Ashcroft 'feeble and stressed' during Gonzales visit« Thread Started on Aug 17, 2007, 9:55am » --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Ashcroft 'feeble and stressed' during Gonzales visitBy DAVID JOHNSTON & SCOTT SHANENew York Times News Serviceread at source> http://www.philly.com/dailynews/nationa ... WASHINGTON - John Ashcroft was "barely articulate," "feeble" and "clearly stressed" as he sat in a hospital room chair in March 2004 when top White House aides unsuccessfully tried to persuade him, as the attorney general, to sign an extension for warrantless domestic eavesdropping on Americans, according to notes made by Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the FBI. Mueller's notes of his visit to Ashcroft's hospital room provide another eyewitness account of the dramatic confrontation over the secret surveillance program. They confirm an account of the encounter given by James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about it in May.Mueller's typed notes, which are undated, also reveal a series of meetings earlier and later that month between the FBI director and other administration officials, including Comey, Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel, and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then the director of the National Security Agency, which conducted the electronic monitoring program.Mueller's notes show that Ashcroft said that he was "barred" from getting as much information as he wanted about the highly classified eavesdropping program, because of strict White House secrecy rules.Mueller's notes, which have been turned over to the House Judiciary Committee, were described by two officials who had reviewed them. The notes recount Mueller's arrival at the hospital after Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff, had attempted to persuade Ashcroft to sign a presidential order reauthorizing the program. Comey, who was acting as attorney general during Ashcroft's hospitalization, had declined to sign the reauthorization because he believed that part of the program was unlawful.