COMEY TESTIFIES BUSH CONTINUED ILLEGAL SPYING PROGRAM FOR UP TO THREE WEEKS

Former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. Thanks to Dan Froomkin in his White House Watch today for providing links to the testimony and to a video.

Comey describes an improbable scene at the intensive care sickbed of John Ashcroft after the president called Ashcroft's room to say that he was sending over Alberto Gonzales, then White House Counsel, and Andy Card, Chief-of-Staff to get Ashcroft's signature on extending the secret domestic spying and wiretap program. Comey rushed to the hospital because Ashcroft had handed over his AG powers to him, and they had both previously agreed that the domestic spying program was illegal. Comey knew that the White House was trying to take advantage of the disorientation of the sick Ashcroft in having him sign off on the legality of a program which the DOJ considered problematic.

Even though Card and Gonzales were pretty annoyed at Comey for refusing to sign off, after Ashcroft rose up from his bed to tell them that Comey was then the acting AG, Comey testified that the White House still went ahead and implemented the program for up to three weeks, during which time the authorization lacked the DOJ's and the AG's authorization.

So now we have it. Bush and Cheney continue a spying program which their own Department of Justice considers illegal.

This raises important and troubling questions. How many other illegal programs does the White House implement? What are these programs? How long are they been in existence?

It is necessary to stand back and put the testimony of Comey in perspective. If Bush and Cheney & Co. would continue an illegal spying program for up to three weeks without DOJ's sign-off, then we can better understand the mentality of the president and vice president in establishing and operating prisons like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and those other secret sites. Then we can evaluate the claims of torture and extraordinary rendition. Then when Gonzales comes out and tries to take away lawyers from those inmates, we can better appreciate the destruction of basic constitutional rights engineered by Bush/Cheney aided and abetted by many of their Republican followers in Congress and even by some Democrats.