WASHINGTON: It just gets worse and worse. We already knew that Alberto Gonzales — who, unbelievably, remains our attorney general — was willing to construe the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions however George W. Bush and Dick Cheney wanted. We knew he was willing to politicise the Justice Department, if that was what the White House wanted. Now we learn that Gonzales also was willing to accost a seriously ill man in his hospital room to get his signature on a dodgy justification for unprecedented domestic surveillance.

The man Gonzales harried on his sickbed was his predecessor as attorney general, John Ashcroft. The episode — recounted this week in congressional testimony by Ashcroft’s former deputy, James Comey — sounds like something from Hollywood, not Washington. It’s hard not to think of that scene in “The Godfather” when Don Corleone is left alone in his hospital bed, vulnerable to his enemies, and Michael has to save him.

It was the night of March 10, 2004. Several days earlier, Ashcroft had been stricken with a severe case of pancreatitis and was rushed to George Washington University Hospital, where his gallbladder was removed and he was placed in intensive care. Ashcroft’s wife had banned all visitors and phone calls.

Ashcroft’s illness came amid a fight between the White House and the Justice Department over the programme of warrantless domestic electronic surveillance that Bush had authorised after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks. Justice had reviewed the programme and expressed doubts about its legality.

Comey, serving as acting attorney general because of Ashcroft’s illness, refused to sign off on a reauthorisation of the programme until changes were made. The night before the current authorisation was to expire, Comey said, he was being driven home when he got a call from Ashcroft’s chief of staff, who had just heard from Ashcroft’s wife that Gonzales, then serving as White House counsel, and White House chief of staff Andrew Card were on their way to the hospital. They wanted to get the ailing Ashcroft to overrule Comey and sign the reauthorisation.

Comey ordered his driver to turn around and managed to get to the hospital first. Rather than wait for the elevator, he ran up the stairs. “And Mrs Ashcroft was standing by the hospital bed,” he testified, “Mr Ashcroft was lying down in the bed, the room was darkened. And I immediately began speaking to him, trying to orient him as to time and place, and try to see if he could focus on what was happening, and it wasn’t clear to me that he could. He seemed pretty bad off.”

Gonzales was carrying an envelope when he and Card arrived. Gonzales told Ashcroft they were there “to seek his approval for a matter,” Comey recalled. Ashcroft refused to sign anything, told them why and said that, in any event, Comey was the acting attorney general with the full powers of the office.

“I was very upset,” Comey said. “I was angry. I thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man.”

Now let’s fast-forward a couple of years — to February 2006, after the secret surveillance programme had become public. Gonzales, testifying before Congress, said there had been no serious disagreement within the administration about the legality of conducting such widespread electronic eavesdropping without seeking court warrants. —Dawn/ The Washington Post News Service