Breaking news on Gonzo TV: The Smoking Gun

USA Today:
Documents show that eight congressional leaders were briefed about the Bush administration’s terrorist surveillance program on the eve of its expiration in 2004, contradicting sworn Senate testimony this week by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The documents, obtained by The Associated Press, come as senators consider whether a perjury investigation should be opened into conflicting accounts about the program and a dramatic March 2004 confrontation leading up to its potentially illegal reauthorization.

A Gonzales spokesman maintained Wednesday that the attorney general stands by his testimony.

At a heated Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Gonzales repeatedly testified that the issue at hand was not about the terrorist surveillance program, which allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on suspects in the United States without receiving court approval.

Instead, Gonzales said, the emergency meetings on March 10, 2004, focused on an intelligence program that he would not describe.[..]

“The dissent related to other intelligence activities,” Gonzales testified at Tuesday’s hearing. “The dissent was not about the terrorist surveillance program.”

“Not the TSP?” responded Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. “Come on. If you say it’s about other, that implies not. Now say it or not.”

“It was not,” Gonzales answered. “It was about other intelligence activities.”

A four-page memo from the national intelligence director’s office shows that the White House briefing with the eight lawmakers on March 10, 2004, was about the terror surveillance program, or TSP.

Read the full memo HERE.

And here is another piece of information from Gonzo's testimony that he lied in regards to his visit to Ashcroft in the hospital. Here is a piece of Tuesday's testimony:

SEN. SCHUMER QUESTIONS: When you went to Ashcroft’s ICU room, did you know that power had been tranferred to Jim Comey? Gonzales says that this was probably something that he knew. Schumer says — wait a minute, dod you know or not? Gonzales says that there was no governing legal principle that precluded Ashcroft from taking back that authority if he felt that he could do so.

Here is a posting in June of one of Jason Leopold's article:

Here was an excerpt of Jim Comey's testimony:


"I was headed home at about 8 o'clock that evening; my security detail was driving me," Comey said."

And I remember exactly where I was - on Constitution Avenue - and got a call from Attorney General Ashcroft's chief of staff telling me that he had gotten a call from Mrs. Ashcroft from the hospital ... Mrs. Ashcroft reported that the call had come through and that, as a result of that call, Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales were on their way to the hospital to see Mr. Ashcroft."Comey said that he rushed to the hospital to arrive before the White House officials, Philbin, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel who worked with Philbin in reviewing the legality of the wiretapping program.

Gonzales did most of the talking, Comey testified, adding that Gonzales and Card pressed Ashcroft to reauthorize the program in spite of reservations about its legality. Comey said Ashcroft reiterated his concerns and refused to sign the order reauthorizing the program.

Ashcroft "lifted his head off the pillow and, in very strong terms, expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me - drawn from the hour-long meeting we'd had a week earlier - and in very strong terms expressed himself, and then laid his head back down on the pillow, seemed spent, and said to them, 'I'm not the attorney general,'"