A dramatic account of Alberto Gonzales’ nighttime visit to John Ashcroft’s sick bed may well be the last straw for Mr. Gonzales as he struggles to hold his job as U.S. attorney general.

The riveting testimony about his visit three years ago was described by then Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey. He was also at the bedside of Mr. Ashcroft in 2004, and had taken over leadership of the Justice Department when Attorney General Ashcroft was being cared for at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, where he was suffering from a severe case of pancreatitis.

Mr. Ashcroft was in a heavily guarded intensive-care suite after surgical removal of his gallbladder when his wife received a telephone call from the White House saying that Mr. Gonzales, then White House counsel, and Chief of Staff Andrew Card were on their way there.

Mr. Comey, informed of the call on his way home at 8 p.m., alerted FBI Director Robert S. Mueller and headed for the hospital to intercept the White House officials. Mr. Comey knew that they would try to persuade Mr. Ashcroft to certify the legality of the administration’s secret warrantless wiretapping program, which Mr. Comey and Mr. Ashcroft had already decided they could not do.

Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card, arriving with an envelope shortly after Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller got there, started talking to Mr. Ashcroft about signing off on the wiretapping program. To everyone’s surprise, Mr. Ashcroft raised his head from the pillow and forcefully refused, adding that it didn’t matter because Mr. Comey was in charge as acting attorney general.

Mr. Comey was summoned to the White House at 11 that night. He and Mr. Mueller and other officials were prepared to resign, on the ground that they could not stay if the administration continued to conduct a program that they believed had no legal basis. But President Bush intervened, certain changes were made in the program, and the officials withdrew their resignations.

Questions remain: Did the president send Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card to Mr. Ashcroft’s bedside to pressure him to approve the wiretapping? Mr. Bush has refused to answer that question. What was the extent of the illegal wiretapping? What other officials objected to it? What changes made it possible for the Justice Department to certify its legality?

Mr. Gonzales’ fate may have been suggested in a recent New York Times report. It quoted Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser, as believing that “it’s in the best interest of the president for Gonzales on his own to resign,” but that the matter was up to Mr. Gonzales and the president.

To some observers, that obvious hint to Mr. Gonzales meant that he was being left to “swing slowly, slowly in the wind,” as President Nixon’s staff said of Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray when he got involved in the Watergate scandal.