Unlikely Heroes
August 16th, 2007Two years ago, who among us would have imagined John Ashcroft a defender of the Constitution, standing for the Bill of Rights even as he lays ill in a hospital bed?
Then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was “feeble” and “barely articulate” following a hospital room confrontation in March 2004 with Alberto R. Gonzales, who wanted Ashcroft to approve a warrantless wiretapping program over Justice Department objections, according to personal notes from the FBI director released today. Five pages of heavily censored notes from FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III also suggest that Ashcroft’s deputy was so concerned about undue pressure from Gonzales and other White House aides that he asked Mueller to bar any more visitors from entering Ashcroft’s room.
“Saw AG,” Mueller writes in his notes for 8:10 p.m. on March 10, 2004. “Janet Ashcroft in room. AG in chair; is feeble, barely articulate, clearly stressed.” The records also show that Mueller met with Vice President Cheney in connection with the dispute later in the month, on March 23. The notes, which were released after Mueller turned them over to the House Judiciary Committee, provide further insight into a tumultuous but secret legal battle that gripped the Justice Department and White House in March 2004, after senior Justice Department officials had determined that some activities of a warrantless wiretapping program run by the National Security Agency were illegal.
Although the broad outlines of the legal dispute have been reported in media accounts dating to early 2006, the episode has attracted sharp attention from Congress in recent months following testimony from James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general under Aschroft. Comey described in vivid detail his rush to Ashcroft’s bedside prior to the visit from Gonzales, who was White House counsel at the time, and White House chief of staff Andrew Card. Comey testified that he was angered because he believed Gonzales and Card were attempting to take advantage of a sick man.
It might be that age and infection tempered his legal enthusiasm, but I think it likelier that Ashcroft is simply a strict Constitutionalist and his calm conservatism clashed with the active neoconservatism of the Bush Administration, details of which will gush onto the record in future years but are already leaking now. To be honest, I still don’t believe that John Ashcroft belonged anywhere near the Justice Department, but legal conservatism calls for restraint and the Constitution, which is something that I relate to. I don’t hold myself to the standards held by members of, say, the Federalist Society, but I consider myself a Federalist and a Constitutionalist. I just don’t believe that every word is to be literally interpreted today, though many should be and are.
Speaking of unlikely heroes, how about Dick Cheney circa Nineteen Ninety Four? That was a strange year. The Montreal Expos were the best team in baseball, the World Series was cancelled, Hillary Clinton’s health care program was destroyed, Kurt Cobain committed suicide (or was killed), Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump were filmed and Dick Cheney made sense. You know, I’m teasing, but he was a very smart, sensible man. Now he’s a smart, foolish man, and his transformation from Annakin Skywalker to Darth Vader will make for a great biography someday.