An FBI agent's notes stated that then-White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and Pres. G. W. Bush called the hospital room, and that Ashcroft's wife had taken the call. Card would not sit for an interview with the IGs about his dramatic visit with then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales to the hospital bedside of an ailing Ashcroft. Gonzales told the inspectors general that Bush instructed him to go to the hospital to obtain Ashcroft's signature on a document that would green-light continuation of the program. "Extraordinary and inappropriate" secrecy about a warrantless eavesdropping program undermined its effectiveness as a terrorism-fighting tool, government watchdogs have concluded in the first examination of one of the most contentious episodes of the Bush administration. WP NYT Reader, report