We’ve noted Sunday’s NYT editorial endorsing the impeachment of Alberto Gonzales if Solicitor General and acting AG Paul Clement does not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Gonzales’ alleged perjury before Congress. But a number of readers have pointed out this odd passage. The Times editorial rather blandly states that it was Vice President Cheney who ordered the nighttime visit to John Ashcroft’s hospital room.
Unwilling to accept [DOJ’s refusal to reauthorize the program], Vice President Dick Cheney sent Mr. Gonzales and another official to Mr. Ashcroftâs hospital room to get him to approve the wiretapping.
The folks at TPMmuckraker are the ones really following this story closely. So perhaps this is a detail that has eluded me. But I was not aware that it had ever been established that Vice President Cheney ordered the visit. Speculated, rumored, sure. But I wasn’t aware this had been established at all.
And yet the Times states it rather offhandedly as a fact. So what do they know?
Editorials like these are sometimes a venue where facts are stuck in which are ‘known’ to be true but which cannot be sourced cleanly or clearly enough to make it onto the news pages. Is that what’s up here?
