We know the administration has broken the law with regard to wiretapping, but that wasn't enough to provoke a massive outcry amongst Americans, the MSM, or Congress. We know that Bush refused to discuss whether he authorized the hospital visit to Ashcroft, choosing to trot out national security concerns and the inability to discuss it once again.
But did the hospital visit and ensuing conversation with Ashcroft actually violate national security? Constitutional experts think it may. There are laws regulating the location of such discussions, because it is easy for adversaries to use electronic surveillance themselves to pick up conversations at insecure locations, public locations, i.e. hospitals.
More after the flip
Neil Katyal, also prominent on Gitmo detainee civil rights issues, says in Time:
"Executive branch rules require sensitive classified information to be discussed in specialized facilities that are designed to guard against the possibility that officials are being targeted for surveillance outside of the workplace," says Georgetown Law Professor Neal Katyal, who was National Security Advisor to the Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton. "The hospital room of a cabinet official is exactly the type of target ripe for surveillance by a foreign power," Katyal says. This particular information could have been highly sensitive. Says one government official familiar with the Terrorist Surveillance Program: "Since it's that program, it may involve cryptographic information," some of the most highly protected information in the intelligence community.
There is precedent for this, plenty of investigations have focused on the improper disclosure of such information. I find it highly ironic that once again we are subject to being told we can't know anything because it keeps us safe, but actual practice by the government violates these same principles.
The SJC is weighing the issue, and ironically the Justice Department may need to decide if it itself should be investigated.
In response to questions on the legality of Gonzales' hospital room conversation, Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the National Security Division of the Justice Department, said, "I am not going to speculate on discussions that may or may not have taken place, much less attempt to render a legal judgment on any such discussions." A Senate investigator says the Judiciary Committee is weighing whether to investigate the matter formally. One consideration will be whether the Justice department itself decides it should be investigated. Gonzales, as head of the department, would be conflicted in the matter. "The fact that you have a potential case against the Attorney General himself calls for the most scrupulous and independent of investigations," says Georgetown's Katyal.
One thing is clear, we need to know who thought it was a good idea to go over Comey. Did they think Ashcroft's state would make it easier for approval? Didn't anyone think that location might not be the best of places to discuss it? Why the rush? This is just one more thing to add to the long line of questions that need to be answered.
via Think Progress
Update: More troubling, it was well-known he was in the hospital, and the hospital itself was identified. Easy pickings, if you know what I mean. Here's the NYT article about it, on March 6, 2004:
After complaining of stomach pain, Mr. Ashcroft, 61, was taken on Thursday evening to the emergency room at George Washington University Hospital in downtown Washington on the advice of a White House doctor. He was put on antibiotics, and doctors were closely monitoring his condition, officials said.
Update 2: Here are the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. They should be contacted and urged to dig deeper.