Rice and Ashcroft Sang Hymns While Assassination Plans Reviewed!

True and surreal and ironic and pathetic and mind-boggling and...

A two-day crisis meeting of Mr Bush's senior advisers had finally wound up. The President had gone to bed.

Across the room, the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was singing hymns, accompanied on the piano by the Christian fundamentalist Attorney-General, John Ashcroft.

Leafing through the CIA documents, Mr O'Neill was astonished to read plans for covert assassinations around the globe designed to remove opponents of the US Government. The plans had virtually no civilian checks and balances.

"What I was thinking is, 'I hope the President really reads this carefully', Mr O'Neill said. "It's kind of his job. You can't forfeit this much responsibility to unelected individuals. But I knew he wouldn't."

Mr O'Neill's account of that famous cabinet meeting is just one of many surreal episodes he recalls from his two-year tenure as Mr Bush's top economic official in The Price of Loyalty, the controversial new book by a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Ron Suskind. But there are many similar moments in the 328-page book on Mr O'Neill published on Tuesday with the subtitle: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill.

Democrats.com also speculates that FCC Chairman Powell is attacking Bono for his support of O'Neill.