Comey "discloses" more

Former deputy attorney general James Comey's response to written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee has disclosed more information about the Secret Surveillence Program that points directly to Cheney.

Washington Post has the story:

Official: Cheney Urged Wiretaps
Stand-In for Ashcroft Alleges Interference

Vice President Cheney told Justice Department officials that he disagreed with their objections to a secret surveillance program during a high-level White House meeting in March 2004, a former senior Justice official told senators yesterday.

The meeting came one day before White House officials tried to get approval for the same program from then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who lay recovering from surgery in a hospital, according to former deputy attorney general James B. Comey.

Comey's disclosures, made in response to written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, indicate that Cheney and his aides were more closely involved than previously known in a fierce internal battle over the legality of the warrantless surveillance program. The program allowed the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls and e-mails between the United States and overseas.

Comey said that Cheney's office later blocked the promotion of a senior Justice Department lawyer, Patrick Philbin, because of his role in raising concerns about the surveillance.

The disclosures also provide further details about the role played by then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales. He visited Ashcroft in his hospital room and wrote an internal memorandum on the surveillance program shortly afterward, according to Comey's responses. Gonzales is now the attorney general. He faces possible congressional votes of no-confidence because of his handling of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys last year.

"How are you, General?" Gonzales asked Ashcroft at the hospital, according to Comey.

"Not well," replied Ashcroft, who had just undergone gallbladder surgery and was battling pancreatitis.

The new details follow Comey's gripping testimony last month about the visit by Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., then President Bush's chief of staff, to Ashcroft's hospital bed on the night of March 10, 2004. The two Bush aides tried to persuade Ashcroft to renew the authorization of the NSA surveillance program, after Comey and other Justice Department officials had said they would not certify the legality of the effort, according to the testimony and other officials.

Ashcroft refused, noting that Comey had been designated as acting attorney general during his illness.

The episode prompted sharp criticism from Democrats and some Republicans, who questioned whether Gonzales and Card were attempting to take advantage of a sick man to get around legal objections from government lawyers. It is unclear who directed the two Bush aides to make the visit.

Democrats said yesterday that the new details from Comey raise further questions about the role of Cheney and other White House officials in the episode.
More at the link.

Just makes you wonder who is really president. And I've heard, lately, that Bush is not happy with Cheney. We'll see.

Cheney Blocked promotion of Patrick Philbin

According to AP:

Vice President Dick Cheney blocked the promotion of a Justice Department official involved in a bedside standoff over President Bush's eavesdropping program, a Senate committee learned Wednesday.

In a written account, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey said Cheney warned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that he would oppose the promotion of a department official who once threatened to resign over the program.

Gonzales eventually decided against trying to promote Patrick Philbin to principal deputy solicitor general, Comey said.

"I understood that someone at the White House communicated to Attorney General Gonzales that the vice president would oppose the appointment if the attorney general pursued the matter," Comey wrote. "The attorney general chose not to pursue it."

Comey responded to written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt.

Comey's account provides new detail in a sprawling, Democratic-elicited story of how much the White House influences the department's operations.

Also Wednesday, the department released 39 new pages of internal e-mails and documents that partly detail efforts by the department's former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, in January 2006 to obtain authority to hire and fire political staffers.

"Ok to send up directly to me, outside of system," Goodling wrote in a Jan. 19, 2006, e-mail to Paul Corts, the assistant attorney general for administration.

The Democrats' investigation into whether the firings of eight U.S. attorneys were improperly political led to testimony last month in which Comey disclosed details of a hospital visit on March 10, 2004, to the attorney general at that time, John Ashcroft.

Democrats contend the story shows the White House's heavy-handed influence over the department, including the agency's role to periodically endorse the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program.

Schlozman testified yesterday. I'll post some of what he didn't say. But it seems there is more and more evidence of a White House involvement in all of this.

The Daily Show Video on Gonzales, McNulty and Comey

Now there's a timeline of The President's Secret Program

CNN is covering this all day today! James Comey's testimony that Washington Post called Shocking. Was the President's wireless surveillance used illegally? It was being used way before we even knew about it.

TPM Muckraker has the time line which explains a lot and fills in what you don't know.

There is more coverage at the NY Times also.

This could mean an impeachable offense.

Breaking on CNN: Dem. Senators Schumer and Feinstein call for Gonzales No-Confidence vote.

The President's Involvement - From Comey's Testimoney

Great post at Daily Kos today that shows the direct involvement of President Bush for Ashcroft to sign off on warrantless wiretapping.

There's a video from Politics TV of Comey's testimony also.

Here's a bit of Daily Kos:

Comey: It was just the three of us at that point. I tried to see if I could help him get oriented. As I said, it wasn't clear that I had succeeded. I went out in the hallway, spoke to Director Mueller by phone. He was on his way. He handed the phone to the director of the security detail, and Director Mueller instructed the FBI agents present not to allow me to be removed from the room under any circumstances. And I went back in the room.

Card and Gonzales arrived shortly thereafter, tried to persuade Ashcroft to authorize their activities, but failed and ultimately left the room. Within minutes after that, Card called Comey and demanded an immediate meeting on his turf, in the White House. Comey told Card that:

After the conduct I had just witnessed, that I would not meet with him without a witness present. He said, "What conduct? We were just there to wish him well."

I said again, after what I just witnessed, I will not meet with you without a witness, and I intend that witness to be the Solicitor General of the United States.

A must read!

WaPo Calls Comey's Testimony Shocking

Comey's testimony was shocking. His testimony puts out there what his administration has been doing to change the rules and laws of this nation. And not for the better! It shows the secretive, underhanded way they have bent the rules to take our freedoms away. All in the name of terrorism that this admin has done very little to stop. They've gotten us into a war we should never have started in Iraq, and not really for terrorism but a vendetta against Saddam. And by doing that has raised the level and amount of terrorists.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox for now so here's some of the Washington Post's article on Comey:

Mr. Comey's Tale
A standoff at a hospital bedside speaks volumes about Attorney General Gonzales.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007; Page A14


JAMES B. COMEY, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source. The episode involved a 2004 nighttime visit to the hospital room of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft by Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff. Only the broadest outlines of this visit were previously known: that Mr. Comey, who was acting as attorney general during Mr. Ashcroft's illness, had refused to recertify the legality of the administration's warrantless wiretapping program; that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card had tried to do an end-run around Mr. Comey; that Mr. Ashcroft had rebuffed them.

Mr. Comey's vivid depiction, worthy of a Hollywood script, showed the lengths to which the administration and the man who is now attorney general were willing to go to pursue the surveillance program. First, they tried to coerce a man in intensive care -- a man so sick he had transferred the reins of power to Mr. Comey -- to grant them legal approval. Having failed, they were willing to defy the conclusions of the nation's chief law enforcement officer and pursue the surveillance without Justice's authorization. Only in the face of the prospect of mass resignations -- Mr. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself -- did the president back down.

As Mr. Comey testified, "I couldn't stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis." The crisis was averted only when, the morning after the program was reauthorized without Justice's approval, President Bush agreed to fix whatever problem Justice had with it (the details remain classified). "We had the president's direction to do . . . what the Justice Department believed was necessary to put this matter on a footing where we could certify to its legality," Mr. Comey said.

You can read the rest at the link.

It's good to know there are still people in this government with a consience and a belief in our constitution. Mr. Comey should have alerted someone, the House or Senate, someone to what they were trying to do prior to this, but, at least he's come forward now.

Here's a bit more of the article that says it all:

The dramatic details should not obscure the bottom line: the administration's alarming willingness, championed by, among others, Vice President Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, to ignore its own lawyers.

Comey's Bombshell

From the AP:

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that he refused to recertify the program because Attorney General John Ashcroft had reservations about its legality just before falling ill with pancreatitis in March 2004.

Comey, the acting attorney general during Ashcroft's absence, said then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card responded by trying to get Ashcroft to sign the recertification from his bed at George Washington University Hospital.

During that dramatic meeting, also attended by Comey, Ashcroft lifted his head off the pillow and appeared reluctant to sign the document, pointing out that Comey held the powers of the office.

Gonzales and Card then left the hospital room, Comey said.

"I was angry," Comey told the panel. "I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man who did not have the powers of the attorney general."

And you were doubting the White House's involvement and lead in all this?

Update from Raw Story:

The former second-in-command at the Justice Department from 2003 through 2005 on Tuesday detailed a March 2004 incident in which top members of the Bush administration, including Alberto Gonzales and members of Vice President Dick Cheney's staff, worked to subvert a legal certification process for the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. One Republican senator compared the episode to President Richard Nixon's efforts to disrupt the Watergate investigation.

James Comey was the Deputy Attorney General first under Attorney General John Ashcroft, and briefly under Alberto Gonzales. He testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday as part of continuing oversight pertaining to the firing of US Attorneys by the Bush administration.

However, most of the hearing focused on a March 2004 incident concerning a deadline for an internal authorization at the Justice Department of the legality of the warrantless domestic spying program of the National Security Agency. The deadline for the legal certification of the domestic spying program, called the 'Terrorist Surveillance Program' by the Bush administration, was approaching, and Comey as Acting Attorney General refused to approve it.

Cheney!!!

FiredogLake is Live Blogging Senate Judicial Hearing

If you want to follow along or read the blog later, firedoglake.com is live blogging the Senate Judicial Hearing of Jim Comey today.

You can also watch it Here.