Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey reignited interest in Bush’s warrantless wiretap program and the propriety of Alberto Gonzales serving as Attorney General, but his stunning testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee a couple of weeks ago could only go into so much detail. Eventually, the committee ran out of time.
So, Comey agreed to follow-up with senators with written responses to various questions. As luck would have it, they’re pretty interesting, too.
Vice President Cheney told Justice Department officials that he disagreed with their objections to a secret surveillance program during a high-level White House meeting in March 2004, a former senior Justice official told senators yesterday.
The meeting came one day before White House officials tried to get approval for the same program from then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who lay recovering from surgery in a hospital, according to former deputy attorney general James B. Comey.
Comey’s disclosures, made in response to written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, indicate that Cheney and his aides were more closely involved than previously known in a fierce internal battle over the legality of the warrantless surveillance program…. Comey said that Cheney’s office later blocked the promotion of a senior Justice Department lawyer, Patrick Philbin, because of his role in raising concerns about the surveillance.
In this administration, standing up for the rule of law, even if you’re a conservative Republican, will only lead to punishment and retribution. That Cheney was helping direct the punishment should surprise no one.
In Philbin’s case, he had the audacity to raise legal questions about an administration program that circumvented the law. Alberto Gonzales was not inclined to punish him for those questions, but the Vice President personally intervened — and the AG went along with Cheney’s demands. As Josh Marshall explained, Gonzales was “not personally vindictive or perhaps even a person of malign will, but an obedient servant of bad men.”
Sounds like most of the Bush administration since 2001.
Also, senators asked Comey for more details about the showdown in Ashcroft’s hospital room. They asked him whether Gonzales or Andy Card asked Ashcroft “questions to elicit his state of mind and/or medical condition prior to discussing their request for authorization of the classified program?”
“How are you, General?” Gonzales asked Ashcroft at the hospital, according to Comey.
“Not well,” replied Ashcroft, who had just undergone gallbladder surgery and was battling pancreatitis.
It was then that Gonzales and Card tried to badger the “not well” man, who had already transferred his responsibilities to Comey, to literally sign off on a legally dubious surveillance program that he knew to be questionable.
As for Cheney, the Vice President’s involvement has certainly piqued the interest of Senate Dems.
Democrats said yesterday that the new details from Comey raise further questions about the role of Cheney and other White House officials in the episode.
“Mr. Comey has confirmed what we suspected for a while — that White House hands guided Justice Department business,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). “The vice president’s fingerprints are all over the effort to strong-arm Justice on the NSA program, and the obvious next question is: Exactly what role did the president play?”
A White House spokesman declined to comment.
Stay tuned.