Comey Testimony – Moon of Alabama

May 15, 2007

Comey Testimony

There was a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today. James Comey, Deputy Attorney General to Attorney General Ashcroft was questioned.

The important part was about an incident Newsweek reported on in January 2006:

On
one day in the spring of 2004, White House chief of staff Andy Card and
the then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a bedside visit to
John Ashcroft, attorney general at the time, who was stricken with a
rare and painful pancreatic disease, to try—without success—to get him
to reverse his deputy, Acting Attorney General James Comey, who was
balking at the warrantless eavesdropping. […] (The
White House denies this; Comey declined to comment.)

That bedside visit had much more drama than the Newsweek account communicates. Bush was directly involved too. Here is the part of the live-blogging of the hearing emptywheel did at firedoglake (emphasizes are hers):

JC: James Comey
CS: Senator Charles Schumer
AGAG: Attorney General A. Gonzales, at that time counsel to the President

JC We communicated that to WH that we could not recertify program.
I was driving home, got a call from David Ayers, gotten a call from
Mrs. Ascroft, from the hospital, Mr Card and Mr Gonzales were on the
way to the hospital. I have some recollection that the call was from the President, I’m not sure. I called my COS to get as many of my people to the hospital immediately.

JC I was concerned that they might ask Ashcroft to overrule me when
he was in no condition to do that. It wasn’t clear he could orient to
time and place. It was you, Mrs. Ashcroft, and the AG. I tried to help
him get oriented. Meuller instructed the FBI agents not to remove me
under any circumstances. The three of us DOJ people were in the room,
Jack Goldsmith and Patrick Phildmon (sp). We waited. It was only a
matter of minutes, in walked Gonzales and Card. They stood by the bed
and then AGAG began to discuss why they were there, to seek his
approval. AG Ashcroft stunned me and in very strong terms expressed his
view of the matter, drawing from the hour long view we had a week ago.
Then he said, "that doesn’t matter bc I’m not the AG."

CS But he expressed his reluctance to sign it.

JC Yes. The two men did not acknowledge me, they walked from the
room. We had a brief exchange with AG. Then we went outside in the
hallway.
…

The White House effort shown in the above account does not suggest that the program was only about "listening to terrorist phonecalls." The White House contined the program without the legally required reauthorization and only after Ashcroft, Comer and others threatend to resign changes were made.

The modified program still continues. What is it really about and what changes were made?

Your guess what it is about as good as mine …

UPDATE: Full hearing transcripts here (pdf):

COMEY: I have some recollection that the call was from the president himself, but I don’t know that for sure. It came from the White House. And it came through and the call was taken in the hospital. 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.

SCHUMER: What was your concern? You were in obviously a huge hurry.

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.

SCHUMER: Right, OK.

COMEY: I was worried about him, frankly. And so I raced to the hospital room, entered. And Mrs. Ashcroft was standing by the hospital bed, Mr. Ashcroft was lying down in the bed, the room was darkened. And I immediately began speaking to him, trying to orient him as to time and place, and try to see if he could focus on what was happening, and it wasn’t clear to me that he could. He seemed pretty bad off.
….

Posted by b on May 15, 2007 at 17:30 UTC | Permalink

Comments

I have said all along, this “warrantless wiretapping” program that Gonzo and the WH were so determined to put into place was not intended to catch “terrorists,” but rather to get dirt on their political enemies – mostly Democrats. We have seen the WH exposed more than ever recently about their blatant and ruthless politicization of everything in the government. If the taps were actually against suspected “terrorists,” as claimed, there would have been no reason to avoid the scrutiny and accountability of the courts. No, BushCo was after information on people they knew no court would approve of and further, it’s not just wiretapping of phones, it’s access to all telecommunications which include e-mails and faxes.
And right on cue…AP Confirms the reports that Jerry Falwell is dead.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 15 2007 17:56 utc | 1

While dkos and others are dancing on graves, In their necro-celebration, I’m more concerned that the Comey testimony will be not overshadowed, but non-existent due to America’s Saint or if you prefer, devil’s passing.
As a commenter at TPM say’s,”So let me get this straight… Card and Gonzales were discussing a top secret, codeword classified program in a DC hospital? Was this hospital room in a SCIF? (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility).”
So these “ambulance chasers” card and abu were pushing asscroft to do illegal shit in a post op grogginess and when he didn’t go for it, they did it anyway? No wonder Andrew Card resigned when he did; he saw the Full Spectrum Catastrophe (pun intended) coming, especially after Jr’s phone call. But will it save him? I am telling you these guys are traitors, this is felonious, high crimes, if not down right High Treason.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 15 2007 18:27 utc | 2

@Uncle –
@1 – that’s my guess too – it is essentially a Rove program. Note that the incident took plave in March 2004 – elections coming up …
@2 – scumbags I’d say – especially Gonzales

“You have to remember, at the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names,” Gonzales told reporters at a National Press Club forum in Washington. “And he would know better than anyone else, anyone in this room, anyone — again, the deputy attorney general would know best about the qualifications and the experiences of the United States attorneys community, and he signed off on the names.”
…
McNulty has acknowledged approving the list of prosecutors who were ordered to leave last October, a few weeks before the firings were made official. But documents released by the Justice Department show he was not closely involved in picking all the U.S. attorneys who were put on the list — a job mostly driven by two Gonzales staffers with little prosecutorial experience.

What an utter asshole.
Ashcroft might have been a nutty rightwing guy. But he was at least a nutty rightwing guy who did stick to the law.
Gonzales is a nutty rightwing criminal and like his boss a very cowardly nutty rightwing criminal.

Posted by: b | May 15 2007 18:43 utc | 3

marty lederman has the transcript:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/05/did-comey-just-testify-that-president.html

Posted by: selise | May 15 2007 19:22 utc | 4

Youtube:James Comey testifies before Senate Judiciary

In his testimony today, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey described an attempt by the White House in 2004 to go behind Comey’s back — even though he was the acting attorney general because Ashcroft was hospitalized — to get John Ashcroft’s signature on the reauthorization order for the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 16 2007 9:15 utc | 5

PBS Frontline:Spying on the homefront
watch it online.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 16 2007 10:41 utc | 6

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