SALON

Tuesday, Sep 4, 2007 3:11 PM UTC

“One bomb away”

The White House, the FISA court and a heroic John Ashcroft.

By

Topics: War Room, Espionage,

Alberto Gonzales used to justify the president’s warrantless wiretapping program by arguing that even the “monitor first and get a warrant later” procedures allowed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act somewhere weren’t quick enough.

Dick Cheney Chief of Staff David Addington had an idea for getting around all of that. As Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, tells the New York Times, Addington once observed that the White House was just “one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court.”

Translation: Just one more terrorist attack on America would persuade Congress to free the Bush administration of the requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Of course, as it turned out, the White House didn’t really need another attack; when the Democratic-controlled Congress adopted changes to FISA earlier this year, it gave the Bush administration broad new surveillance powers, free in some instances of the check that the FISA court once provided.

Goldsmith, who resigned from the OLC in June 2004, says he once suggested to Gonzales and to Addington, who was then Cheney’s legal counsel, that the administration simply seek Congress’ approval for broader surveillance powers under FISA. Goldsmith says Addington rejected the idea out of hand. In Goldsmith’s accounting, the White House didn’t want to seek congressional approval because doing so would acknowledge that Congress had some role to play. “They embraced this vision,” Goldsmith says, “because they wanted to leave the presidency stronger than when they assumed office, but the approach they took achieved exactly the opposite effect. The central irony is that people whose explicit goal was to expand presidential power have diminished it.”

One more irony: John Ashcroft, a man once vilified for his attacks on our civil liberties, emerges in Goldmith’s account — as he did in James Comey’s — as some sort of latter-day Patrick Henry.

Here’s Jeffrey Rosen, recounting Goldsmith’s version of the 2004 incident in which Gonzales and Andy Card turned up at Ashcroft’s hospital room to get his approval for the president’s secret surveillance program:

“Ashcroft lay with a bright light shining on him and tubes and wires coming out of his body. Suddenly, Gonzales and Card came in the room and announced that they were there in connection with the classified program. ‘Ashcroft, who looked like he was near death, sort of puffed up his chest,’ Goldsmith recalls. ‘All of a sudden, energy and color came into his face, and he said that he didn’t appreciate them coming to visit him under those circumstances, that he had concerns about the matter they were asking about and that, in any event, he wasn’t the attorney general at the moment; Jim Comey was. He actually gave a two-minute speech, and I was sure at the end of it he was going to die. It was the most amazing scene I’ve ever witnessed.’”

As Gonzales and Card left the room, Ashcroft’s wife stuck her tongue out at them. Says Goldsmith: “It captured the feeling in the room perfectly.”

Tim Grieve is a senior writer and the author of Salon's War Room blog. More Tim Grieve.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 9 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

War Room is our political news and commentary blog, with coverage and commentary throughout the day.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations