The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

350 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
it hAd Been two weeKs since Ashcroft confronted the commission with
Gorelick’s alleged complicity in undermining the war on terror. On the
day before the commission was set to interview the president and vice
president, Ashcroft posted more memos on the Justice Department’s
Web site, including some that hadn’t been shared with the commission.
That was too much for even the preternaturally patient Kean. The chairman
told Card he was mad as hell.
When the commission arrived at the White House, Bush met privately
with Kean and Hamilton. Straightaway he apologized for Ashcroft’s attacks
on Gorelick, especially the new batch of memos. When the other
eight members joined them in the Oval Office, Bush repeated his apology.
“Jamie, this shouldn’t have happened,” the president told her earnestly.
Bush and his brain trust had finally wised up. They had opposed
creating the 9/11 Commission, fearing it might portray him as a bungler.
That was now water over the dam. Creating a hostile commission was the
last thing they needed in the middle of a re-election campaign. 18
Bush could be terrific one-on-one. He came across as genuinely apologetic,
eager to help. “I spent more time in the Oval Office on that one errand
than I did in my entire 18 years in the United States Senate,” Gorton
says. “Bush answered every question. In fact, two commissioners had to
leave for other appointments because the meeting went so long. What I
found most amusing was that the tigers on the commission turned into
pussy cats when they were sitting in the Oval Office.”
It was a bravura performance, with political expediency for an encore.
Bush had never been close to Ashcroft, so, as they say in Texas, he took
him to the woodshed. From then on Ashcroft’s days were numbered.
Gorton viewed Ashcroft’s departure with mixed emotions. The attorney
general had been a hero to some for refusing to reauthorize a warrantless
domestic spying program that the Justice Department had determined
was illegal. (Gonzales and Card brought the papers to Ashcroft’s
hospital room while he lay ill in the winter of 2004. Ashcroft’s deputy got
there first, sirens blaring on his police escort.) 19
After Ashcroft was “unceremoniously canned at the end of the first
Bush Administration,” Gorton says, Bush appointed “a much worse attorney
general as a result—Alberto Gonzales. I could have done that job
with my eyes closed better than either of those people did.”
when donALd RuMsfeLd, Bush’s alternately charming and imperious
secretary of defense, appeared before the commission on March 23, 2004,
he knew full well that Gorton and Kerrey were particularly immune to