Gonzales, the president's lawyer and Texas buddy, is twisting slowly in the wind, facing a vote of no confidence from the Senate.
Political Air: Former Justice Department White House Liaison Monica Goodling (right) secured immunity from prosecution by testifying about the 2006 firings of eight U.S. attorneys for which many lawmakers are pressuring that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (left with President Bush) be fired
By Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas
Newsweek
June 4, 2007 issue - The United States Department of Justice has not always been above politics. John F. Kennedy, after all, appointed his brother and consigliere Robert to be attorney general. But the Justice Department is supposed to stand for the rule of law—to be the enforcer of the laws of the United States, not the place presidents go to get around the law. Independence is an important tradition in the columned limestone building on Constitution Avenue. It is worth remembering that before Richard Nixon could find someone at the Justice Department willing to fire the Watergate special prosecutor in 1973, he had to accept the resignations of the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, and the deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus. (Solicitor General Robert Bork finally did the deed.)
So consider these scenes from March 2004, described by two former top Justice officials who, like other ex-officials interviewed by NEWSWEEK, did not wish to be identified discussing sensitive internal matters. Attorney General John Ashcroft is really sick. About to give a press conference in Virginia, he is stricken with pain so severe he has to lie down on the floor. Taken to the hospital for an emergency gallbladder operation, he hallucinates under medication as he lies, near death, in intensive care. On the night after his operation, he has two visitors: White House chief of staff Andrew Card and presidential counsel Alberto Gonzales. As described in public testimony, they want Ashcroft to sign a document authorizing the government's top-secret eavesdropping program to go on. The attorney general, who thinks the program is illegal, refuses.
Back at the Justice Department, there is an equally extraordinary scene. Appalled by the White House's heavy-handed attempt to coerce the gravely ill attorney general, virtually the entire top leadership of the Justice Department is threatening to resign. The group includes the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum and the chief of the Criminal Division, Chris Wray. Some of them gather in the conference room of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who describes Ashcroft's bravely turning away the president's men from his hospital bed. The mood that night in the conference room was tense—and sober. "This was a showdown," says a former senior Justice Department official who was there. "Everybody understood the choice they were making and the gravity of the situation. Everybody knew what the stakes were." A different source estimated that as many as 30 top DOJ officials would have resigned.
more Marty Lederman
After the White House Counsel and Chief of Staff had tried to shake down the sedated and ailing Attorney General in his hospital bed.
After those two officials did not so much as acknowledge the presence of the Acting Attorney General and the head of OLC, standing there in the hospital room.
After the President nevertheless overruled the AG and Acting AG and decided to plunge ahead with an unlawful program on the mere say-so of the Vice President's unorthodox view of the Constitution.
After all that -- what might the mood have been like in the halls of the Justice Department, among the very conservative Bush loyalists who had just been railroaded because they had insisted upon some fidelity to the Rule of Law?
Solemn. And stunned. And prepared to do something virtually unprecedented in our Nation's history -- something that would make the Saturday Night Massacre seem like a tea party.
According to a
new article by Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas (which nicely summarizes all that we've learned so far):
"This was a showdown," says a former senior Justice Department official who was there. "Everybody understood the choice they were making and the gravity of the situation. Everybody knew what the stakes were." A different source estimated that as many as 30 top DOJ officials would have resigned.
And remember: These were anything but civil libertarians or closet Democrats. They are not officials who were standing on ceremony. They were officials zealously devoted to the prosecution of the war against Al Qaeda, and willing to stretch the law quite considerably to give the President the tools he thought he needed: "This was not ideological," recalled a former Ashcroft aide.
"This was about the difference between pushing the limits to the edge of the line and crossing the line." (On the constitutional question of whether it's acceptable to even go "up to the line," see
here.) To their great credit, these officials insisted that the line not be crossed -- and in order to make sure that it wasn't, they were willing to take a stand by doing something that would have not only blown the lid on the President's secret surveillance program, but that likely would have precipiated a constitutional crisis, and threatened the Bush Presidency itself, in the middle of an armed conflict when the public had no inkling whatsoever that any of this was occurring.
Is there anything remotely like it in U.S. history?
Hot tip for the mainstream press (not to mention Congress):
This is not your everyday occurrence. As
I've been trying to emphasize, this internal DOJ showdown -- and, more broadly, the role of the Vice President's office in pushing a constitutional vision so extreme that the entire upper echelon of the Ashcroft Justice Department was ready to resign over it -- is a very big deal, what you might fairly call a huge story.
Indeed, other than the tragedy of Iraq (which is also the result of the President permitting the government to be controlled by a small coterie of like-minded extremists who were committed to ignoring all professional and expert perspectives inconsistent with their world view), this is probably the most important story of Bush Administration. And there is a ton of information that we do not yet know.
linkEdited to add this from
Talking Points Memo:
There are a lot of interesting insights in Michael Isikoff's and Evan Thomas'
Newsweek piece on what they call "The Gonzales Mess," but the follow-up to James Comey's hospital-room story stood out.
Back at the Justice Department, there is an equally extraordinary scene. Appalled by the White House's heavy-handed attempt to coerce the gravely ill attorney general, virtually the entire top leadership of the Justice Department is threatening to resign. The group includes the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum and the chief of the Criminal Division, Chris Wray. Some of them gather in the conference room of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who describes Ashcroft's bravely turning away the president's men from his hospital bed. The mood that night in the conference room was tense -- and sober.
"This was a showdown," says a former senior Justice Department official who was there. "Everybody understood the choice they were making and the gravity of the situation. Everybody knew what the stakes were." A different source estimated that as many as 30 top DOJ officials would have resigned.
I seem to recall Alberto Gonzales
testifying under oath that wasn't any "serious disagreement about the program" at the Justice Department. Is that still operative?
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