Drip by drip

It's all coming out, folks. Drip by drip, but still it's adding up to what many of us have felt was true all along: george bush and dick cheney conducted one of the worst presidencies in history.

Now we get Senator Diane Finestein saying on national tv that CIA Director Leon Panetta told the Senate Intelligence Committee that it was VP cheney who ordered the CIA not to disclose the latest-revealed CIA program to the appropriate oversight committees of congress.

That is arguably an illegal act, although there is probably some loophole he can crawl through. Already their spin is that the program was never put into operation and therefore did not meet the criterion for required disclosure. Nevertheless, the assumption is unmistakable that he must have assumed that congress would put a stop to the program if they new about it.

And now, thanks to the eagle eye of Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel blogging fame, we know from released IG documents that it was bush himself who sent Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card to AG Ashcroft's hospital room (actually he was in the ICU in severe pain and under heavy medication) to try to get him to sign the torture authorization. Here's what Marcy ferreted out:

According to notes from Ashcroft's FBI security detail, at 6:20 PM that evening Card called the hospital and spoke with an agent in Ashcroft's security detail, advising him that President Bush would be calling shortly to speak with Ashcroft. Ashcroft's wife told the agent that Ashcroft would not accept the call. Ten minutes later, the agent called Ashcroft's Chief of Staff David Ayres at DOJ to request that Ayres speak with Card about the President's intention to call Ashcroft. The agent conveyed to Ayres Mrs. Ashcroft's desire that no calls be made to Ashcroft for another day or two. However, at 6:5 PM, Card and the President called the hospital and, according to the agent's notes, "insisted on speaking [with Attorney General Ashcroft]." According to the agent's notes, Mrs. Ashcroft took the call from Card and the President and was informed that Gonzales and Card were coming to the hospital to see Ashcroft regarding a matter involving national security.

We have known the rest of the story, Ashcroft refused and told them that he was not AG at the moment because he had put Comey in charge; Comey refused to sign the authorization and threatened to resign; they backed down and made some changes.

It had to have been either bush or cheney -- but this makes the picture even more vivid: the president ignoring a wife's plea to leave her critically ill husband alone and instead sending his goons to try to force his compliance: all simply to try to cover their culpability in authorizing illegal acts of torture.

Keep the drips coming, please. Every little bit adds to the flood that might eventually force the appointing of an investigative prosecutor.

Ralph