The NYT noted today that “someone at the White House (and Americans need to know who) dispatched Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card to Mr. Ashcroft’s hospital bed.” Was it the president? He doesn’t want to talk about it. From a White House event this morning:
Q: Thank you, sir. There’s been some very dramatic testimony before the Senate this week from one of your former top Justice Department officials, who describes a scene that some senators called “stunning,” about a time when the wireless — when the warrantless wiretap program was being reviewed. 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?
BUSH: Kelly, there’s a lot of speculation about what happened and what didn’t happen; I’m not going to talk about it.
At the risk of sounding picky, that’s not good enough. When it came to the Plame scandal, Bush said he would refuse to answer questions because it was the subject of a criminal investigation. When the investigation ended, Bush said he would still refuse to comment, because he’s decided to treat it like an ongoing investigation.
But (alas) there is no special prosecutor investigating the president’s warrantless-search program. There’s no grand jury; there are no depositions; there are no suspects hiring defense attorneys. There are just questions about the latest in a series of White House scandals.
By saying he’s “not going to talk about it,” Bush is hiding behind the classified nature of a surveillance program — that he’s already acknowledged publicly. For that matter, the question doesn’t even involve the details of intelligence gathering; but rather just the process. Did the White House engage in activity that Bush’s Justice Department found to be illegal? Did the president dispatch Card and Gonzales to Ashcroft’s hospital bedside?
Bush doesn’t want to talk about it. What a surprise.
All he’s willing to say is the same vapid nonsense he’s been saying since the NSA program was exposed in the first place.
“As I said, this program is a necessary program that was constantly reviewed and constantly briefed to the Congress. It’s an important part of protecting the United States. And it’s still an important part of our protection because there’s still an enemy that would like to attack us. No matter how calm it may seem here in America, an enemy lurks. And they would like to strike. They would like to do harm to the American people because they have an agenda. They want to impose an ideology; they want us to retreat from the world; they want to find safe haven. And these just aren’t empty words, these are the words of al Qaeda themselves.
I think we’re just about back to “If I have to follow the law, the terrorists win.”
A couple of days ago, Tony Snow said, “Jim Comey gave his side of what transpired that day.”
What’s the other side? The White House doesn’t want to talk about it.