ABSTRACT
While driving home from work the evening of March 10, 2004, the acting attorneygeneral of the United States, James Comey, received a disturbing call. It came from an aide to Comey’s boss, John Ashcroft. Ashcroft had suffered an acute illness that required his gall bladder to be removed, so Comey was acting as attorney general while Ashcroft recovered. The aide told Comey that Andrew Card, President George W. Bush’s chief of staff, along with White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, was driving to Ashcroft’s room at George Washington University Hospital, just five and a half blocks up Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.
