GOLDSMITH ON THE HOSPITAL VISIT

Jack Goldsmith was head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the DOJ and recently testified¹ before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He supported the testimony of former deputy AG James Comey and FBI Director Mueller about the infamous hospital visit Abu Al Gonzales paid to the ailing John Ashcroft. Note that all 3 accounts contradict Gonzales' sworn testimony.

EXCERPTS:

SEN. SPECTER: Professor Goldsmith, on the Terror Surveillance Program, you say that there were some aspects that you could not find legal, what can you tell us about the incident in Attorney General Ashcroft's hospital room, you write in your book that Ms. Ashcroft stuck out her tongue at Attorney General Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card when they left the room, what happened to provoke that?

MR. GOLDSMITH: Just to make the record clear, that particular statement is not from my book sir, it's from an interview I believe. But I did say that certainly. And so would you like to know about what happened in the hospital room?

[SNIP]

SEN. FEINSTEIN: Okay. Would you please go to the hospital room that Senator Specter started to ask you about and quickly give us the statement of facts as you saw them and exactly what happened, what your concern was and why you were there?

MR. GOLDSMITH: Yes. It was a classified program that my office had been reviewing round the clock for several months. There was a -- the program had to be authorized on Thursday, March 11.

The week before -- after months of work, I determined that I could not find a legal basis for certain aspects of the program. I had been informing the attorney general and the deputy attorney general for a while about this, and about the time I made this decision, the attorney general was -- got -- became very ill, so Jim Comey became the acting attorney general.

And to make a long story short, we'd -- he advised the White House about the justice department's decision and the -- just fast forwarding to Wednesday what happened was that as Jim Comey testified, he got word that two people from the White House, Judge Gonzales and Andrew Card were coming to seek to, in effect, have the attorney general overrule Jim Comey. And so Jim Comey rushed to the hospital.

He, through the command center of the justice department, contacted me since it was my legal analysis essentially that was at the bottom of all this. I rushed to the hospital, we rushed into the room, we arrived a few minutes before Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales did -- I'm rushing through this quickly, but I'm happy to tell you more details if you like.

The attorney general looked terrible, I hadn't seen him in a week, but he'd lost a lot of weight, he had -- I did believe that he'd had an operation the day before. He looked very weak, very tired and ashen, and he didn't seem to have any strength at all.

But after a couple of minutes after we entered the room, Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card entered the room, only Mr. Gonzales spoke. He asked the attorney the -- Mr. Ashcroft, he asked how he was doing, and then he asked -- he basically said, he was there to seek authorization for the program, at which point, Attorney General Ashcroft sort of lifted himself off the bed and color came into his cheeks, and he sort of came to life, and he gave a -- just a couple of minutes speech in which he said that he didn't -- in which he said he shared the justice department's concerns, the concerns that Mr. Comey and I had conveyed.

He said he didn't appreciate being visited in the hospital under these circumstances and he said that Mr. Comey in any event was the acting attorney general, and that was it, and he fell back into the bed and looks terrible again and then the two gentlemen left the room.

¹Federal News Service
October 2, 2007 Tuesday
HEARING OF THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE;
SUBJECT: PRESERVING THE RULE OF LAW IN THE FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM;
CHAIRED BY: SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT);
WITNESS: JACK LANDMAN GOLDSMITH, HENRY L. SHATTUCK PROFESSOR OF LAW, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS;
LOCATION: 226 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING