FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III yesterday contradicted thesworn testimony of his boss, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales,by telling Congress that a prominent warrantless surveillanceprogram was the subject of a dramatic legal debate within the Bushadministration.
Mueller's testimony appears to mark the first public confirmationfrom a Bush administration official that the National SecurityAgency's Terrorist Surveillance Program was at issue in an unusualnighttime visit by Gonzales to the hospital bedside of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who was under sedation andrecovering from surgery.
Mueller's remarks to the House Judiciary Committee differed fromtestimony earlier in the week from Gonzales, who told a Senate panelthat a legal disagreement aired at the hospital did not concern theNSA program. Details of the program, kept secret for four years,were confirmed by President Bush in December 2005, provoking widecontroversy on Capitol Hill.
"The discussion was on a national -- an NSA program that hasbeen much discussed, yes," Mueller said in response to a questionfrom Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.). Mueller told another lawmakerthat he had serious reservations about the warrantless wiretappingprogram.
His testimony presents a new problem for the beleaguered attorneygeneral, whose credibility has come under attack from Democrats andsome Republicans. They say Gonzales deceived them on a number ofissues, including the NSA program and events surrounding the firinglast year of nine U.S. attorneys.
"He tells the half-truth, the partial truth and anything but thetruth," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), as he and three otherDemocrats on the Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Departmentyesterday to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whetherGonzales lied to Congress about the NSA program.
Complicating the administration's predicament, Senate JudiciaryCommittee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) yesterday issuedsubpoenas to White House adviser Karl Rove and a deputy, demandingtheir testimony by Thursday as part of the panel's long-runninginvestigation into the prosecutor firings and the allegedpoliticization of Justice Department career personnel jobs. TheWhite House has refused such requests, prompting House lawmakers tomove toward criminal contempt citations against a former Bush legalcounsel and his current chief of staff.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said in a statementthat Gonzales's testimony and statements about the NSA program havebeen accurate, but that "confusion is inevitable when complicatedclassified activities are discussed in a public forum."
Gonzales is under fire in particular for his testimony inFebruary 2006 that there had been no "serious disagreement" aboutthe NSA wiretapping program. Gonzales and his aides have since saidthat he was referring to the monitoring of internationalcommunications confirmed by Bush and not to other, undisclosed"intelligence activities" that attracted controversy within theadministration.
"The disagreement that occurred in March 2004 concerned the legalbasis for intelligence activities that have not been publiclydisclosed and that remain highly classified," Roehrkasse said.
Other officials, including Mueller and several Democraticlawmakers who were briefed on the NSA's activities, have said thatthe surveillance, or some part of it, was at the heart of thedispute.
Mueller declined at the hearing to discuss Gonzales's statementson the topic. "I really can't comment on what Judge Gonzales wasthinking or saying," he said. "I can tell you what I understood atthe time."
Mueller's testimony is particularly striking in light of hisopposition to Gonzales's view of the matter at issue during the 2004legal dispute. Then-Acting Attorney General James B. Comey soughtMueller's help in ensuring that an FBI security detail did not evictComey from Ashcroft's hospital room during the visit by Gonzales,then White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the WhiteHouse chief of staff.
Mueller was not present during the hospital visit but testifiedyesterday that Ashcroft briefed him on the conversation. Herepeatedly said he agreed with Comey's version of events, whichincluded testimony that Mueller, Ashcroft, Comey and others wereprepared to quit if the program went ahead without changes to renderit legal.
Bush agreed to make the changes after he met with Mueller anddiscussed the objections Mueller shared with Comey, according toComey's account. Mueller conveyed that promise to Comey.
Signaling that Democrats intend to keep pursuing the issue, HouseJudiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) wrote to Mueller afteryesterday's hearing, requesting notes about the 2004 hospitalincident. Mueller testified that he kept records because the episodewas "out of the ordinary."
FBI officials declined to comment.
The request by four senators to appoint a special prosecutor wassent to Solicitor General Paul D. Clement. He has taken charge ofmatters relating to the U.S. attorney firings and relatedcontroversies because Gonzales and numerous other aides are recused.
Leahy also raised the possibility this week of asking JusticeInspector General Glenn A. Fine to open a perjury investigation ofGonzales if the attorney general declines to correct testimony thatLeahy considers inaccurate.
Besides demanding Rove's testimony on the attorney firings, Leahysent a subpoena to J. Scott Jennings, the White House's deputypolitical director. Rove and Jennings appear in Justice Department e-mails discussing steps in the plan to fire the prosecutors.
Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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