Let's Go Back To Domestic Spying

Comey Breaks Silence: White House Tried To Force Incapacitated Ashcroft To Back Spying Program

In March 2004, President Bush’s warrantless domestic spying efforts were temporarily suspended after then-acting Attorney General James Comey refused to sign on to an extension of the program “amid concerns about its legality and oversight.”

Today, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Comey detailed the extraordinary and potentially illegal efforts made by Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card — then White House counsel and chief of staff, respectively — to attempt to force John Ashcroft to overrule Comey, despite the fact that Ashcroft was debilitated in a hospital with pancreatitis.

In his testimony today, Comey spoke for the first time about:

– The high-speed pursuit that took place when Comey learned that Card and Gonzales were on their way to see Ashcroft at the hospital;

– The hospital meeting, in which the seriously ill Ashcroft “stunned” Comey by lifting “his head off the pillow and in very strong terms” rejecting Card and Gonzales’ effort to have him reauthorize the spying program;

– Comey’s admission that he believed he had “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”;

– Andrew Card’s subsequent “very upset” call to Comey, in which Card claimed that he and Gonzales had visited Ashcroft “just…to wish him well”;

– The White House’s eventual agreement to suspend the warrantless spying in the face of a threat of mass resignations, including from FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Ashcroft