Wednesday Night Ambush II

Posted by Richard Blair at 1:23 PM on May 22, 2007.

In online discussions of the Wednesday Night Ambush, one question goes unanswered that I have yet to see anyone ask: why didn't the subject of the ambush come up during Alberto Gonzales' confirmation hearing in January, 2005?

White House Counsel Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andy Card accosted an ailing John Ashcroft on March 11, 2004, two days after major surgery to relieve his pancreaitis, in an effort to get him to sign off on the Bush regime's domestic wiretap program. As previously noted, Ashcroft refused, and the subsequent mutiny almost cost the regime its entire senior leadership at the DOJ (Ashcroft, Comey, and others threatened to resign before Bush pulled back).

The actions of Gonzales and Card didn't happen in a vacuum or under a cloak of extreme secrecy. Even if it did, secrets are hard to keep in Washington, DC. Someone (or multiple someones) knew of the Wednesday Night Ambush. On November 11, 2004, George Bush nominated Gonzales to replace Ashcroft as Attorney General. The subsequent confirmation hearings were contentious, but seemed to focus on a narrow set of issues (primarily, Gonzales' role in establishing the regime's torture doctrine). Illegal wiretapping was secondary, at best.

Following an unsatisfactory set of answers at Gonzales' rubber stamp confirmation hearing, Sen. Russ Feingold wrote a letter to Gonzales...

Feingold asked:

I am particularly interested in asking about your misleading testimony at your confirmation hearing on January 6,2005, when I specifically asked you if the President has the authority to authorize warrantless wiretaps in violation of statutory prohibitions.

As the attached transcript shows, you initially tried to dismiss my question as "hypothetical." After further questioning, you said the following:

Judge Gonzales: Senator,this President is not- it's not the policy or the agenda of this President to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes.

Senator Feingold: Finally, will you commit to notify Congress if the President makes this type of decision and not wait 2 years until a memo is leaked about it?

Judge Gonzales: I will commit to advise the Congress as soon as I reasonably can, yes, Sir.

In light of recent revelations that the President specifically authorized wiretapping of Americans in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and did so years prior to your confirmation hearing at a time when you were White House Counsel, I find this testimony misleading, and deeply troubling. I will expect a full explanation at the hearing....

The Washington Post characterized this exchange as:

Gonzales said that it was impossible to answer such a hypothetical question but that it was “not the policy or the agenda of this president” to authorize actions that conflict with existing law. He added that he would hope to alert Congress if the president ever chose to authorize warrantless surveillance, according to a transcript of the hearing.

So, even during his confirmation hearing, Gonzales was apparently intentionally misleading the Senate Judiciary Committee - because he knew damn well, at the time, that not only had he visited Ashcroft's hospital bed in the dead of night, but that Bush continued the illegal domestic wiretap program for weeks, in contravention to the DOJ's opinion.

But what's somewhat maddening is that (again), Gonzales' attempted strong-arming of Ashcroft had to be known, but it didn't come up in the confirmation hearing. Did no Democrat know? Or did Feingold know something at the time, but considered it hearsay, and therefore didn't bring it out at Gonzales' confirmation hearing?

More and more it's clear: Attorney General Gonzales isn't going anywhere - because if the Bush regime cut him loose, and he was no longer serving as a buffer between the White House and the Department of Justice, a lot of people would be potentially be on a fast track to prosecution.

Tagged as: gonzales, ashcroft, attorneygate

Richard Blair is a Philadelphia area freelance writer, and the blogmaster of All Spin Zone.