Oath of Loyalty

In Washington divided government loosens lips; narratives that might never have been told play out as sworn testimony. Some witnesses encase their truths in leaden prose. Not so James Comey, a former Deputy Attorney General, who unspooled a vivid tale in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee about the night in March 2004 when he raced to the hospital to prevent two top White House aides from taking advantage of his critically ill boss, John Ashcroft, in a dispute over the Administration's secret domestic eavesdropping program. Comey was acting Attorney General while Ashcroft was incapacitated by pancreatitis. Like his boss, Comey...