Chips starting to fall?

Back in May 2007, James Comey was testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his time as acting Attorney General while AG James Ashcroft was in a hospital bed after surgery (we wrote about it HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE).

During his testimony, Comey laid out the now-infamous “bed-side visit” to John Ashcroft by Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales. The due had gone to see Ashcroft so he could order the reauthorization of Bush’s surveillance program.

During the testimony, Comey laid out the possibility that “President” Bush had called Ashcroft’s wife to tell her that Card and Gonzales were on their way to the hospital.

At the time, Bush said of his involvement; “There’s a lot of speculation about what happened and what didn’t happen. I’m not going to talk about it.”

Whilst that is a classic Bush(whacked) Administration tactic, it wasn’t a denial… and now we may know why it wasn’t a denial.

The Atlantic’s Murray Waas wrote last week that Gonzales is now telling investigators that Bush was directly involved.

From Waas' article;

According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales is now saying that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit. … Gonzales has painted a picture of Bush as being very much involved when it came to his administration’s surveillance program.

Hmmmmm, very interesting.

Add this to the fact that current Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced today that he’s naming a special prosecutor to investigate AttorneyGate, and you have the makings of “President” Bush facing some serious questioning after he leaves office.
Stay tuned…

The story, and the cover-up, continues...

Considering that neither ABC nor CBS have, according to Media Matters, aired one single story about the testimony of James Comey, I refuse to let this story die on this blog.

It’s a given that Card and Gonzales broke any and all bounds of decency, civility and decorum in their sick-bed confrontation with John Ashcroft… but now there’s more and more talk about if their nighttime hospital raid broke the law.

Neil Katyal, the Georgetown law professor who served as a national security advisor in Bill Clinton's Justice Department told Time magazine, “Executive branch rules require sensitive classified information to be discussed in specialized facilities that are designed to guard against the possibility that officials are being targeted for surveillance outside of the workplace.”

Katyal went on to say that “The hospital room of a cabinet official is exactly the type of target ripe for surveillance by a foreign power.”

According to Time magazine, the law controlling the unwarranted disclosure of classified information gained through electronic surveillance is very, very strict. In the past everyone from low-level officers in the armed forces to sitting Senators have been investigated by the DOJ for the intentional disclosure of such information, and the penalty for “knowingly and willfully” disclosing information “concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States” carries a penalty up to 10 years in prison under U.S. law.

Will Gonzales and/or Card be charged with anything?

I doubt it… a spokesman for the National Security Division of the Justice Department was asked about the legality of the hospital conversation and if either of them could be charged with a crime, he declined to “speculate on discussions that may or may not have taken place.”

Translation: No, he won’t be charged with anything as long as George Bush is in the White House.

So even as gop support for Gonzales wavers and more republicans join in the chorus to have him ousted… the cover-up continues.

We need to be told the truth

The more I read about James Comey’s testimony earlier this week, the more questions I have…

Such as; when one considers that John Ashcroft is one of the staunchest republicans to ever walk this earth, and he was against this program being renewed… you have to ask yourself what the hell the program was doing that it turned a tried and trued republican to go against the wishes of a republican president?

Secondly, what exactly is “President” Bush’s role in this distasteful little tale?

The New York Times wrote today that “Americans need to know” who dispatched Gonzales and Card to Ashcroft’s hospital bed, but the “President” is eluding the question.

At a White House press conference this morning, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell asked Bush about his role;

“Sir, did you send your then Chief of Staff and White House Counsel to the bedside of John Ashcroft while he was ill to get him to approve that program, and do you believe that kind of conduct from White House officials is appropriate?”

“Kelly, there's a lot of speculation about what happened and what didn't happen, and I'm not going to talk about it.”

Ok… then I’ll take that as a yes until I hear a better answer.

If Bush indeed ordered Card and Gonzales to visit Ashcroft in the hospital and make him sign something that he wasn’t legally able to sign, then Bush is complicit in any possible wrongdoings and needs to be held accountable… and it certainly seems that “President” Bush was engaged in a prolonged and willful effort to violate the law, and would have continued if senior members of his own administration forced him to stop by threatening resignation.

Regardless of Bush’s involvement in this pathetic drama though, the long and short of it is that it is high time that the Democrats in Congress blow the fucking lid off of the NSA’s surveillance program (They also need to force Gonzales out the door as well, and Senator’s Chuck Schumer (D-NY) & Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) plan to seek a no-confidence vote on Gonzales is definitely a step in the right direction – but that’s an entirely separate post)

Whatever form the domestic spying program took over those past years was so blatantly illegal and so egregious that by 2004 not even the administration’s most republican members could stomach it any more.

We have a right to know what went on… and we deserve to know.

A Disturbing Saga

The story that came out of James Comey’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday is, if nothing else, disturbing.

To summarize a long story, Comey was acting Attorney General in early 2004 after John Ashcroft was hospitalized. Long story short, Comey was hesitant to reauthorize the NSA domestic spying program. Then-White House COS Andy Card and then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales literally went to Ashcroft’s hospital room, shortly after he had had surgery, in order to get him to approve the program and override Comey’s decision.

Ashcroft, naturally groggy after surgery, balked… and led the White House to approve its own domestic surveillance program despite DOJ objections.

The scene unfolded like a movie:

Comey learned, Ashcroft's wife who was at his bedside, that Gonzales and Card were on their way to the hospital. He immediately ordered his driver to turn around and head to the hospital with sirens blazing. He calls the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, who promised to meet him at the scene. Comey gets out of the car and literally runs up the stairs to Ashcroft's room. The head of the FBI orders the agents outside Ashcroft's door to not allow Comey to be removed from the room under any circumstances. Comey tries to explain the situation to a clearly groggy and disoriented Ashcroft, but mnutes later, Gonzales and Card arrive entering the room with papers in hand, without acknowledging Comey's presence. After hearing Gonzales' spiel, Ashcroft finds the strength and temporary focus to sit up and coherently explain to Gonzales why the program is illegal. He then says that it doesn't matter what he thinks anyway because he, at the time, was not the Attorney General and he points to Comey and said; “he's the Attorney General.” Card and Gonzales storm out of the room and soon thereafter Comey gets a call from an irate Card who demands that he come to the White House. Comey tells him: “After what I just witnessed, I will not meet with you without a witness, and I intend that witness to be the solicitor general of the United States," with which Card replied; “What conduct? We were merely there to wish him well.”

You can read the whole transcript HERE.

But the story didn’t end there as the “sickbed visit” was only the beginning of a tense and dramatic showdown between the White House and the Justice Department. According to Comey, the issue was only resolved after Bush overruled Gonzales and Card, and that didn’t happen until Ashcroft, Comey, Mueller and their aides prepared a mass resignation.

Which also suggests that the NSA’s domestic spying program went of for several weeks without DOJ approval.

That’s disturbing and stressing enough, but also consider how John Ashcroft was eventually replaced by one of the men that tried to convince him to sign an important legal document that contradicted the reasoned legal opinion of the Justice Department and whom had neither the official authority nor the legal capacity, due to his heavily-medicated state, to sign.

Think about that for a second. This man essentially took advantage of a man who had just had surgery… and that “man” is now our Attorney General.

What an absolute fucking disgrace…

So what can we take from this example of a pathetic and desperate man?

For starters, that Alberto Gonzales acted in a manner that is, at the very least, ethically questionable. Not only was Gonzales trying to circumvent James Comey's lawful authority as the acting AG, but he was also looking to have a person who had just had major surgery the day before and was heavily-medicated, execute a legal document… a very important legal document at that. Sounds to me that that is something that can get attorney disbarred.

Another? The implication that Robert Mueller didn’t trust Card nor Gonzales as he gave instruction to the agents outside Ashcroft's room to not allow Comey to be removed, implying that he was worried about what could happen in the room if there weren’t ant witnesses. Good to know that someone who didn’t have the trust of the FBI director would become the U.S. Attorney General, which I think speaks volumes about Gonzales and the way he does things and the person he is.

And finally, that the White House was willing to authorize a program that the Justice Department, including the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, the head of the OLC, and the FBI Director, had determined to be illegal.

But as startling as it was to hear this story, there’s something else we shouldn't forget…

We shouldn’t forget that we, the American people, should have known about this story a long, long time ago…