September 9, 2007 (LPAC)--Both in an interview on ABC's Nightline on Thursday and in an interview given as the basis for an article which appeared in the New York Times Magazine today entitled "Conscience of a Conservative" by Jeffrey Rosen, former Department of Justice lawyer Jack Goldsmith gave a detailed account of the visit to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital room by Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card. "It was the most extraordinary thing.

"The attorney general, he looked terrible! He kind of lifted himself off the bed, and he lifted his chest up and kind of looked into his face, and he basically explained to them in a very clear and articulate way. He said he didn't appreciate the visit under these circumstances. And then he said, that, in any event, Jim Comey was the acting attorney general. And then he collapsed back into the bed. I certainly did not think it was appropriate for them to be there under the circumstances. He was obviously incapacitated and they knew it."

Goldsmith added that, as Gonzales and Card walked out of the room, "Mrs. Ashcroft, who obviously couldn't believe what she saw happening to her sick husband ... stuck her tongue out at them.... It captured the feeling in the room perfectly."

On Nightline, Goldsmith identified Dick Cheney's former legal counsel and currently his chief of staff, David Addington, as the person, who "designed all of the administration's counterterrorism policies" and who was his biggest critic.

Goldsmith said: "I discovered in my first weeks on the job that some of our most important counterterrorism policies were based on legal opinions that I viewed as flawed. Goldsmith said that Addington "was always pushing other people to go out on a limb to do things and take responsibility for things that they weren't always in agreement about. One never saw him doing the same thing."

In the New York Times article Goldsmith said: "My conflicts were all with Addington, who was a proxy for the vice president."