Gonzales slammed for visiting hospitalized Ashcroft on wiretapping
By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales made a late-night hospital visit in 2004 to pressure critically ill Attorney General John Ashcroft to approve President Bush's controversial domestic spying program, a Senate panel was told Tuesday.
Speaking publicly about the incident for the first time, former deputy attorney general James Comey said he had rejected the program because Ashcroft and top aides had questioned its legality.
When Ashcroft was ill with pancreatitis, Comey was acting attorney general and had authority to OK the classified program. He said the end-run angered him. "I thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man," he told the Judiciary Committee.
Comey declined to identify the program, which was up for renewal on March 11, 2004. Several committee members asked questions that would apply only to the National Security Agency's domestic spying program that allowed wiretapping without warrants in some terrorism cases.
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