Gonzales's Signature Moment

By Eugene Robinson
Saturday, May 19, 2007; A17

It just gets worse and worse. We already knew that Alberto Gonzales -- who, unbelievably, remains our attorney general was willing to construe the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions however George W. Bush and Dick Cheney wanted. We knew he was willing to politicize the Justice Department, if that was what the White House wanted. Now we learn that Gonzales also was willing to accost a seriously ill man in his hospital room to get his signature on a dodgy justification for unprecedented domestic surveillance.

The man Gonzales harried on his sickbed was his predecessor as attorney general, John Ashcroft. The episode-- recounted this week in congressional testimony by Ashcroft's former deputy, James Comey -- sounds like something from Hollywood, not Washington. It's hard not to think of that scene in "The Godfather" when Don Corleone is left alone in his hospital bed, vulnerable to his enemies, and Michael has to save him.

It was the night of March 10, 2004. Several days earlier, Ashcroft had been stricken with a severe case of pancreatitis and was rushed to George Washington University Hospital, where his gallbladder was removed and he was placed in intensive care. Ashcroft's wife had banned all visitors and phone calls.

Ashcroft's illness came amid a fight between the White House and the Justice Department over the program of warrantless domestic electronic surveillance that Bush had authorized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Justice had reviewed the program and expressed doubts about its legality.

Comey, serving as acting attorney general because of Ashcroft's illness, refused to sign off on a reauthorization of the program until changes were made. The night before the current authorization was to expire, Comey said, he was being driven home when he got a call from Ashcroft's chief of staff, who had just heard from Ashcroft's wife that Gonzales, then serving as White House counsel, and White House chief of staff Andrew Card were on their way to the hospital. They wanted to get the ailing Ashcroft to overrule Comey and sign the reauthorization.

Comey ordered his driver to turn around and managed to get to the hospital first. Rather than wait for the elevator, he ran up the stairs. "And Mrs. Ashcroft was standing by the hospital bed," he testified, "Mr. Ashcroft was lying down in the bed, the room was darkened. And I immediately began speaking to him, trying to orient him as to time and place, and try to see if he could focus on what was happening, and it wasn't clear to me that he could. He seemed pretty bad off."

Gonzales was carrying an envelope when he and Card arrived. Gonzales told Ashcroft they were there "to seek his approval for a matter," Comey recalled. Ashcroft refused to sign anything, told them why and said that, in any event, Comey was the acting attorney general with the full powers of the office.

"I was very upset," Comey said. "I was angry. I thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man."

Now let's fast-forward a couple of years -- to February 2006, after the secret surveillance program had become public. Gonzales, testifying before Congress, said there had been no serious disagreement within the administration about the legality of conducting such widespread electronic eavesdropping without seeking court warrants.

In fact, there was nearly an insurrection. Comey and other high-ranking Justice Department officials threatened to resign if the White House continued the surveillance program as it then was constituted. "Mr. Ashcroft's chief of staff asked me something that meant a great deal to him," Comey testified this week, "and that is that I not resign until Mr. Ashcroft was well enough to resign with me." Ultimately, Bush and Cheney agreed to modifications that addressed Justice's concerns.

Gonzales's testimony in 2006 was that officials expressed no reservations that "dealt with the program that we are talking about today." Presumably he was being extraordinarily careful with his words -- "the program that we are talking about today" had already been modified, two years earlier, to avoid what threatened to become a Wednesday Night Massacre. Before those changes, the attorney general neglected to tell Congress, the program had caused a legal riot.

That must be the umpteenth time we know of that Gonzales blatantly misled Congress and the American people. If, as expected, the Senate passes a resolution next week expressing no confidence in Gonzales, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Bush to do the right thing. After all, Gonzales is just following the president's orders.

The image I can't get out of my head is of Alberto Gonzales carrying a document for Ashcroft's signature into the man's hospital room, attempting a sneaky end-run around the deputy whom Ashcroft left in charge of the department, knowing full well that Ashcroft was seriously ill and almost certainly medicated. What did he intend to do, guide the man's hand?

This is the attorney general of the United States, ladies and gentlemen. Heaven help us.

The Gonzales Coverup
Washington Post Fred Hiatt
Thursday, May 17, 2007; A16

WHY IS IT only now that the disturbing story of the Bush administration's willingness to override the legal advice of its own Justice Department is emerging? The chief reason is that the administration, in the person of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, stonewalled congressional inquiries and did its best to ensure that the shameful episode never came to light.

In February 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee was inquiring into the warrantless wiretapping program whose existence had been revealed just two months before. Sketchy details had also begun to emerge of the March 2004 hospital room ambush, in which Mr. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and then-White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. tried to browbeat the gravely ill Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who had temporarily yielded his office to his deputy, into approving the warrantless surveillance program.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who was then chairing the Judiciary Committee, got Mr. Gonzales to agree to have Mr. Ashcroft testify. But when Mr. Specter followed up with a letter asking as well that the department approve the appearance of former deputy attorney general James B. Comey, Mr. Gonzales balked.

If called to testify, Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Comey wouldn't be allowed to reveal "confidential Executive Branch information," William E. Moschella, an assistant attorney general, wrote to Mr. Specter. "In light of their inability to discuss such confidential information . . . we do not believe that Messrs. Ashcroft and Comey would be in a position to provide any new information to the committee."

If you were Mr. Gonzales, you'd certainly want to make sure they stayed quiet. Consider: Mr. Gonzales, as the president's lawyer, went to the hospital room of a man so ill he had temporarily relinquished his authority. There, Mr. Gonzales tried to persuade Mr. Ashcroft to override the views of the attorney general's own legal counsel. When the attorney general refused, Mr. Gonzales apparently took part in a plan to go forward with a program that the Justice Department had refused to certify as legal.

Then, when part of the story became public, Mr. Gonzales resorted to word-parsing. "[W]ith respect to what the president has confirmed, I believe -- I do not believe that these DOJ officials that you're identifying had concerns about this program," he said.

Mr. Gonzales's lack of candor is no longer surprising. What's critical here is that lawmakers get a full picture of what happened, obtaining whatever documents -- Office of Legal Counsel opinions -- and testimony are necessary, behind closed doors if need be. "Jim Comey gave his side of what transpired that day," White House press secretary Tony Snow said yesterday. If there's another side to the story, we'd like to hear it.

What was the administration doing, and what was it willing to continue to do, that its lawyers concluded was without a legal basis? Without an answer to that fundamental question, the coverup will have succeeded.

Does the WH speak for the Attorney General?