Report: Bush ‘Personally Directed’ Gonzales To Strong-Arm Ashcroft At His Bedside

[FourScore]

In his May 2007 testimony, describing the infamous strong-arming of John Ashcroft done by Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales to reauthorize Bush’s surveillance program, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey said he believed President Bush made a call to Ashcroft’s wife:

COMEY: Mrs. Ashcroft reported that a call had come through, and that as a result of that call Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales were on their way to the hospital to see Mr. Ashcroft.

SCHUMER: Do you have any idea who that call was from?

COMEY: I have some recollection that the call was from the president himself.

Days later, Bush dodged the question about his involvement in the matter, stating, “There’s a lot of speculation about what happened and what didn’t happen. I’m not doing to talk about it.” Yesterday, however, Murray Waas wrote at The Atlantic that Alberto Gonzales is now telling investigators that Bush was directly involved:

According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales is now saying that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit. … Gonzales has painted a picture of Bush as being very much involved when it came to his administration’s surveillance program.

The revelations come as Gonzales refused to tell the Senate in 2007 who sent him to the bedside of Ashcroft, repeatedly asserting, “We were there on behalf of the president of the United States...”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/27/comey-gonzales-bush/