We have known for a while that friction between DOJ and the White House over some kind of secret surveillance system led a number of top DOJ officials to come close to resigning back in 2004. Newsweek has a piece suggesting that the threatened resignations may have been broader than originally thought. Here is the picture Newsweek portrays, as told in a present-tense reconstruction:
Appalled by the White House’s heavy-handed attempt to coerce the gravely ill attorney general, virtually the entire top leadership of the Justice Department is threatening to resign. The group includes the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum and the chief of the Criminal Division, Chris Wray. Some of them gather in the conference room of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who describes Ashcroft’s bravely turning away the president’s men from his hospital bed. The mood that night in the conference room was tense