Ashcroft's lesson lost on Gonzales

Who knew? Maybe the often-controversial John Ashcroft was a better U.S. attorney general than he has been given credit for. At least in one case, he certainly seemed to grasp the unique responsibilities of the office better than the current one, Alberto Gonzales.

Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week highlighted a nuanced but important contrast between the two men's views of the attorney general's role. As the nation's attorney first, Ashcroft stood up to White House overreaching with a domestic-surveillance program. Gonzales acts as henchman, facilitating a shadowy partisan agenda and appearing to consider the public's interests only as an afterthought.

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told senators about a bizarre March 2004 scene where Gonzales, then White House counsel, and Andrew Card, then President Bush's chief of staff, accosted Ashcroft in his hospital sickbed.

Comey had been named acting attorney general when Ashcroft became ill. He and Ashcroft had decided they would not endorse the National Security Agency surveillance program because it was overreaching.

Comey got wind of Card's and Gonzales' attempt to go around him to the ailing Ashcroft. He enlisted then-FBI Director Robert Mueller III, who met him at the hospital.

Roused from sleep, Ashcroft in no uncertain terms told the White House operatives why he would not support the program, Comey recounted.

The White House seemed poised to proceed as it wanted. Comey and Mueller were prepared to resign, as, reportedly, was Ashcroft.

But the morning after the hospital confrontation, President Bush met with Comey and Mueller separately and agreed to permit changes to the program that satisfied the Justice Department's concerns.

Comey testified in the ongoing probe of the Justice Department's firing of nine U.S. attorneys, including Seattle's John McKay.

Comey's story seems to support a serious criticism of Gonzales — that, when he became attorney general, he never grasped the role's larger responsibility of advancing justice for Americans. Instead, he seemed to run the Justice Department as an extension of the White House, letting partisan agendas slosh over into department workings, including the firings.

We will say it again: Gonzales needs to resign.