 |
|
|
 Editorials | May 2007 
Mr. Gonzales's Incredible Adventure
 Mr. Gonzales's Incredible Adventure
NYTimes
| | Top US Justice Department officials, including John Ashcroft, threatened to resign three years ago over a domestic eavesdropping program until President George W. Bush intervened to defuse the revolt, according to a former deputy attorney general. (AFP/Paul J. Richards) |
There were many fascinating threads to the testimony on Tuesday by the former deputy attorney general, James Comey, who described the night in March 2004 when two top White House officials tried to pressure an ailing and hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft into endorsing President Bush's illegal wiretapping operation.
But the really big question, an urgent avenue for investigation, is what exactly the National Security Agency was doing before that night, under Mr. Bush's personal orders. Did Mr. Bush start by authorizing the agency to intercept domestic e-mails and telephone calls without first getting a warrant?
Mr. Bush has acknowledged authorizing surveillance without a court order of communications between people abroad and people in the United States. That alone violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Domestic spying without a warrant would be an even more grievous offense.
The question cannot be answered because Mr. Bush is hiding so much about the program. But whatever was going on, it so alarmed Mr. Comey and F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller that they sped to the hospital, roused the barely conscious Mr. Ashcroft and got him ready to fend off the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, and Mr. Bush's counsel, Alberto Gonzales. There are clues in Mr. Comey's testimony and in earlier testimony by Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Ashcroft's successor, that suggest that Mr. Bush initially ordered broader surveillance than he and his aides have acknowledged.
Mr. Comey said the bizarre events in Mr. Ashcroft's hospital room were precipitated by a White House request that the Justice Department sign off on a continuation of the eavesdropping, which started in October 2001. Mr. Comey, who was acting attorney general while Mr. Ashcroft was ill, refused. Mr. Comey said his staff had reviewed the program as it was then being run and believed it was illegal.
So someone at the White House (and Americans need to know who) dispatched Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card to Mr. Ashcroft's hospital bed. Mr. Ashcroft flatly refused to endorse the program, Mr. Comey said. Later, he said, Mr. Bush agreed to change the wiretapping in ways that enabled Justice to provide a legal rationale. Mr. Comey would not say why he opposed the original program - which remains secret - or how it was changed.
With the benefit of Mr. Comey's testimony, we can see how Mr. Gonzales, in his effort to mislead the Congress and confuse the American public about how much their civil liberties were being violated, may have unintentionally given away vital clues that only now are falling into place.
While testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2006, Mr. Gonzales was asked if Mr. Comey had expressed reservations about the eavesdropping program. Mr. Gonzales replied, "There has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed." By that, he must have meant the program that included modifications made after the hospital visit and after Mr. Comey's meeting with Mr. Bush.
Pressed by Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, Mr. Gonzales said Mr. Comey's concerns "dealt with operational capabilities" that were not part of the program Mr. Bush has acknowledged. Mr. Gonzales would not describe those capabilities, of course. Yesterday, Mr. Schumer wrote Mr. Gonzales and asked him to reconcile Mr. Comey's account with his own.
The Republican-controlled Congress did a disservice to the nation by refusing to hold Mr. Bush to account for the illegal wiretapping. The current Congress should resume a vigorous investigation of this egregious abuse of power.
Mr. Comey's Tale
The Washington Post
A standoff at a hospital bedside speaks volumes about Attorney General Gonzales.
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.
Ashcroft and the Night Visitors
Dana Milbank - Washington Post
As if Attorney General Alberto Gonzales didn't have enough trouble, now comes word that, before coming to the Justice Department, Gonzales preyed on the infirm.
In hair-raising testimony before a Senate committee yesterday, Jim Comey, the former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, described what might be called the Wednesday Night Massacre of March 10, 2004. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card staged a bedside ambush of Attorney General John Ashcroft while he lay in intensive care. Comey, serving as acting attorney general during Ashcroft's incapacitation, testified about how, on a tip from Ashcroft's wife, he intercepted the pair in Ashcroft's hospital room.
"The door opened and in walked Mr. Gonzales, carrying an envelope, and Mr. Card," Comey told the spellbound senators. "They came over and stood by the bed." They wanted Ashcroft to sign off on an eavesdropping plan that Comey and others at the Justice Department had already called legally indefensible.
Ashcroft "lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter" - that Comey was right. "And as he laid back down, he said, 'But that doesn't matter, because I'm not the attorney general. There is the attorney general.' And he pointed to me."
Gonzales and Card "did not acknowledge me," Comey testified. "They turned and walked from the room."
The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee stared. The lone Republican in attendance, Arlen Specter (Pa.), looked down. The 6-foot-8 Comey, slightly hunched in the witness chair, swallowed frequently and kept his hands in his lap as he spun a narrative worthy of Dashiell Hammett.
"I thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man," Comey told the quiet chamber. His voice grew thick and he cleared his throat as he explained how he prepared to resign. "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 had come before the committee to discuss Gonzales's botched firing of U.S. attorneys. Instead, under questioning from Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), he gave his account of Gonzales's dark-of-night attempt to emasculate the department he would soon lead. The testimony had all the more impact because it came the morning after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty became the fourth senior official to resign in the prosecutor mess.
If Comey's testimony had the grip of mystery yesterday, Gonzales's defense had the feel of farce, as he heaped blame on McNulty for the mishandled firings. "The deputy attorney general is the direct supervisor of the United States attorneys," Gonzales volunteered at a National Press Club breakfast. He added: "I went back to the deputy attorney general and I asked Paul, 'Do you still stand by the recommendations?' And he said, 'Yes.' "
At the hearing, Specter offered a different view of McNulty's departure. "It's embarrassing for a professional to work for the Department of Justice today," he said, calling the resignation "evidence that the department really cannot function with the continued leadership or lack of leadership of Attorney General Gonzales."
Despite public pleas from a "lonely" Specter, the other Republicans on the committee didn't risk an appearance. Even the White House declined to counter Comey, who has a reputation for honesty. "You've got somebody who has splashy testimony on Capitol Hill - good for him," presidential press secretary Tony Snow dodged.
In truth, nothing Snow could have said would have matched Comey's testimony. Comey recounted how, while driving home at 8 p.m. on that day in 2004, he got word that Mrs. Ashcroft had received a call - possibly from President Bush himself - to say Gonzales and Card were coming.
"I told my security detail that I needed to get to George Washington Hospital immediately. They turned on the emergency equipment and drove very quickly," Comey testified. "I got out of the car and ran up - literally ran up the stairs with my security detail. . . . I raced to the hospital room, entered." The room was dark, and Ashcroft was "pretty bad off."
In Comey's account, he got FBI Director Robert Mueller to tell his agents guarding Ashcroft not to let Card and Gonzales evict Comey from the room. A few minutes after the bedside confrontation, Card called the hospital. He "demanded that I come to the White House immediately," Comey testified. "I responded that, after the conduct I had just witnessed, I would not meet with him without a witness present."
"He replied, 'What conduct? We were just there to wish him well.' " After Card demanded to know if Comey was "refusing to come to the White House," Comey, with the solicitor general, finally arrived at the West Wing at 11 p.m. His narrative covered the next two days, ending when Bush intervened and avoided a spate of resignations.
The senators had some trouble finding words for what they had heard. "This story makes me gulp," Schumer said.
Specter invoked the firing of the Watergate prosecutor. "It has some characteristics of the Saturday Night Massacre," he said. And the senator left little doubt about whom he blamed.
"Can you give us an example of an exercise of good judgment by Alberto Gonzales?" he asked.
This time, Comey had no narrative. "Let the record show a very long pause," Specter said. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us