The Need to Know: Justice vs. White House

The scene that former Deputy Attorney General James Comey described before a Senate panel yesterday was pure pulp: high-ranking officials from the White House duking it out with their counterparts at the Department of Justice at the hospital bedside of an ailing attorney general.

As Comey describes it, many in the Justice Department had serious misgivings about the White House's wiretapping program that superseded normal legal safe guards. President Bush eventually authorized some alterations in the policy that made it more palatable to the critics.

For more about Comey's role in this behind-the-scenes tug-of-war, here are several previous articles by Chief Legal Correspondent Chitra Ragavan about the ex-prosecuctor:

• A Battle in the Brig (March 28, 2004)
• Ashcroft's Way (January 18, 2004)
• Ready, Aim, Misfire (February 21, 1999)