"The concerns prompted two of President Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general - to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital in March 2004 to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery, the officials said.
The unusual meeting was prompted because Mr. Ashcroft's top deputy, James B. Comey, who was acting as attorney general in his absence, had indicated he was unwilling to give his approval to certifying central aspects of the program, as required under the White House procedures set up to oversee it."
It's unclear whether Ashcroft gave his approval or not. The WH apparently throttled back somewhat on the extra-legal aspects of the operation for several months.
Kevin's conclusion from the Times article?
What did the audit conclude? It's hard to say; the Times doesn't report on whether abuses were discovered during the review or not.
As for the story behind the story, it appears that there's something of a revolt underway at the Department of Justice. There's no way the NYT could get this story, with these details, unless several in-the-know Justice officials decided it was time to start talking.
Indeed, it may be part of a trend. DoJ officials recently leaked word, for example, that attorneys in the in the Civil Rights Division concluded that Georgia's poll-tax law was discriminatory against minority voters and should be blocked from implementation, but they were quickly overruled by Bush-appointed higher-ups. Moreover, the lead attorney in the government's landmark lawsuit against the tobacco industry recently told reporters that her politically appointed bosses undermined her team's work on the case. And earlier this month, the Washington Post reported on leaked memos showing that DoJ officials concluded, unanimously, that Tom DeLay's re-redistricting scheme in Texas violated the Voting Rights Act -- but once again they were overruled by Bush's political appointees.
When the Justice Department starts leaking like a sieve, and all the news embarrasses the White House, you know Bush has a problem.
1 comment:
Wow...so we may well have DOJ investigators looking for DOJ leakers. I suppose they could be doing something useful like fighting crime or hunting for terrorists in our midst, though I suppose anything that distracts the Bush admin from doing pretty much anything they're up to is a good thing.
Post a Comment