It seems president Bush needed a ''yes'' man like Gonzales in there... watching the capital hill hearings on this, certainly raises my respect for Ashcroft a level or two!
In his testimony Tuesday, Comey recounted Ashcroft's wife calling a Justice Department official that night informing her Card and Gonzales were on their way to see Ashcroft. She had banned all outside phone calls and visitors, Comey said.
He immediately headed to the hospital and soon after he got there, the White House officials entered. He said Ashcroft, who had been weak from gall bladder surgery, "very strongly expressed himself" regarding his objections to a classified program, but added that his views didn't matter because he was, temporarily, not the attorney general.
'An effort to take advantage of a very sick man'
Comey said Card and Gonzales then left the hospital room without acknowledging him.
"I was very upset. I was angry. I thought 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. I thought he had conducted himself -- and I said to the attorney general -- in a way that demonstrated a strength that I had never seen before, but still I thought it was improper," Comey told the committee.
Comey told the committee that he and Ashcroft the week before had determined the classified program he declined to name Tuesday should not be authorized and had communicated that to the White House.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/15/ashcroft.nsa/index.html