But a law-breaking executive bears no mentioning, huh? Pffffftttt!
"Notes Detail Pressure on Ashcroft Over Spying" by DAVID JOHNSTON and SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 — Notes taken by Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. say that Attorney General John Ashcroft was “barely articulate,” “feeble” and “clearly stressed” shortly after a hospital-room meeting in March 2004 in which two top White House aides tried to persuade him to sign an extension for eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.
Mr. Mueller’s notes, based on a visit to Mr. Ashcroft’s room and released Thursday by the House Judiciary Committee, provide a fuller picture of the events surrounding a March 10, 2004, confrontation over the surveillance program. They go beyond the account that Mr. Mueller gave the committee in July and reinforce an account by James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general who testified in May.
In providing corroboration for Mr. Comey’s version of events, Mr. Mueller’s typewritten entries served to rebut the suggestion of some Bush administration officials who have privately dismissed Mr. Comey’s account of the hospital standoff as an overwrought and one-sided description.
In terse shorthand, and despite heavy redactions, Mr. Mueller offered a glimpse of a tumultuous battle over the fate of the eavesdropping program. The notes list 26 meetings and phone conversations over three weeks — from March 1 to March 23 — during a fierce debate that almost led to mass resignations at the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The notes also reveal a series of meetings before and after March 10 between Mr. Mueller and other high-level administration officials. Some of those meetings were attended by Vice President Dick Cheney, suggesting that Mr. Cheney had played a central role in the controversy.
[But he CAN'T RECALL any involvement in this! Whadda FUCKING LIAR!!!!]
Other regular participants included Mr. Gonzales and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then the director of the National Security Agency, which conducted the eavesdropping program.
Mr. Ashcroft, the notes said, reviewed his legal objections to the eavesdropping program and complained to Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card that he had been “barred from obtaining the advice he needed on the program by the strict compartmentalization rules of the WH,” a reference to the extreme secrecy imposed by the White House.
[Keeping it secret from the ATTORNEY GENERAL? Sigh!]
Mr. Mueller’s notes had some entries deleted or heavily edited by officials at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. Judiciary Committee aides said that the agencies had justified the deletions on the grounds that the material pertained to internal deliberations.
As a result of the deletions, virtually all of Mr. Mueller’s notations about his White House meeting with President Bush on March 12 were missing. After speaking with Mr. Comey and Mr. Mueller, the president agreed to permit changes in the security agency’s activities to satisfy their legal objections.
[That's called a COVER-UP right there! HE was BREAKING the LAW!!!!]
Current and former government officials have said the legal dispute involved data mining, or computer searches of electronic records of telephone calls and e-mail."
[Nothing will ever change the FACT that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are LAW-BREAKING, MASS-MURDERING CRIMINALS!]
