I thought that the Attorney General of the US worked for the people, not as a personal lawyer for the President to persecute the whistleblowers of executive crimes.
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department has opened another investigation into leaks of classified information, this time to determine who divulged the existence of President Bush's secret domestic spying program.
Yes, we must find this person. Many rewards, parades and shiny medals to bestow!
The inquiry focuses on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said.
The newspaper recently revealed the existence of the program in a front-page story that also acknowledged that the news had been withheld from publication for a year, partly at the request of the administration and partly because the newspaper wanted more time to confirm various aspects of the program.
White House spokesman Trent Duffy said Justice undertook the action on its own, and Bush was informed of it Friday.
"The leaking of classified information is a serious issue. The fact is that al-Qaida's playbook is not printed on Page One and when America's is, it has serious ramifications," Duffy told reporters in Crawford, Texas, where Bush was spending the holidays.
Now, I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that if leaking this information is such a serious offense, with it's serious ramifications, then perhaps the White House should be charged with obstruction of justice for not investigating this leak for a whole year. They knew about it. Why didn't they investigate before?
As a side note, who thinks Trent Duffy is lined up to take the place of Scott McClellan? But, I digress...
Disclosure of the secret spying program two weeks ago unleashed a firestorm of criticism of the administration. Some critics accused the president of breaking the law by authorizing intercepts of conversations — without prior court approval or oversight — of people inside the United States and abroad who had suspected ties to al-Qaida or its affiliates.
The inquiry launched Friday is only the most recent effort by the Bush administration to determine who is disclosing information to journalists.
Two years ago, a special counsel was named to investigate who inside the White House gave reporters the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, an effort that led to perjury and obstruction of justice charges against Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide, Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby.
Time it took to start the Plame investigation- four months. Time to start this one- two weeks.
More recently, the Justice Department has begun examining whether classified information was illegally disclosed to The Washington Post about a network of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
Parades from them, too.
It is unclear whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will recuse himself from the inquiry. He was White House counsel when Bush signed the executive order authorizing the NSA, which is normally confined to overseas operations, to spy on conversations taking place on American soil.
For the past two weeks, Gonzales also has been one of the administration's point men in arguing that the president has the constitutional authority to conduct the spying.
"It's pretty stunning that, rather than focus on whether the president broke his oath of office and broke federal law, they are going after the whistleblowers," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Romero said a special prosecutor from outside the Justice Department needs to be appointed. "This confirms many of the fears about Gonzales' appointment — that he would not be sufficiently independent from the president and that he would play the role of a crony," he said.
And if you don't think that Bush's Supreme Court nominations will behave the same way, think again. Does this explain the appointment of Harriet Miers? What does Mr. Alito think of the use of executive power in cases such as this? Perhaps that should be in the line of questioning come January. Hint, hint, Senators.