In March 2004 John Ashcroft, U.S. Attorney General, lay in a hospital sickbed and James Comey was acting Attorney General. On May 14th Mr. Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and described the appalling behavior of Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card. Comey had informed Gonzales and Card that extensive Justice Department review had shown that the NSA's wiretapping program was not legal.
Comey testified that
he refused to sign a presidential order reauthorizing the program, which allowed monitoring of international telephone calls and e-mail of people inside the United States who were suspected of having terrorist ties. He said he made his decision after the department's Office of Legal Counsel, based on an extensive review, concluded that the program did not comply with the law. At the time, Mr. Comey was acting attorney general because Mr. Ashcroft had been hospitalized for emergency gall bladder surgery.Not to be refused, Gonzales and Card
tried to bypass [Comey] by secretly visiting Mr. Ashcroft. Mr. Ashcroft was extremely ill and disoriented, Mr. Comey said, and his wife had forbidden any visitors.Mr. Comey ... ordered his driver to rush him to George Washington University Hospital with emergency lights flashing and a siren blaring ... he phoned Mr. Mueller, who agreed to meet him at the hospital ... Mr. Mueller ordered the F.B.I. agents on Mr. Ashcroft's security detail not to evict Mr. Comey from the room if Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card objected to his presence.
Mr. Comey said he arrived first in the darkened room, in time to brief Mr. Ashcroft, who he said seemed barely conscious. Before Mr. Ashcroft became ill, Mr. Comey said the two men had talked and agreed that the program should not be renewed.
When the White House officials appeared minutes later, Mr. Gonzales began to explain to Mr. Ashcroft why they were there. Mr. Comey said Mr. Ashcroft rose weakly from his hospital bed, but in strong and unequivocal terms, refused to approve the eavesdropping program.
"I was angry," Mr. Comey told the committee. " 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 ... I thought it was improper."
Mr. Bush quelled the revolt over the program's legality by allowing it to continue without Justice Department approval, also directing department officials to take the necessary steps to bring it into compliance with the law.
This just clearly demonstrates Gonzoles's disregard for the law and the Constitution, but also Bush's. Clearly Gonzoles needs to go, but doesn't this also show that Bush was prepared to not uphold his oath to protect the Constitution? He was ready to install the program anyway without the Justice Department's sign off. That is until, Comey, Mueller, and Ashcroft himself threatened to resign over it. In other words, it took a threat that certainly would have been big news in the media to cool Bush's jets - not the fact that the program was illegal.
And worse, how do we know that Comey's/Ashcroft's recommendations are in place? How do we know they didn't go ahead and write up the program one way to get DOJ's authorization but have installed it and are operating it they way they wanted to?
This is one of the reasons he will never be nominated (at least by this President).
Fitzgerald would also bring instant credibility to the Department, but he too is a long shot.
The most likely replacement seems to be Ted Olsen.
What really, really concerns me is that now that Gonzoles is AG, that program may have been altered back to it's original illegal form.
I will not be surprised to see him threatened with impeachment before this is all said and done (I say threatened--because the moment that likely impeachment is about to occur, Bush will encourage him to go back to private life. Although even then, there are some fairly serious criminal charges that might follow).
I once represented a guy that the feds had "dead" on a "project exile" gun case, but I went to Jim with the facts of the case and background of the defendant. Although my guy would have been proven guilty, it was a clear "mistake of fact" case and Jim dismissed it with prejudice without trial or pretrial diversion. His take was it was not the kind of case that the program was designed to address and my client was not the kind of defendant the program was designed to take off the streets. Therefore, he gave up a sure "win" in order to JUSTICE! Regardless of party, he is the kind of person that we deserve and must have run our federal law enforcement system, not "W" sycophants, religious fanatics, and/or disgusting slime taking marching orders from Rove, Bush or Cheney.
It is surprising that Aschcroft finally stood up for the Constitution. But that's because the lawbreaking became so blatant that even he could no longer ignore it. With a few cosmetic changes, the program was put back in place, and Ashcroft went on to a less stressful job at Regent University. No one resigned, made a stink, or went public to stop the program when it really mattered. These great patriots, like the New York Times, simply looked the other way and ignored clear constitutional violations until a more convenient time arrived to speak up.