New evidence was brought to light yesterday. Here's my take, up at Alternet.
Documents provided Thursday to House Democrats by FBI Director Robert Mueller reinforced the sense among Democrats and critics of the Bush Administration that Alberto Gonzales perjured himself before the Senate Judiciary committee about the physical condition of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, as the White House attempted to seek his reauthorization of a controversial warrantless wiretapping program....
In response to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), Gonzales insisted that Ashcroft seemed lucid in the hospital, where the White House aides sought his reauthorization of a domestic surveillance program.
"Obviously, there was concern about General Ashcroft's condition," Gonzales told Specter, "and we would not have sought, nor did we intend, to get any approval from General Ashcroft if, in fact, he wasn't fully competent to make that decision."
But Mueller's notes belie that contention. One sentence, in particular, indicates that Ashcroft was anything other than fully competent: "AG in chair; is feeble, barely articulate, clearly stressed."
So much is still not known about the other sides of this controversy (most notably whether or not Gonzales perjured himself when he hinted at a distinction between the NSA's Warrantless Wiretapping Program and "other" surveillance activities). I'm not really actively reporting on that, but the two finest sources in probably all of journalism for information about just that question are Spackerman and the mysterious Anonymous Liberal. Read their work daily.
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