Larry King doesn't buy Cheney's faulty memory on Ashcroft hospital visit

David Edwards and Nick Juliano

Published: Tuesday July 31, 2007





Print This Email This

Want to get politics as it breaks? Get our politics news feed .

In an interview set to air Tuesday night on CNN, Vice President Dick Cheney tells Larry King that the administration would stick by embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, but King told viewers he thought Cheney's answer was not completely supportive.

"I did not think ... that it was a firm, 100 percent 'we love you General Gonzales,'" King said Tuesday afternoon on CNN.

Cheney described the ongoing investigation into the firing of nine US Attorneys as "a bit of a witch hunt on Capitol Hill as they keep turning over rocks hoping they find something." He said he would stand by Gonzales in a brief excerpt of the interview.

"Al's a good man, good friend, and in a difficult assignment," Cheney said.

King told viewers that he asked Cheney whether he instructed Gonzales and then White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card to visit then-Attorney General John Ashcroft at his hospital bedside to push Ashcroft, who was recovering from surgery, to approve a secret surveillance program.

Cheney told King he had no recollection of delivering those instructions, but the veteran CNN interviewer said he didn't quite buy that explanation.

"How could you not recall? You know, 'Hey you two guys, you go over to that guy in the hospital bed, and you tell him to sign this,'" King said.

The following video is from CNN's Newsroom, broadcast on July 31.



