When I came to the Office of Legal Counsel three years into President Bush's first term, the most popular Attorney General portraits had been taken. On the wall across from my desk hung a painting that no one else wanted: that of Elliot Richardson, Richard Nixon's third Attorney General. On Saturday, October 20, 1973, Nixon ordered Richardson to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who had subpoenaed Nixon for tapes of conversations made in the Oval Office. But Richardson had promised the Senate during his confirmation hearings "not to countermand, nor interfere with the special prosecutor's decisions." So he told Nixon that he would quit rather than carry out his order. "I'm sorry that you insist on putting your personal commitments ahead of the public interest," Nixon angrily told Richardson. "I can only say that I believe my resignation is in the public interest," Richardson responded, during his last meeting ever with Nixon. At first, I paid little attention to the beady stare from behind the oversized eyeglasses in Richardson's portrait.

Two months into my job, however, I had thought a lot about the sixty-ninth Attorney General. During those eight weeks, I was briefed on some of the most sensitive counterterrorism operations in the government. Each of these operations was supported by OLC opinions written by my predecessors. As I absorbed the opinions, I concluded that some were deeply flawed: sloppily reasoned, overbroad, and incautious in asserting extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the President. I was immensely worried to discover that some of our most important counterterrorism policies rested on severely damaged legal foundations. It began to dawn on me that I could not-as I thought I would eventually be asked to do-stand by or reaffirm these opinions. Book jacket.