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Index of articles by wrter in the Atlantic story lede: The
Justice Department is investigating whether former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales created a set of fictitious notes so
that President Bush would have a rationale for reauthorizing his warrantless eavedroopping program, according to sources close
to the investigation. President Bush reauthorized the surveillance program on March 11, 2004, one
day after the hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to sign a certificate saying that the program was legal
and therefore continue. story lede: In
March, 2004, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made us a now-famous late-night visit to the hospital room of Attorney General
John Ashcroft, seeking to get Ashcroft to sign a certification stating that the Bush administration's warantless wiretapping
program was legal According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales
is now saying that George Bush personally direced him to make that hospital visit. The hospital
visit is already central to many contemporaneous historical accounts of the Bush presidency. At the time of the
visit, Ashcroft had been in intensive care for six days, was heavily medicated, and was recovering from emergency surgery
to remove his gall bladder. Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey has said that he believes that Gonzales and White
House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who accompanied Gonzales to Ashcroft's hospital room, were trying to take advantage
of Ashcroft's grievously ill state-- presisng him to sign the certification possibly witout even comprehending what he
was doing-- and in the process authorize a government surveillance program which both Ashcroft and the Justice Department
had concluded was of questionable legality.
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