Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

Washington Post Columnist Eugene Robinson has some advice following this week’s testimony by former Deputy Attorney General James Comey: “This the attorney general of the United States, ladies and gentlemen. Heaven help us.”

Comey testified that while his former boss, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized on March 10, 2004 with a severe attack of pancreatitis — a condition so severe at the time, that it necessitated transfering the Attorney General’s powers to Comey while Ashcroft was hospitalized — then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and President Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card rushed to the hospital in despereate attempt to have Ashcroft approve the highly controversial domestic surveillance program that the Justice Department had just studied and concluded was unconstitutional.

Comey raced to the hospital where Ashcroft was ill, and ran up the stairs to try and meet with him before Gonzales and Card arrived (Ashcrofts’s wife had alerted Comey to the White House Counsel’s and Chief of Staff’s impending visit).

According to Comey, Ashcroft told off Gonzales and Card when he refused to authorize a renewal of the domestic surveillance legislation.

But what is most signficant is that Ashcroft effectly told Gonzales and Card that he was disgusted at their attempt to make an end run around Comey, the acting Attorney General.

Ashcroft dismissed the White House attempts to have him sign off on the surveillance bill, telling them their efforts “do[n’t] matter, because I’m not the Attorney General, there’s the attorney general,” pointing to Comey.”

In a move that smacks’s of an anecdote from Stanford Business School Professor Robert Sutton’s book, “The No Asshole Rule,” Comey testified that Gonzales and Card “did not acknowledge me, they turned and walked from the room.”

There you have it. Gonzales ignored the acting Attorney General in a Machiavellian, but unsuccessful maneuver.