Agence France-Presse,
Top US Justice Department officials threatened to resign three years ago over a domestic eavesdropping program until President George W. Bush intervened to defuse the revolt, according to a former deputy attorney general.
The attorney general at the time, John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and other senior Justice Department aides nearly resigned in protest against efforts in 2004 to push through a warrantless spy program over the objections of Justice Department lawyers, James Comey told a congressional panel on Tuesday.
The crisis began with a dramatic showdown in a hospital room with White House aides pressuring an ailing Ashcroft — the nation's top law enforcement officer — to approve the renewal of the spy program despite declarations from his staff that the eavesdropping was illegal, Comey said.
The riveting testimony confirmed for the first time the Justice Department had found the warrantless eavesdropping program illegal.
And equally damaging for the Bush administration, his account also revealed that Alberto Gonzales, now the embattled attorney general, was one of the White House officials lobbying Ashcroft on his sickbed.
The testimony is another blow for Gonzales who faces calls from both Bush's Republicans and Democrats to step down over allegations he sacked federal prosecutors for political reasons.
Comey said that despite urging from Gonzales and Andrew Card, then Bush's chief of staff, a weak Ashcroft rose from his hospital bed and firmly refused to approve the spy program.
“I was angry,” Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “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 in a way that demonstrated a strength I had never seen before, but still I thought it was improper.”
When he learned that Gonzales and Card were headed over to see Ashcroft, Comey said he alerted the FBI director and raced over to the hospital with sirens blaring, arriving just in time.
Before Ashcroft was hospitalized for emergency gall bladder surgery, Comey said the two men had agreed that the program should not be renewed.
The eavesdropping program allowed for surveillance without court warrants of international telephone calls and emails of people inside the United States who were suspected of having terrorist ties.
Comey said Bush soon after accepted suggested changes to the program and he and other officials withdrew their resignations.
The White House did not comment on the details of Comey's testimony but said the program was a vital tool and had been revised to ensure its legality.
“This is a program that saved lives, that is vital for national security, and furthermore has been reformed in a bipartisan way that is in keeping with everybody,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said.
