Marty Lederman has posted the full transcript (.pdf) of James Comey’s testimony today. It’s pretty riveting stuff.
If I’m reading the transcript correctly, it seems that most of the highest-level officials in DOJ were ready to resign over the NSA Surveillance program when the White House decided to continue it without DOJ approval. The Office of Legal Counsel under Jack Goldsmith had come up with parameters under which DOJ was willing to approve the program as legal — perhaps within the scope of the AUMF? who knows — and it sounds like the then-existing program was broader than what OLC thought was permitted. Comey agreed with OLC’s legal analysis, so he wasn’t willing to give DOJ’s approval to the program.
So Card and Gonzales (then WH Counsel) go to Ashcroft at the hospital to try to persuade Ashcroft to overrule Comey. Comey gets word of what is happening, and he gets to the hospital first and tries to get Ashcroft ready for Card and Gonzales. Comey explains:
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