Bedside drama
Toolbox
Published: May 19, 2007
t has all the ingredients of a human drama that would have Hollywood scriptwriters drooling, yet at this point there's something missing from the amazing (and true) story of James Comey that should puzzle us all, and perhaps the only person who can fill in the blanks is President Bush himself.
Comey is the former deputy attorney general who testified to a Senate committee this week that two former top White House aides – Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales – attempted in 2004 to persuade then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to formally approve extending the president's controversial (and secret) domestic eavesdropping program run by the National Security Agency.
"Though his topic was bureaucratic infighting, Comey's account crackled with the kind of tension more often found in a suspense novel," one reporter observed.
Had Ashcroft been in his regular office at the time, what Card and Gonzales did might simply have amounted to a merely routine attempt by the White House to present its case to its own Justice Department and there would have been much less drama to explore. But that's not how it happened, as we learned this week.
The eavesdropping program was scheduled to expire on March 11, 2004, unless Ashcroft agreed to its extension. But at that time the attorney general was seriously ill with pancreatitis, so Comey was serving as acting attorney general. Believing the program to be illegal, Comey advised the White House he would refuse to sign off on it, and so Card and Gonzales were dispatched (it's not clear who sent them, but highly unlikely they acted on their own) to Ashcroft's bedside.
"In vivid testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee 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," the Washington Post reported Wednesday. "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 newspaper's account continued: "The sickbed visit was the start of a dramatic showdown between the White House 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 continued for several weeks without Justice approval, he said."
Ashcroft, who later was succeeded as attorney general by the utterly hapless Gonzales, was (and remains) one of the most conservative politicians in the United States. Unlike so many others who call themselves conservatives, he gave every indication of actually respecting the constitutional protections guaranteed to all Americans.
Although high-level White House operatives were furious at Ashcroft's and Comey's refusal to legitimize the administration's surveillance initiative, for some reason the president himself betrayed no such anger. In fact, according to Comey, Bush personally instructed him to "do what's right" even though he knew that meant Comey would withhold the Justice Depart-ment's authorization for the controversial program.
Comey later resigned but still supports and admires Bush, which may explain why, even when pressed by members of the Senate committee, he offered no testimony that would directly implicate the president in the sorry sideshow in Ashcroft's hospital room. Nor do we yet know why the president overruled Card and Gonzales or why he still stubbornly supports Ashcroft's incompetent successor.
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