How extreme are they?
JOHN ASHCROFT thought they were too extreme.
At Ashcroft's bedside, Gonzales did most of the talking, Comey said, adding that Gonzales and Card pressed the attorney general to reauthorize the program in spite of reservations about its legality. Comey said Ashcroft reiterated his concerns and refused to sign the order reauthorizing the program.
Ashcroft "lifted his head off the pillow, and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me - drawn from the hour-long meeting we'd had a week earlier - and in very strong terms expressed himself, and then laid his head back down on the pillow, seemed spent, and said to them, 'I'm not the attorney general,'" Comey said, adding that Gonzales and Card left the hospital that evening without a signature from the Justice Department allowing the surveillance program to continue.
"I was very upset. I was angry," Comey testified. "I thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me.... I was concerned that this was an effort to do an end run around the acting attorney general and to get a very sick man to approve something that the Department of Justice had already concluded - the department as a whole - was unable to be certified as to its legality.
ITMFA.
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