MURRAY WAAS: Myth, deception—Gonzales is still under investigation, or will be, by the acting US attorney in Connecticut as to whether he lied to Congress about the firings. And he’s currently under investigation for lying to Congress or perjury in regard to what he told Congress about their surveillance program.
But what the story in The Atlantic said was that Gonzales created a fictitious set of notes and created this funny set of notes, so that President Bush could reauthorize their surveillance program at a time the Department of Justice had concluded it was outside the law or of dubious, you know, legality. And so, they needed a pretext. They needed some rationale. And so, Gonzales simply made up a set of notes that wasn’t inaccurate, but a total lie—an extraordinary act for an attorney general.
AMY GOODMAN: And where are those notes?
MURRAY WAAS: Those notes—well, they’re highly classified. Ironically, the investigators had a hard time getting them. So they’re conducting a perjury investigation, but they claim the notes were originally too, you know, classified for the investigators to look at. Once they got a look at them, they found out something extraordinary, which is the Attorney General apparently created a set of notes recounting a meeting with members of Congress, eight congressional leaders, known as the Gang of Eight, and these eight congressional leaders, according to his notes, said that they wanted the President to continue on with their surveillance program, even though the Department of Justice refused to certify it as legal and was questioning its legality. And based on that, Gonzales and Bush signed the reauthorization of the program.
But the members of Congress who were there say it’s a complete lie; they never said anything of this sort, they never did anything of this sort. So Gonzales wrote a false account in these notes, so, in case they got in legal trouble or, you know, let’s say there was an—even impeachment was quite possible if this had become known, but also public relations. All of these things probably played a role in why Gonzales made up these notes. But he essentially fabricated a set of notes to authorize a surveillance program that, in its form at the time, the Department of Justice said was of dubious legality.
AMY GOODMAN: You also say Alberto Gonzales, according to sources, now clams President Bush personally directed him to that famous visit to the hospital bed of the former Attorney General John Ashcroft in that wiretap renewal incident. Explain exactly what happened in 2004.
MURRAY WAAS: What happened was, we had this surveillance program, we had this eavesdropping program, warrantless eavesdropping program. The Department of Justice had certified its legality, an office called the Office of Legal Counsel. And they had a guy come in, a new guy named Jack Goldsmith, a conservative, conservative credentials, handpicked by Gonzales, liked by the President. And this was a guy who not only had conservative credentials, but believed in the law. So he ordered a legal analysis done of the program, and he realized, came to the conclusion, as did other people in the Department of Justice and throughout government, that the program, as it was being carried out at the time, was of dubious legality and probably illegal. And so, he wrote this legal opinion that it was illegal.
He brought that to the attention of James Comey, the Deputy Attorney General. Comey then talked to then-Attorney General Ashcroft. And there was a consensus by the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, throughout the Department of Justice, that they couldn’t certify the program as legal anymore, and it would have to discontinue. And if it continued, though, you’d have the President perhaps breaking the law. You’d have an extra-constitutional, you know, illegal program. So the Justice Department refused to certify it.
It was at that point that Gonzales met with the—on a single day, March 10th, 2004, I believe, Gonzales met—Gonzales and Dick Cheney, Vice President Cheney, they met with the Gang of Eight, these eight congressional leaders, and they said, “We have this problem. The Department of Justice isn’t going to certify this program as legal. We think it’s so important to the country, we want it to continue.” And the Gang of Eight, the eight congressional leaders, refused to go along. They said that they did nothing to encourage them. But after that meeting, Gonzales creates this false set of notes saying the Gang of Eight wants us to continue on with this program.
And so, they’re still trying to—they have like one day to get the program reauthorized. And so, after they get—after they have these phony notes, later that evening, Gonzales and Andrew Card, the President’s chief of staff at the time, they go and visit John Ashcroft, the then-attorney general, in the hospital. John Ashcroft is clinging to life, deathly ill. He has been in intensive care. He had his gall bladder removed in emergency surgery. He’s heavily medicated, sedated, in pain, not competent to sign any legal papers or to think of anything, you know, so complex. And so, Gonzales—the Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who’s acting attorney general, refuses to reauthorize the program or say it’s legal. So Card and Gonzales go to the Attorney General’s hospital room in an attempt to get him to sign the certification. And so, that’s how we end up with the dramatic scene in the hospital that night.
AMY GOODMAN: We just interviewed Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, who wrote the book Angler about the Cheney vice presidency, how the government almost fell soon after that, when, finally, the President called in Comey and said, you know, “Why am I dealing with this at the last minute?” and Comey had already written his resignation letter and said that Mueller was going to resign, as well, that day over this.
MURRAY WAAS: Well, to take a couple steps back, before that, what happened in the hospital room was, the Attorney General’s wife, Mrs. Ashcroft, informed her chiefs of staff what was going on. And then he called up—he called everybody—Comey, Mueller—and so, they all raced to the hospital. They careened down Pennsylvania Avenue with their sirens on. They raced up the steps. And James Comey, the very straight-arrow Deputy Attorney General, got to the hospital room about five minutes before Gonzales and Card. And Mueller, the FBI director, to give you an idea of this drama, said—told the security detail, Ashcroft’s security detail, under no circumstances were Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales to be alone with John Ashcroft, that James Comey was to be with them at all times, because he didn’t trust them, you know, to be alone with Ashcroft.
And so, in the hospital room, Ashcroft and Card come in, make their case—I’m sorry, Gonzales and Card come in and make their case. And Ashcroft, who’s deathly ill, somehow pulls himself up just for a moment, before he collapses, and says, “I’m not Attorney General. There is the Attorney General; James Comey is the Acting Attorney General. Deal with him.” And so, they leave, not getting Ashcroft’s signature.
And so, what they do the next day is they decide to go ahead with the program without the Attorney General’s signature. And so, what they did is they had a computer-generated copy of this document, and they simply removed the place where the Attorney General should sign and put a line for Alberto Gonzales to sign. And so, Gonzales and the President signed this authorization to continue with this program, despite the fact that their own Justice Department said if they did so, they’d be doing something illegal.
And then, it was the following day that Comey and Mueller kind of argued with them some more, and Bush, you know, backed off and withdrew the authorization or agreed to work with it until it got, you know, within a legal framework.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, now, coming full circle, where does that leave Alberto Gonzales, and what is he doing today, and what do you think he should be doing?
MURRAY WAAS: I think he’s spending a lot of time with lawyers, and he—because he has a lot of stuff that he has—he has this US attorney investigation he has to face. But I think the greater legal jeopardy is lying about—lying under oath about the surveillance program and this new thing, creating these fictitious notes, because when Gonzales and Bush signed the authorization, it was these fictitious, made-up notes that was one of the bases for the President to sign it. So that’s a very serious issue. And so, there are so many legal threats to this particular former attorney general.
AMY GOODMAN: And these are criminal?
MURRAY WAAS: They’re criminal, yeah. I mean, the appointment today of the prosecutor in Connecticut brings the investigation to a criminal basis. The investigation that was—the inspector general didn’t have that prosecutorial power or authority, so now Gonzales is facing a criminal investigation on the US attorney thing, and then, of a greater liability or greater threat to him legally is about the surveillance program.
Commentary 
AMY GOODMAN: We return to my interview with investigative journalist Murray Waas. I asked him about two articles he wrote in 
