Senate panel testimony continues to show why Gonzales must go

As the Senate committee investigation into Attorney General Alberto Gonzales continues, it is getting more and more obvious Gonzales has always put loyalty to President Bush above everything else including the law.

Obvious as well is the Bush White Houses disregard of the law when it threatens to interfere with what the president wants to do.

Few things illustrate both so clearly as an incident that happened back in 2004.

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified this week the White House came to him while then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was recovering from surgery to get re-approval for the Bush administrations domestic eavesdropping program.

Comey said no. The no-warrant eavesdropping program would not pass muster under the Constitution and was illegal.

Well, the Bush White House doesnt like the word no unless it is the one using it.

So Gonzales, then chief White House counsel, and former Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card went to the hospital where Ashcroft was recovering to try and get his OK for the program.

Bear in mind Ashcroft was in intensive care and had turned over authority to Comey. Ashcrofts wife had asked that he have no visitors. Perhaps the White House thought it stood a better chance with an AG in a hospital room, on pain medication and not in the best of states to consider serious legal questions.

Comey got wind of the move and headed to the hospital, calling FBI Director Robert Mueller to meet him. Gonzales and Card didnt get what they came for. Ashcroft said no.

‘I was angry’ Comey told the Senate panel. ‘I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me.

Of course, this White House did what it normally does when legal concerns get in the way of what it wants to do it ignored them.

So the White House went ahead and reauthorized the wiretapping program. Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Comey threatened to resign and President Bush had to come to a compromise over the program.

Neither Ashcroft nor Comey could be accused of being soft of terrorism. And Ashcroft, in particular, was more than willing to give President Bush plenty of latitude in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001.

But Ashcroft and Comey both saw the eavesdropping program as illegal.

The White House was willing to flout the law to get what they wanted. And Alberto Gonzales, the man who would come to run the Justice Department, put his loyalty to President Bushs wishes above the law.

Just one more example of why the attorney general must be a man with enough backbone to put the law first and why Alberto Gonzales is not that attorney general.