Compartments of truth

Guess the left isn't giving up on the Ashcroft hospital drama quite yet. The WaPo's Dan Eggen has a new column repeating the old lines, with the exception of one new item--that only four people at Justice knew the details of the TSP program.

Shocking? Not when one presumes they were trying to keep the leaks to a minimum. Comey has previously mentioned that Bush had all this stuff "compartmentalized", which was presumably why Ashcroft was pushing back on the re-up signature.

Of course, the left would mention other reasons for the compartments. And that seems to leave two choices. One, believing Bush had evil intentions, or two, because he knew that it would be tough to keep a secret program secret, which was essential if it had the smallest chance of being effective in a town where Mothers and Mother Teresas are routinely stabbed in the back for power. This was supposed to be about public safety and the anthrax killer had not yet been caught, after all.

Once again former DoJ lawyer Jack Goldsmith was used as a hammer to hammer Bushco. Again we get a description of the AJAG that fateful night, this time he was "very weak, very tired and ashen". Pretty soon this fish story will become "he was a zombie and Gonzales and Card were eating his flesh".

Goldsmith, a native of Memphis, was not nearly as hostile-sounding to his former boss when Glenn and Helen interviewed him in a podcast a few months ago. And Comey went on to serve another year after the incident before quiting. But apparently there are movies to make and political points to score, so the story lives on.