I’m will­ing to bet that at least she won’t be capa­ble of this:

The time had come for the vice pres­i­dent to step in. Prox­ies were not get­ting the job done. Cheney was going to have to take hold of this thing himself.

Even now, after months of debate, Cheney did not enlist the pres­i­dent. Bush was across the river in Arling­ton, com­mend­ing the win­ners of the Mal­colm Baldrige awards for qual­ity improve­ment in pri­vate indus­try. Cam­paign season had come already, and the pres­i­dent was doing a lot of that kind of thing. That week he had a fundraiser in Dallas, a “Bush-Cheney 2004 event” in Santa Clara, Calif., and a meet-and-greet at a rodeo in Houston.

Soon after hear­ing what had hap­pened between Gold­smith and Gon­za­les, the vice pres­i­dent asked Andy Card to set up a meet­ing at noon with Mike Hayden, FBI Direc­tor Robert S. Mueller III, and John McLaugh­lin from the CIA (sub­sti­tut­ing for his boss, George J. Tenet). Cheney spoke to them in Card’s office, the door closed.

Four hours later, at 4 p.m., the same cast recon­vened. This time the Jus­tice con­tin­gent was invited. Comey, Gold­smith and Philbin found the titans of the intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment lined up, a bunch of grave-​faced ana­lysts behind them for added mass. The spy chiefs brought no lawyers. The law was not the point. This meet­ing, described by offi­cials with access to two sets of con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous notes, was about telling Jus­tice to set its qualms aside.

The stag­ing had been arranged for max­i­mum impact. Cheney sat at the head of Card’s rec­tan­gu­lar table, piv­ot­ing left to face the acting attor­ney gen­eral. The two men were close enough to touch. Card sat grimly at Cheney’s right, directly across from Comey. There was plenty of eye con­tact all around.

This pro­gram, Cheney said, was vital. Turn­ing it off would leave us blind. Hayden, the NSA chief, pitched in: Even if the pro­gram had yet to pro­duce block­buster results, it was the only real hope of dis­cov­er­ing sleeper agents before they could act.

“How can you pos­si­bly be revers­ing course on some­thing of this impor­tance after all this time?” Cheney asked.

Comey held his ground. The pro­gram had to oper­ate within the law. The Jus­tice Depart­ment knew a lot more now than it had before, and Ashcroft and Comey had reached this deci­sion together.

“I will accept for pur­poses of dis­cus­sion that it is as valu­able as you say it is,” Comey said. “That only makes this more painful. It doesn’t change the analy­sis. If I can’t find a lawful basis for some­thing, your telling me you really, really need to do it doesn’t help me.”

“Others see it differently,” Cheney said.

There was only one of those, really. John Yoo had been out of the pic­ture for nearly a year. It was all Addington.

“The analy­sis is flawed, in fact facially flawed,” Comey said. “No lawyer read­ing that could rea­son­ably rely on it.”

Gon­za­les said noth­ing. Adding­ton stood by the window, over Cheney’s shoul­der. He had heard a bellyful.

“Well, I’m a lawyer and I did,” Adding­ton said, glar­ing at Comey.

“No good lawyer,” Comey said.

In for a dime, in for a dollar.