This is amazing. FBI Director Robert Mueller has just turned over to congress his notes on the now infamous visit to John Ashcroft's hospital room by Alberto Gonzales, Andy Card and Jim Comey, and as Spencer Ackerman notes, they include the following revelation:
The only non-redacted portion of the notes concerns the Ashcroft hospital visit, which takes up only a scant four paragraphs. Ashcroft -- who, contrary to Gonzales' portrayal, is described in Mueller's notes as "feeble, barely articulate, clearly stressed" -- isn't talking about what happened during the visit. But Mueller reveals something intriguing. According to the FBI director, Ashcroft tells Card and Gonzales that "he was barred from obtaining the advice he needed on the program" -- again, note program, singular -- "by the strict compartmentalization rules of the [White House.]"
Got that? The program was so secretive that they didn't want to tell the Attorney General of the United States about the details. At the same time, they knew they couldn't proceed without his approval, so even though he couldn't know what it involved, they expected him to sign off on it nonetheless. And to make sure he did, they showed up at his hospital bedside demanding a signature while he was, in Mueller's words, "feeble, barely articulate, [and] clearly stressed."
We don't know what the program was. Even john Ashcroft, the Attorney General, didn't have all the details. But what he did know had prompted him, the FBI Director, and the Acting Attorney General to threaten to resign en mass if it was not changed. Whatever the program was - and perhaps still is - it was so far beyond the law that they AG and his staff would rather publicly break with the administration than see it continue.
There is a reason these people are so desperate to keep this program secret, and it has nothing to do with national security. If the program violated the FISA statutes - laws that were initially designed in part as a reaction to the abuses uncovered during the Watergate era - my understanding is that the president will have committed not one but at least several felonies. And if that isn't an impeachable offense, nothing is.
UPDATE: Looks like the Senate is moving forward on an investigation of Gonzales. If there were any doubts left that he lied to congress, today's revelations should have taken care of them.
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