Gonzales: Bush personally directed me to ask Ashcroft to sign off on warrantless wiretapping
Exclusive September 26, 2008
Sources say Alberto Gonzales now claims that President Bush personally directed him to John Ashcroft's hospital room in the infamous wiretap renewal incident-and that in another instance the President asked him to fabricate fictitious notes
by Murray Waas
What Did Bush Tell Gonzales?
In March 2004, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a now-famous late-night visit to the hospital room of Attorney General John Ashcroft, seeking to get Ashcroft to sign a certification stating that the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program was legal. 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.
Related story:
The Case of the Gonzales Notes
Did Alberto Gonzales create a set of fictitious notes to justify the reauthorization of Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program? By Murray Waas
The hospital visit is already central to many contemporaneous historical accounts of the Bush presidency. At the time of the visit, Ashcroft had been in intensive care for six days, was heavily medicated, and was recovering from emergency surgery to remove his gall bladder. Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey has said that he believes that Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who accompanied Gonzales to Ashcroft’s hospital room, were trying to take advantage of Ashcroft’s grievously ill state-pressing him to sign the certification possibly without even comprehending what he was doing-and in the process authorize a government surveillance program which both Ashcroft and the Justice Department had concluded was of questionable legality.
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