Gonzales Scrubbed

It reads like a bad episode of Scrubs.

T.S.P. or N.S.A.?

Regardless...

...sounds to me like Gonzales is D.O.A.

The Hospital Visit

At the time, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was in the hospital for an operation, and Deputy AG James Comey was acting attorney general. Comey was against renewing the surveillance program and told Alberto Gonzales--then White House Counsel--as much.

Gonzales, with then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, went to Ashcroft's hospital room and tried to get him to overrule Comey and reauthorize the spying program.

Ashcroft refused.

Arlen Specter asked Gonzales, given Comey's version of events, how Gonzales could say there had been no disagreement about the program.

Gonzales said that the visit to the hospital was not about the terrorist surveillance program but rather, about other intelligence activities.

The sentence had barely left Gonzales' mouth when Specter jumped in, "Mr. attorney general, do you really expect us to believe that?"

Gonzales said that he went to Ashcroft's hospital room to get the surveillance program reauthorized only after top Republicans and Democrats from the House and Senate said they supported the program.

"We had had an emergency meeting in the White House situation room, where the congressional leadership told us to continue going forward with this very important intelligence activity," he told the committee.

Gonzales said he had gone to Ashcroft's hospital room to let him know where the leadership stood on the issue.

He hadn't gone there to pressure him.

The Hospital Visit, Part Two

FBI Director Robert Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee that the Bush administration’s secret eavesdropping program was the main topic at an encounter in the hospital room of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on March 10, 2004, contrary to what Mr. Gonzales told a Senate panel on Tuesday.

In his testimony before the Senate panel on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales said the subject in the hospital room was “intelligence activities” under debate in the administration, but not the secret eavesdropping program.

Code Blue.


STAT.