The Hospital Room Showdown: Former Deputy A.G. James Comey tells tale. . .

[pnwmom]

Source: Salon

COMEY: David Ayers. That he had gotten a call from Mrs. Ashcroft from the hospital. She had banned all visitors and all phone calls. So I hadn't seen him or talked to him because he was very ill. And Mrs. Ashcroft reported that a call had come through, and that as a result of that call Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales were on their way to the hospital to see Mr. Ashcroft.

SNIP

So I hung up the phone, immediately called my chief of staff, told him to get as many of my people as possible to the hospital immediately. I hung up, called Director Mueller and -- with whom I'd been discussing this particular matter and had been a great help to me over that week -- and told him what was happening. He said, "I'll meet you at the hospital right now."

Told my security detail that I needed to get to George Washington Hospital immediately. They turned on the emergency equipment and drove very quickly to the hospital. I got out of the car and ran up -- literally ran up the stairs with my security detail.

SNIP

COMEY: I was concerned that, given how ill I knew the attorney general was, that there might be an effort to ask him to overrule me when he was in no condition to do that.

Read more: http://www.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2007/05/15/comey_testimony/index.html

---

This is a partial transcript from former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's Senate Judiciary Testimony today.

Almost unbelievable account of Gonzales' attempt to take advantage of Ashcroft -- and to get Ashcroft to overturn his OWN previous decision -- when he was critically ill.

[pinto]

1. You know, it reminds me of the Godfather series, more than anything else these guys have done.

Get the guy in the hospital.

[pnwmom]

2. A lot of the MSM articles are saying that it was like a scene in a movie.

Tony Snow had something snarky to say about it today, but I bet this is going to have repercussions.

[pinto]

3. Yeah, Mr. Snow misidentified the hospital stay as an 'appendectomy' and

downplayed the whole significance of the overtly political power play visit.

Ashcroft was in for gall bladder surgery w/complications from pancreatitis...and was medicated.

You'd think Snow's recent serious medical history would at least give him some insight on that part.

Go figure.

[pnwmom]

4. And Ashcroft was in intensive care,

and Comey thought he was disoriented.

Until Gonzales walked in, made his pitch, and Ashcroft shot him down!

Gonzales is so bad he's making even Ashcroft look good.

[glitch]

6. Isn't that remarkable? Never thought I'd see it, but then I didn't know much about Gonzales

back then.

[lovuian]

16. Even this amazing to go in on the guys ICU bed

plus he is on pain medication

they should know he's decision won't stand

[connecticut yankee]

42. I never thought

I would have anything good to say about Ashcroft until now.

[rodeodance]

39. my empathy for Snow just went down a notch.

[supernova]

5. So, let me get this straight

I have to be glad that we had John "Let the Eagle Soar" Ashcroft for as long as we did because that was our last hope for an independent judiciary?


Oi.

[UpInArms]

8. 7/26/06 WP: Ashcroft Nostalgia

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/25/AR2006072501308_pf.html

By Ruth Marcus
Wednesday, July 26, 2006; A17


Alberto Gonzales is achieving something remarkable, even miraculous, as attorney general: He is making John Ashcroft look good.

I was no fan of President Bush's first attorney general, who may be best remembered for holding prayer breakfasts with department brass, hiding the bare-breasted statue in the Great Hall of Justice behind an $8,000 set of drapes, and warning darkly that those who differed with administration policy were giving aid to terrorists.

But as I watched Gonzales testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, it struck me: In terms of competence (the skill with which he handles the job) and character (willingness to stand up to the president), Gonzales is enough to make you yearn for the good old Ashcroft days.

Gonzales is an amiable man, not nearly so polarizing or ideological as his predecessor. If you were given the old desert-island choice between the two, he would be the better option -- more likely to share the rainwater, less likely to make you listen to him sing. (If you've ever heard Ashcroft's "Let the Eagle Soar," you know what I mean.)

Where Ashcroft was hard-edged and combative, Gonzales is pleasant and seemingly imperturbable. He's always reminded me a bit of the Pillsbury doughboy: No matter how hard he's poked, he springs back, smiling.

...more...

[Peace Patriot]

18. Gonzales just knifed his chief aide in the back. Some "Pillsbury doughboy."

He furthermore--according to James Comey's testimony to the Senate Justice Committee today--tried an end-run around Acting AG Comey (when Gonzo was WH counsel), on illegal domestic spying, by disregarding Mrs. John Ashcroft's specific desire to protect her very sick and drugged husband, AG Ashcroft, from any visitors or calls, and pushing into Ashcroft's sickbed in ICU, along with Bush chief aide Andrew Card, to try to get him to do the signoff, when Comey had refused to. Comey got word of it from Mrs. Ashcroft, and raced to Ashcroft's side to prevent undue influence, meanwhile calling FBI Director Robt. Mueller and agents to meet him there. To head off mass resignations at DoJ, Bush finally agrees to some controls on the illegal spying program. You can read the whole bizarre story and commentary at Firedoglake.com (they live blogged it). But here we have the WH counsel and future Bush-appointed AG Gonzales willing to coerce a sick man in ICU to further the Bush Junta's nazi agenda of spying on (and controlling, blackmailing?) everybody in the country, with no oversight.

Coward. Thug. Toady. Torture memo writer. Fascist. Ass-kisser to the rich and powerful. Spy. Ripper up of the Constitution.

A rancid "Pillsbury doughboy." Biscuits laced with arsenic. Frankenfood to kill your children with. "Amiable"? "Pleasant"? My gorge rises when I see or hear Gonzales. He is a deceitful and contemptible, and wily and lethal, operative of the horrendous war criminals and traitors. I am certainly no Ashcroft fan--who rose to AG after the small aircraft that his opponent was flying in, in the Missouri Senate race, fell out of the sky, and the Missouri voters voted for the dead guy rather than Ashcroft. His own state couldn't stomach him. (Just the guy for Bush.) But, when push came to shove, he sided with the honorable lawmen--Comey, Mueller--who were, at the very least, trying to keep a modicum of civility in our government, and, at best, were heroes, who risked their careers (and, who knows?, maybe their lives) for the rule of law.

When the Washington Post--and their brethren in the war profiteering corporate news monopolies--want to cover something up, or cover it over, this is often how they do it: through elaborate gushy or wordy characterization, through "personality politics"--wasting words on qualities that THEY perceive in a politician, or want to sell us on (like Bush being someone people who "would like to have a beer with"--what nonsense!--says who?), and thus taking the bite out of critically important issues and actions. And they pass this mush-brained writing off as journalism.

They furthermore state as fact things that are NOT fact. "Gonzales is an amiable man." Is. Not "many people think" or "some people think" or "his family and neighbors think." IS. Fact. Swallow it and choke. And if YOU don't think that this lying sack of slime Alberto Gonzales is "amiable," then YOU obviously don't think like a the Beltway insider and YOUR opinion is so much dog crap for Beltway insiders to avoid stepping in with their high-heeled shoes.

God, I hate WaPo! Let's fumigate Washington, ok? Or re-build the capitol somewhere else. The stench may never leave.

[Mr Rabble]

26. Id like to Rec' this post.^^^^^^^^^^^^ Thank you!

Great post Peace Patriot.

[Hekate]

27. PP, you see him for who he really is, but the mask, the persona, has allowed him to go far

I agree with you -- to be accurate, the columnist should have qualified her language considerably when discussing his personality. It's all seeming, like so much else in the BushCheneyRove admin.

Hekate

[UpInArms]

32. Peace Patriot, I am so with you on this, Gonzales

is a bug, a nasty evil bug.

Let's fumigate together

He's the torture author, but prior to that, he was the one that said that Dimson didn't need Congressional authority to invade Iraq - that the 1991 UN Resolution covered any invasion.

The Whoreshington Post and the Whore Street Journal have blood on their hands and their presses should be seized.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002193

Bush's Iraq Resolution
The president should make Congress an ally in fighting Saddam.

Thursday, August 29, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT

Alberto Gonzales is surely right on the law. As the White House counsel has informed his boss, President Bush already has full authority under the Constitution to order the U.S. military to depose Saddam Hussein. But in our view he'd still be wise to seek a vote of Congressional support.

His legal authority starts with the original 1990 United Nations resolution against Saddam, which endorsed "all necessary means" not only to oust the dictator from Kuwait but "to restore international peace and security in the area." The U.S. Congress then passed its own resolution endorsing force to implement that U.N. mandate, including all of the later U.N. resolutions on inspections. No one disputes that Saddam has violated those resolutions and remains a threat to security, so the legal case for using force today seems more than solid.

Historically, too, outright declarations of war by Congress have been rare: Only five, to be precise, the last one coming after Pearl Harbor. Yet U.S. Presidents have used force hundreds of times without a formal declaration, and these columns have long argued for an expansive interpretation of Presidential war-making power. If Congress wants to stop a President, it can always use the power of the purse and cut off funds.

...more...

[FloridaJudy]

46. I became physically ill

Watching Gonzalez blame McNulty for the firings on Olbermann last night. Last week he couldn't remember anything, but suddenly he recalls it was all McNulty's doing? And all the time Gonzo had this smug little smirk on his face, like a kid tearing the wings off of butterflies.

What a slimy little toad! If I were a member of the DOJ, I'd resign and spill my guts ASAP, before I had to be rushed to the E.R. with stiletto wounds. This is starting to look like some blood-drenched Jacobean drama.

I never thought I'd have any sympathy for John Let-the-Eagle-Fly-and-Cover-the-Breasts Ashcroft, but he's starting to look like a tragic hero by comparison.

I see a future Grand Opera here.

[UpInArms]

7. Jan 1, 2006: NYT: Justice Deputy Resisted Parts of Spy Program

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0101-01.htm

Justice Deputy Resisted Parts of Spy Program
by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen


WASHINGTON - A top Justice Department official objected in 2004 to aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and refused to sign on to its continued use amid concerns about its legality and oversight, according to officials with knowledge of the tense internal debate. The concerns appear to have played a part in the temporary suspension of the secret program.

The concerns prompted two of President Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general - to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital in March 2004 to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery, the officials said.

The unusual meeting was prompted because Mr. Ashcroft's top deputy, James B. Comey, who was acting as attorney general in his absence, had indicated he was unwilling to give his approval to certifying central aspects of the program, as required under the White House procedures set up to oversee it.

With Mr. Comey unwilling to sign off on the program, the White House went to Mr. Ashcroft - who had been in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital with pancreatitis and was housed under unusually tight security - because "they needed him for certification," according to an official briefed on the episode. The official, like others who discussed the issue, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

Mr. Comey declined to comment, and Mr. Gonzales could not be reached.

...more...

[pnwmom]

9. I remember when that came out, but Comey's never testified before.

And his testimony was gripping.

[PassingFair]

48. Yup, the whole scenario's been public for a while now.

Comey could have the government by the
short hairs if he wanted right now.

The 'pukes should run HIM.

They WOULD NOT LOSE.

[fearnobush]

10. Gonzales Pressured Ashcroft on Program, Comey Says

<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=a_3OvQ.5CsLs&refer=politics>

May 15 (Bloomberg) -- Alberto Gonzales pressured then- Attorney General John Ashcroft while he was hospitalized in 2004 to recertify a classified program whose legality was questioned by the Justice Department, the agency's former No. 2 official told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified that he and other Justice Department officials planned to resign after the visit to Ashcroft's hospital bed by Gonzales, then White House counsel, and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. Comey was acting attorney general because of Ashcroft's illness. He wouldn't specify the program at issue, though panel members said it apparently was secret wiretapping of suspected terrorists.

``I was concerned that this was an effort to do an end-run around the acting attorney general and to get a very sick man to approve something'' that the Justice Department had concluded ``was unable to be certified as to its legality,'' Comey told the Senate panel in Washington. Comey said Vice President Dick Cheney also had told him he disagreed with the department's stance.

[Melinda]

11. Kick: Everyone Must Read!! Article Shows * Attempts to Circumvent Law!!

Ashrcroft and Coomey had reviewed and decided that the wiretapping provision * wanted was not legal -it was ILLEGAL - and the AG was not going to sign off on it. One week later, when Ashcroft was in Intensive Care, Gonzales and Card tried to pull a fast one and events began unfolding as explained ined in the article:

<snip>
And it was only a matter of minutes that the door opened and in walked Mr. Gonzales, carrying an envelope, and Mr. Card. They came over and stood by the bed. They greeted the attorney general very briefly. And then Mr. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there -- to seek his approval for a matter, and explained what the matter was -- which I will not do.

And Attorney General Ashcroft then stunned me. He lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me -- drawn from the hour-long meeting we'd had a week earlier -- and in very strong terms expressed himself, and then laid his head back down on the pillow, seemed spent, and said to them, "But that doesn't matter, because I'm not the attorney general."
<end snip>

The article goes on at great length to describe the circus events as they unfolded throughout the evening and next day; Comey continued to refuse to sign off, and * ultimately decided to authorize the program anyway, ie; yest another act in a long list fo criminal actions by the * maladministration:

<snip>
COMEY: The program was reauthorized without us and without a signature from the Department of Justice attesting as to its legality. And I prepared a letter of resignation, intending to resign the next day, Friday, March the 12th.
<end snip>

While I am most certainly not a fan of John Ashcroft, I am pleased to note that not everyone in the * misadministration has proven to be criminal. I trust Schumer will be pitbull like with this latest bit of information, and I encourage everyone to contact their Congree critters to demand hearings on this matter alone.

And please - read, kick, and recommend!!

[pnwmom]

19. Thank you, Melinda. It was an amazing thing to read, wasn't it?

[AnnieBW]

12. I never thought I'd say anything good about Ashcroft

But at least he did something RIGHT with this!

[pnwmom]

17. He, when he was critically ill, was a far better Attorney General

than Gonzales on his best day.

As much as I disagreed with his positions on most things, he apparently had some integrity, unlike the current crew of Pirates.

[yodermon]

13. IS THERE VIDEO OF THIS YET?

I missed it this morning.
sorry for shouting :)

[Spazito]

21. Here you are!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxHjWYA50Ds

(Thanks to Breeze54 for the link)

[yodermon]

29. THANK you, watching now!

:toast:

[porque no]

14. Madrid bombing the next day, convenient timing, again.

After they decide to ignore the Attorney general and reinstate the illegal spying, a terror attack comes in right on time.

[eridani]

15. John A--I really, really apologize for sending you those calico cat postcards

You stood up and did the right thing once in your life, and that's worth something.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051507R.shtml

[MnFats]

20. "Godfather?" More like "Seven Days in May!"

i thought I had lost my capacity to be astonished but this is astonishing.
impeach and jail the whole lot of them.

[yellowcanine]

22. Exactly. It has elements of a banana republic coup. This alone should sink Gonzo.

Someone that lawless is not fit to be AG

[yellowcanine]

23. Is there a statute of limitations on treason? The case could be made.

Trying to circumvent lawful authority.

[madrchsod]

25. no

[madrchsod]

24. comey is the guy that appointed fitzgerald......

comey is one tough son of a bitch who everyone knows is telling the truth. i hope every fucking republican is throwing up in their mouth today...

[pnwmom]

28. And, as I recall, he drafted the appointment

with words that would prevent any Bushie from firing him.

[disndat]

30. cloak and dagger stuff

This reminds me of the Putin critic who was mysteriously poisoned in a London cafe drinking tea. How did Ashcroft end up in the George Town hospital ICU?

[pnwmom]

31. I think it was gall bladder surgery complicated by pancreatitis.

And he was extremely ill, and in intensive care.

It wasn't an appendectomy, as Tony Snow claimed.

[rasputin1952]

33. I am about as far as one can get from an Ashcroft supporter...

but even though I never liked his policies, or his absurd fundamentalist agenda, there is one thing that can be said about him, he had principles, even if one does not agree with them, he stuck to them. He was a bat-shit crazy zealot, but he wasn't selling off the country and the Constitution. Gonzo is doing both, and much worse...how this asshole ever got in is beyond me. He's remarkably stupid, he has no concept of what a democratic-Republic is, and he is just one more flunky for bush/cheney. He's going down, it is just a question of how soon.

[IndianaGreen]

34. These fascists succeeded in turning John Ashcroft into a civil liberties champion

It must be pretty bad when a Neanderthal like Ashcroft comes across as a defender of the Constitution. We are in a world of hurt!

[rasputin1952]

35. How true...

:(

[L. Coyote]

43. Excellent perspective. They moved the right-side goal line that far right.

[MidwestTransplant]

37. One of the fired USAs said Ashcroft told them to leave politics at the door

When Gonzo came in he told them that they in effect work for the White House.

[rasputin1952]

45. Just shows you what a contmeptable little man Gonzo is...

Me thinks he is not long for his post as AG.

The house of cards is not just crumbling, it is on fire.

[Recursion]

36. I hate to admit it, but Ashcroft impressed me in this telling

He -- very possibly near death, mind you -- picks his head up off the pillow, says he thinks it's illegal, and says at any rate it doesn't matter what he thinks because Comey is the AG, not Ashcroft.

I'm not an Ashcroft fan but he just went up a notch in my book.

[rodeodance]

38. nytimes: President Intervened in Dispute Over Eavesdropping

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/washington/16nsa.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print

May 16, 2007
President Intervened in Dispute Over Eavesdropping
By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, May 15 — President Bush intervened in March 2004 to avert a crisis over the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program after Attorney General John Ashcroft, Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. and other senior Justice Department aides all threatened to resign, a former deputy attorney general testified Tuesday.

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, according to Congressional testimony by the former deputy attorney general, James B. Comey.

...........


Mr. Comey said that on the evening of March 10, 2004, Mr. Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., then Mr. Bush’s chief of staff, tried to bypass him by secretly visiting Mr. Ashcroft. Mr. Ashcroft was extremely ill and disoriented, Mr. Comey said, and his wife had forbidden any visitors.

.......Mr. Comey left the Justice Department in August 2006, saying publicly that he had never intended to serve through the end of Mr. Bush’s second term. Privately, he has told friends that he grew weary of what he felt was increasing White House influence on the agency.................

[UNCLE_Rico]

41. there are FEW things more vile than watching the once-respected NY Times

shove their noses as far up *'s stinky buttcrack as they can possibly go...

I'd like to know how an editor could possibly allow the wording used in this story's introduction, at least, if that editor has any clue whatsoever about the reality of the news this article is supposedly reporting on? Could the author POSSIBLY twist the meaning/significance of what Comey had to say any more blatantly? Could the insinuation(s) made by the first two paragraphs possibly be any more asinine? It almost reads like some kind of bizarro-world version of a story from The Onion.

[JoFerret]

47. Have you been reading their editorials?

.

[wordpix]

49. and yet, despite all that happened that day, Gonzo can't recall a thing

:crazy: :silly: :crazy:

[Up2Late]

40. Here's a different report from NPR from today

Former Justice Deputy Describes Political Clash

Listen to (or read) this story...(at link)
by Ari Shapiro

All Things Considered, May 15, 2007 · Leaders at the White House and the Department of Justice clashed long before last year's dismissal of U.S. attorneys, according to former Deputy Attorney General James Comey.

Comey, who worked under John Ashcroft in President Bush's first administration, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the firings of U.S. attorneys and the alleged politicization of the Justice Department. One senator called it some of the most dramatic testimony he's heard in 25 years as a legislator.

Comey was the only witness at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, where for the first time, he publicly told the story of a dramatic confrontation at a hospital bedside between some of the most powerful men in Washington.

"I thought 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," Comey testified....

(more at link)
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10192754>

[krkaufman]

44. "when he was critically ill" --- not to mention, I expect, on painkillers ...

... and in no condition whatsoever to make a rational judgement, putting aside the ghoulish behavior.

[Lisa]

50. Wow. I feel sorry for John Ashcroft, the World Bank, and the CIA

Entities that have been abused by this administration -- and which I have never had much sympathy for, until recently. Bush is really a uniter, isn't he! Talk about getting everybody on the same side ... against him!