White House Wiki Watch

"And so I raced to the hospital room, entered. And Mrs. Ashcroft was standing by the hospital bed, Mr. Ashcroft was lying down in the bed, the room was darkened. And I immediately began speaking to him, trying to orient him as to time and place, and try to see if he could focus on what was happening, and it wasn't clear to me that he could. He seemed pretty bad off. . . .

"[T]he door opened and in walked Mr. Gonzales, carrying an envelope, and Mr. Card. They came over and stood by the bed. They greeted the attorney general very briefly. And then Mr. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there -- to seek his approval for a matter, and explained what the matter was -- which I will not do.

"And Attorney General Ashcroft then stunned me. He 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, 'But that doesn't matter, because I'm not the attorney general... There is the attorney general,' and he pointed to me. . . .

"The two men did not acknowledge me. They turned and walked from the room. And within just a few moments after that, Director Mueller arrived. I told him quickly what had happened. He had a brief -- a memorable brief exchange with the attorney general and then we went outside in the hallway. . . .

"I was very upset. I was angry. 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 thought he had conducted himself, and I said to the attorney general, in a way that demonstrated a strength I had never seen before. But still I thought it was improper."

And here is Gonzales's testimony from July 24:

"Obviously, we were concerned about the condition of General Ashcroft. We obviously knew he had been ill and had surgery. And we never had any intent to ask anything of him if we did not feel that he was competent.

"When we got there, I will just say that Mr. Ashcroft did most of the talking. We were there maybe five minutes -- five to six minutes.

"Mr. Ashcroft talked about the legal issues in a lucid form, as I've heard him talk about legal issues in the White House. But at the end of his description of the legal issues, he said, 'I'm not making this decision. The deputy attorney general is.'

"And so Andy Card and I thanked him. We told him that we would continue working with the deputy attorney general and we left."

Abandon Ship?

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow spoke to conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday and almost made some startling personnel disclosures: