an intentional thorn in the side of the adminstration and was more supportive of democrat approaches to handling terrorism.

[stevem]

I don’t know that I would rely on Arlen Soecter to add to any discussion, but I do agree with Robert Novak that Justice is a great place for Gonzales because it kept him off of the Supreme Court.

[Shermy]

“”The word is that President Bush supported staff who opposed Gonzales””

Where’s that “word” from? Could be disinfo/spin.

“”And Attorney General Ashcroft then stunned me,” Comey went on: He raised his head from the pillow, reiterated his objections to the program, then lay back down, pointing to Comey as the attorney general during his illness.””

If I saw that in a movie, I would think it a fake overdramatization. Truth is stranger...

[James W. Fannin]

CQ TODAY MIDDAY UPDATE
May 15, 2007 – 1:45 p.m.

Ashcroft, Top Justice Team Almost Resigned in 2004

Former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee today that he, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, their top aides and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III nearly resigned in early 2004 after the administration went ahead with a classified program without Justice Department approval.

Comey recounted a dramatic March 2004 showdown between top White House and Justice Department officials, including then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, that was only resolved after President Bush intervened.

Ashcroft, who was hospitalized at the time with acute pancreatitis, had relinquished his authority, making Comey the acting attorney general. Comey described a tense confrontation in Ashcroft’s room at George Washington University Hospital between himself, Ashcroft, Gonzales and former White House chief of staff Andrew Card.

Although Comey declined to specify the program, he most likely was referring to the National Security Agency’s warrantless electronic surveillance program that Bush authorized after the Sept. 11 attacks as a counterterrorism measure. Administration officials have said that program was subject to reauthorization at 45-day intervals. Comey testified that he had balked at reauthorizing the program.

Comey said he prepared a resignation letter after the administration decided to go ahead with the classified program without his approval. He said that he believed his chief of staff, Ashcroft, Mueller and Ashcroft’s chief of staff would have resigned as well.

After Bush intervened, the Justice Department was able to “put this matter on a footing” that he felt he could accept, Comey said.

Source: CQ Today Midday Update
Political Clippings compiled from BNN Frontrunner and CQ Politics.com.
© 2007 Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[keepitreal]

Is John Ashcroft now a hero to the MSM? I never thought I would live long enough to see that.

[DemEater]

“but I do agree with Robert Novak that Justice is a great place for Gonzales because it kept him off of the Supreme Court.”

I’ll bet Gonzo still thinks he has a shot.

[James W. Fannin]

It’s going to be ironic if Ashcroft were “too conservative” to accept executive violations of the 4th amendment.

[trumandogz]

They should never use “Old News” against anyone in political office and especially those who are running for either the Republican or Democratic nominations for President.

[middie]

Gonzales is to a potential seat on the supreme court as is that biblical camel making through the eye of a needle.

[jrooney]

I find it amusing that Ashcroft is a friend of the adminsitration and so is Mueller, yet Comey, whom is a friend of Fitzgerald, called him the modern day version of Elliot Ness at their press conference when he appointed him, and a close associate of McNulty that has been fanning the fires of the attorny firings and all three are close associates of Schumer. Schumer pressed for an investigation into Plame and Fitzgerald was appointed by Comey. Comey, McNulty and Fitzgerald are all from the NY southern office of DOJ. All from NY.

[EGPWS]

The word is that President Bush supported staff who opposed Gonzales, encouraging them to obey their consciences.

No, the word is that political agenda's become rampant on the eve of elections.

This is something that all can and should believe.

Nice try however.

[calcowgirl]

How many good folks will be smeared and brought down to protect the totally inept, bumbling Alberto Gonzales?

[James W. Fannin]

...a close associate of McNulty that has been fanning the fires of the attorny firings and all three are close associates of Schumer.

Checks and balances.

I am more concerned with unconstitutional aspects of the Patriot Act, the recently uncovered telecomm privacy invasions, and Gonzales' alignment with gun grabbing Senator Lautenberg against the Second Amendment.

Like EGPWS indicates, I seriously doubt Ari Shapiro's source (Arlen Specter) stating that the President wanted to back down on the more draconian aspects of his cabinet's ideas on how to "defend us" by "spying on us." Nonetheless, Gonzales is hardly worth defending. Considering recent events on our border, his cavalier treatment of the Second Amendment, I support the Congressional proceedings against him.

Audio is up at the NPR link. It is truly chilling.

[janetgreen]

Considering recent events on our border, his cavalier treatment of the Second Amendment, I support the Congressional proceedings against him.

Gonzalez was another one of the totally incompetent George W. Bush's totally incompetent puppet appointments.

[James W. Fannin]

Incompetent people are easier to push around from behind the scenes.

[Rodney King]

So you are saying that this isn’t true that Gonzales rushed to the hospital to try to get Ashcroft to sign on to something while he was basically not in any state to do so?

[jrooney]

What I am saying is put in pretty good context here on the American Thinker blog today -

Comey's testimony yesterday

Al Johnson

"On the face of it, there was little of interest in former Deputy Attorney General Comey's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. No wrongdoing was alleged against AG Gonzalez or any Administration official, and the matters discussed occurred well before Gonzalez was even nominated for the AG post. However, there is an aspect that deserves to be emphasized--or, rather, there is more to the context than appears in the testimony.

Comey came on board as DAG at the beginning of December, 2003, and he had some unusual support for a Republican appointee--Senator Chuck Schumer was very much in his corner. So it was that Comey was pretty much brand new on the job at the time he decided to reverse what appeared to the Administration as settled policy on the NSA eavesdropping program--certainly a shocking and radical development in any Administration. But Comey had already taken actions that boded ill for the White House, and especially for the Office of the Vice President (OVP), with whom the transcript shows he was in serious, and probably personal, conflict.

Comey, when asked for names of his adversaries in the OVP, mentioned his disagreements with VP Dick Cheney and Cheney's Legal Counsel, David Addington. Curiously, Comey failed to mention Scooter Libby--Cheney's Chief of Staff, a prominent attorney in his own right, and a leading architect of policy at the OVP--even though it is known that Libby was also involved in these matters. It is scarcely credible to suppose that Comey had no dealings with Libby, nor that they were in disagreement over the NSA program. Perhaps Comey avoided mention of Libby because he wished to avoid the appearance of personal animus. After all, it is well known that Libby had beaten Comey in a contentious case in the Southern District of New York a few years earlier, and one of Comey's first acts as DAG--before the NSA program came up for recertification--was to talk Ashcroft into recusing himself from the Plame affair. Comey then proceeded to appoint his former SDNY pal Patrick Fitzgerald to go after Libby, even expanding Fitzgerald's purview to "process violations," even though Comey knew that Armitage was the "leaker" and that the supposed "leak" violated no known law.

The upshot was that Comey and his supporters--I'm guessing career lawyers at DoJ with past connections to Schumer and other Democrats--may well have already been targeting the OVP through Fitzgerald when they next precipitated a crisis by refusing to recertify the NSA program. I doubt that it was any coincidence that Fitzgerald dragged Cheney and Addington into the Plamegate charade. Remember, too, that both Comey and Fitzgerald had close connections with Schumer from their days in the SDNY. Seen in the total context, Comey throwing bouquets Ashcroft's way during his testimony was a subterfuge, a way of saying: look, even the arch-conservative Ashcroft was morally outraged at the evil Administration. Certainly Comey tacked back and forth, admitting that nothing illegal was done and so forth, but the PR damage was done--as intended. I suspect that the arrival of Comey at the feckless Ashcroft's DoJ signalled the beginning of a coup attempt that would use DoJ to try to topple, or seriously cripple, the Administration through action on several fronts: prominently Plamegate and legal aspects of the GWOT. To suppose that all this was coincidence is to elevate coincidence to the level of an analytical principle in the study of politics--something no person with any knowledge of the ways in which bureaucracies work can accept."

Al Johnson is a retired attorney.

[napscoordinator]

Bump. I thought is was a crazy story that some might find interesting.

[James W. Fannin]

Precious few, apparently.