Administration Wanted Loyalist As Justice Dept. Legal Adviser

Through a White House liaison, Ashcroft told Bush that Yoo was unacceptable. Former Justice officials have said that the attorney general resented Yoo's close relationship with Addington and their consultations on sensitive legal advice.

Card and Gonzales "were absolutely determined to have a guy who was going to tell them what they wanted to hear," said the other source.

The compromise selection of Goldsmith soon proved problematic when he took issue with Yoo's opinions. Last year, he published an inside account of his stormy tenure at Justice and his disagreements with administration officials.

Since leaving office, Ashcroft, who now leads the Ashcroft Group, a consulting firm, has been tight-lipped about national security issues and internal disputes that occurred during his government service.

One famous episode that eventually broke into public view was a March 2004 showdown in which Gonzales and Card visited Ashcroft while he was in the hospital, in an apparent attempt to persuade him to reauthorize a warrantless eavesdropping program over the objections of others at Justice. The strong-arm tactics prompted resignation threats from Ashcroft, deputy James B. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and others.

Former Justice officials have spoken openly about disagreements with Yoo. They say he routinely avoided the chain of command at the department and held secret meetings with a small war council of lawyers who advocated for expansive presidential powers.

After he was passed over for the top job at OLC, Yoo left Justice in the summer of 2003. But he has staunchly defended his judgments on vexing questions that developed in the aftermath of terrorist strikes.

Yoo drafted secret legal briefs supporting the warrantless wiretapping program and the use of such strategies as sleep deprivation and simulated drowning in questioning terrorism suspects. The documents since have been likened to a "golden shield" that essentially offered legal immunity to contractors, CIA agents and others who interrogated prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.