Thinking that Meeting should not take place .
That night, though, Comey knew he had an ally to call. He asked Mueller, the ramrod-straight FBI director, to meet him at the hospital, but as his own car raced toward the hospital—its grill lights flashing and siren wailing—Comey realized that Mueller wouldn’t make it before the White House officials, so he asked for help: Don’t let them remove me, he asked Mueller.
Comey knew that Card would have Secret Service protection with him, and he was worried about being forcibly ejected by agents from Ashcroft’s hospital room. Ashcroft, weakened from gallbladder problems, was in no condition to sign off on STELLAR WIND—he’d legally turned the reins over to Comey while he was incapacitated—but, Comey feared, if the White House could isolate Ashcroft, who knew what it would do? Comey thought fast: Ashcroft had his own FBI security detail, and so he asked Mueller to call ahead and tell them not to allow the attorney general to be left alone. It was, in an extraordinary showdown between the White House and Justice Department, perhaps the single most extraordinary moment of the tumultuous Bush years: The FBI director ordering his agents to resist the Secret Service if they tried to remove the deputy attorney general from the attorney general’s bedside. As motorcades converged on the hospital from across Washington, everyone involved wondered: Just how far would this situation escalate?