All hail the king

Under Bush, loyalty has reigned supreme. But as his presidency unravels, his obligation to his faithful servants -- from Gonzales to Wolfowitz -- has become perilously relative.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Read more: Politics, Sidney Blumenthal, Department of Justice, John Ashcroft, World Bank, Opinion, Iraq War, Alberto Gonzales, U.S. Attorneys

Photo: Reuters/Jim Bourg

Photo composite of George W. Bush as he speaks at the White House on April 16.

May 17, 2007 | Loyalty has always been the alpha and omega of George W. Bush's presidency. But all the forms of allegiance that have bound together his administration -- political, ideological and personal -- are being shredded, leaving only blind loyalty. Bush has surrounded himself with loyalists, who fervently pledged their fealty, enforced the loyalty of others and sought to make loyal converts. Now Bush's long downfall is descending into a series of revenge tragedies in which the characters are helpless against the furies of their misplaced loyalties and betrayals. The stage is being strewn with hacked corpses -- on Monday, former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty; imminently, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz; tomorrow, whoever remains trapped on the ghost ship of state. As the individual tragedies unfold, Bush's royal robes unravel.

Loyalty to Bush is the ultimate royal principle of the imperial presidency. The ruler must be unquestioned and those around him unquestioning. Allegiance to Bush's idea of himself as the "war president," "the decider" and "the commander guy" is paramount. But the notion that the ruler is loyal to those loyal to him is no longer necessarily true. While he must be beheld as the absolute incarnation of kingly virtue, his sense of obligation to those paying homage has become perilously relative.

Those who feel compelled to tell the truth rather than stick to the cover story are cast in the dust, like McNulty. Those Bush defends as an extension of his authority but who become too expensive become expendable, like Wolfowitz. And those who exist solely as Bush's creations and whose survival is crucial to his own are shielded, like Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

On Tuesday, James Comey, the former deputy attorney general, disclosed a story that might have been written by Mario Puzo, and it explained the rise of Gonzales as attorney general. On March 10, 2004, Comey was serving as acting attorney general while John Ashcroft was in an intensive-care unit being treated for pancreatitis. After an "extensive review" by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which concluded that Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance program was illegal, Comey refused to sign its reauthorization. An aide to Ashcroft tipped Comey off that White House legal counsel Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card were headed to Ashcroft's hospital to get him to sign it. Comey rushed to the darkened room, where he briefed the barely conscious Ashcroft. Gonzales and Card entered minutes later, demanding that Ashcroft comply. He refused, pointing to Comey, saying he was the attorney general. "I was angry. I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man," Comey testified.

Gonzales and Card then summoned Comey to the White House, where they attempted to intimidate him by telling him that Vice President Dick Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, were in favor of the reauthorization. Comey still refused. And the program went forward without the legal Justice Department approval. Comey and other high Justice Department officials prepared their resignation letters. The next day, having heard about the planned mass resignations, President Bush met alone with Comey, who briefed him on what needed to be done to bring the program under the law. Several weeks later Comey signed the authorization for a legal program. But during that period it was conducted outside the law.

Then, after Bush's reelection, Ashcroft was not reappointed. In his place Bush sent a new name to the Senate for confirmation -- Alberto Gonzales. Every position he had held was the result of his undying loyalty to Bush. The confrontation in Ashcroft's hospital room had been a turning point in his rise. Comey, who Bush privately derided as "Cuomo," quit. In his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales was asked about domestic surveillance, and he blithely misled the senators, acting as if he would always uphold the existing law, even though he had pressured Ashcroft and Comey to approve the illegal program. "The government cannot do that without first going to a judge," he said. "Government goes to the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court and obtains a warrant to do that." Gonzales spoke those lines knowing he had done precisely the opposite. His lie demonstrated his higher loyalty to his patron.

At the moment that Comey was finishing his testimony about the drama at Ashcroft's sickbed, Gonzales was delivering a speech at the National Press Club blaming his former deputy for the political purge of eight U.S. Attorneys. "You have to remember," said Gonzales, "at the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. The deputy attorney general would know best about the qualifications and the experiences of the United States attorneys community, and he signed off on the names." Gonzales had previously accepted generic "responsibility," claimed he didn't know anything about the dismissals and also blamed his former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson.

McNulty had, in fact, testified truthfully before the Senate, which reportedly infuriated Gonzales. Though ostensibly in charge of the U.S. attorneys, McNulty was kept out of the loop of the detailed planning for the purge, informed only in outline and briefed to give false testimony about the reasons for the firings by Sampson and others at his February appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. After McNulty conveyed his talking points about the U.S. attorneys being dismissed for "performance related" problems, he conceded under questioning that one had been replaced in order to fill his post with one of Karl Rove's protégés. That revelation blew up the scandal. McNulty's scapegoating and resignation were inevitable.

McNulty was tainted as a betrayer for telling the truth. He had been an operator for two decades within the Republican Party, but his loyal service could not protect him. A graduate of the Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, he had striven upward as a faithful party man, making a career of political networking. His adherence to the principles of the Federalist Society lent him an imprimatur as a reliable conservative. He served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of President Clinton. His partisanship was considered so solid that he was named head of the Bush transition team for the Justice Department. He received the plum appointment as U.S. attorney for Northern Virginia, the so-called rocket docket, used for high-profile terrorism cases after 9/11, like that of John Walker Lindh. With Comey's departure, he rose to deputy attorney general.

Next page: Gonzales' instinct for self-preservation easily triumphed over his desire for self-respect