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Sarcastic American!
Guest
Reported by Murray Waas for the Huffington Post.
Alberto Gonzales was briefed extensively about a criminal leak
investigation despite the fact that he had reason to believe that
several individuals under investigation in the matter were potential
witnesses against him in separate Justice Department inquiries.
While Attorney General, Gonzales oversaw the probe into the disclosure
of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program to the
New York Times. However, many of those under scrutiny in that
investigation were likely to be crucial witnesses about whether
Gonzales himself had violated the law while promoting the program as
White House counsel and testifying about it to Congress.
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine is currently
investigating whether Gonzales gave false or misleading testimony
about the eavesdropping program while under oath.
Earlier, the Justice Department's Office of Professional
Responsibility (OPR) attempted to investigate whether Gonzales and
other government attorneys acted within the law in authorizing and
overseeing the program. President Bush personally intervened in the
spring of 2006 to shut down that investigation by preventing OPR
investigators from gaining the necessary security clearances.
Senior federal law enforcement privately question the propriety of
Gonzales receiving such sensitive information about subordinates being
scrutinized in one inquiry when those same individuals were likely to
be witnesses about alleged misconduct by Gonzales for the other
investigations.
A senior law enforcement official said, "Most of the people who have
been looked at [during the leak investigation] are never going to be
charged. Most did nothing wrong."
Yet, during the course of the leak investigation, the official said,
people were asked about their contacts with the press, whether they
disagreed with aspects of the Bush administration's eavesdropping
program, and even their personal politics. The official said that
special care should have been taken in briefing Gonzales -- a
political figure who also was the nation's chief law enforcement
official -- and indeed was to some degree. But the fact that some of
those investigated had information about potential wrongdoing against
Gonzales was even worse.
Of serious concern, the law enforcement official said, was that the
"investigative files in the [leak] case are the equivalent of raw
intelligence files for someone like Gonzales."
Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University,
said in an interview that Gonzales's conduct was improper.
"Gonzales should have stayed out of the leak investigation once it
began to focus on potential witnesses against him. By overseeing it,
Gonzales put himself in a position to hurt the careers and reputations
of subordinates whose cooperation was needed in the separate
investigation of him. They are likely to recognize this added
vulnerability -- it's hard enough as it is to provide evidence against
your boss -- which will in turn intimidate them from saying anything
that invites retribution from Gonzales."
Charles Wolfram, a professor emeritus of ethics at Cornell University
Law School, similarly said, "As a matter of legal ethics, Gonzales had
a clear conflict of interest. It seems to be flat out wrong that he
should be supervising and getting information about people taking
shots at him at witnesses in these other investigations."
How much of a serious concern was it to law enforcement officials that
Gonzalez continued to oversee an investigation of people who have
accused him of wrongdoing?
Gonzales' own legal team preemptively leaked word this month that the
former Attorney General had retained George Terwilliger, a former
deputy attorney general during the first Bush administration, to
defend him during various investigations of his own conduct by the
Justice Department and Congress.
Gonzales' attorneys were reportedly concerned that the Justice
Department's Inspector General might send a criminal referral to the
Justice Department's Public Integrity Section or even recommend the
appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Gonzales. (The
Inspector General does not have authority to prosecute crimes
himself.)
As a result of the briefings that Gonzales received during the leak
probe, he now has an advantage that no private citizen under
investigation could conceivably have: access to government records
about his accusers even while investigations of him are ongoing.
"What happens if the Inspector General is going to come out with a
report, or worse, refer to someone?" said the senior federal law
enforcement official who criticizes Gonzales' briefings. "If not the
first thing, then it is the second thing any good attorney is going to
want to know: What do you have to discredit your accusers? What do we
have to give to the press?" In this instance, the official pointed
out, "You have a former attorney general being represented a federal
deputy attorney general. You have people who understand how to play
this game better than anyone.
"The question then is whether Alberto Gonzales is going to be able to
say to his own attorney, 'I can't tell you what I learned about my own
accusers. That would have been an abuse of my authority as Attorney
General.'"
Do witnesses against Gonzales feel intimidated in the way that law
enforcement officials and ethics experts say might be the case?
Some former government officials who have been questioned as part of
the leak probe, as well as attorneys representing officials
questioned, said as much in interviews for this story. None wanted to
speak for the record because they did not want to anger prosecutions
investigating them or their clients.
But at least one former Justice Department official, who was
questioned during the leak probe, has spoken out publicly: Jack
Goldsmith, who, as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal
Counsel, questioned the legality of some aspects of the warrantless
surveillance program, and directly clashed with Gonzales over the
program when Gonzales was White House counsel.
Goldsmith declined to be interviewed for this story. But in his
recently published memoir of his time serving in the Bush
administration, "The Terror Presidency", Goldsmith disclosed that he
been subpoenaed by FBI agents last April to testify under oath about
the leak probe before a federal grand jury.
"What angered me most about the subpoena I received," Goldsmith wrote,
was "the fact that it was Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department that
had issued it... I had spent hundreds of very difficult hours at OLC,
in he face of extraordinary White House resistance, trying to clean up
the legal mess that then-White House counsel Gonzales, David Addington
[Vice President Cheney's then-counsel], and others had created in
designing the foundations of the Terrorist Surveillance Program.
"It seemed rich beyond my comprehension for a Gonzales-led Department
of Justice to be pursuing me for possibly illegal actions in
connection with the Terrorist Surveillance Program."
In response to such concerns, Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice
Department's National Security Division, said via email: "I'm sorry,
but we will not be able to provide you any comment whatsoever on the
ongoing leak investigation."
White House press secretary Dana Perino also declined comment on the
propriety of Gonzales' continued involvement in the leak probe, any
information he might have given President Bush about the probe, and
conversations between Bush and Gonzales to shut down the OPR probe.
"The White House does not comment on private conversations that the
president has with his senior advisers and his Cabinet. And that has
been, and will continue to be, our standard operating procedure,"
Perino said. "The attorney general is one such close adviser to the
president."
Perino also asserted that the discussions between Bush and Gonzales
were appropriate because "the terrorist surveillance program is a
highly classified national security tool to fight the global war on
terror."
Terwilliger, Gonzales' attorney, did not return phone calls seeking
his comment for this story.
During much of the same time that Gonzales oversaw the leak
investigation, the Justice Department's Office of Professional
Responsibility was attempting to conduct an entirely separate
investigation into whether Gonzales and other government attorneys
acted within the law in approving and overseeing the eavesdropping
program.
President Bush personally intervened in spring 2006 to shut down that
particular investigation by not allowing OPR investigators to be
granted the necessary security clearances. Gonzales has told Congress
that Bush consulted with him on the matter, and that Gonzales actually
advocated that the security clearances be granted so the OPR probe
could continue -- but that Bush overrode that advice.
The OPR inquiry was shut down not long after the head of OPR, Marshall
Jarrett, had informed superiors that his team was about to interview
witnesses and review records that would directly contradict sworn
testimony to Congress by Gonzales, according to Justice Department
records and interviews. The testimony in question was Gonzales's
assertion that there had been no "serious disagreement" within the
Bush administration regarding the legality of the eavesdropping
program.
It is unknown exactly when Gonzales learned that his own conduct would
be a focus for OPR investigators, but Jarrett first complained to his
superiors in a Jan. 20, 2006 memo that his investigation was being
stymied because of the delay in obtaining security clearances. In the
same memo, Jarrett named specific witnesses he wanted to interview and
documents he wanted to review. Those witnesses and documents indicated
that senior Justice Department officials had reservations about the
legality of some aspects of the administration's eavesdropping
program.
Two weeks after Jarrett asked for his security clearances, on Feb. 3,
2006, Gonzales appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was
asked whether anyone within the Bush administration had raised
questions about the legality of the eavesdropping program.
Gonzales said: "There has not been any serious disagreement about the
program that the President has confirmed."
Of course, it would later become famously known that there were indeed
a score of top Justice Department officials who had very serious
disagreements with Gonzales over the legality of the program.
Gonzales has denied having purposely mislead Congress. (His
explanation of why his testimony is truthful is included in this New
York Times story.)
But three senior government officials -- former Deputy Attorney
General James B. Comey, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Goldsmith --
have all since testified before Congress that they disagreed sharply
about legal aspects of the eavesdropping program. Comey and Goldsmith
have publicly described the intense confrontation when Alberto
Gonzales and Andrew Card pressed a severely ill John Ashcroft to
reauthorize the program from his hospital bed at George Washington
University Medical Center. (Watch video of Comey's testimony here.)
Goldsmith, who was in the hospital room at the time, described the
scene to the New York Times:
"Ashcroft, who looked like he was near death, sort of puffed up his
chest. All of a sudden, energy and color came into his face, and he
said that he didn't appreciate them coming to visit him under those
circumstances, that he had concerns about the matter that they were
asking about and that , in any event, he wasn't the attorney general
at he moment; Jim Comey was. He actually gave two-minute speech, and I
was sure at the end of it he was going to die."
But none of this was known when the OPR investigation was effectively
terminated -- or at least not known officially, because Jarrett could
not question Comey or Goldsmith without security clearances.
On March 21, 2006, six weeks after Gonzales's notorious testimony,
Jarrett took his case directly to the no. 2 official at the Justice
Department, then-Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, according to
Department records. Some time subsequently, President Bush, after
consulting with Gonzales, apparently made the final decision to deny
OPR security clearances to continue.
In his memo to McNulty, Jarrett pointed out that others throughout the
Justice Department and elsewhere in government, often with less
pressing needs. were routinely granted clearances regarding the
eavesdropping program.
Jarrett noted, for example, "the Criminal Division's request for the
same security clearances for a large team of attorneys and FBI agents
that was investigating who initially leaked details of the NSA
eavesdropping program to the New York Times."
In contrast to the nettlesome Jarrett, both Bush and Gonzales were
determined to ferret out who in government leaked details of their
eavesdropping to the media. No resources were to be spared. Security
clearances were readily granted.
Jarrett also noted in the same memo that clearances were being granted
even to Department employees handling routine Freedom of Information
requests, as well as private citizens on a presidential board, while
he and his staff were denied them:
"We have also learned that individuals involved in the Civil
Division's response to legal challenges to the NSA program and
responses to Freedom of Information Act litigation have received the
same clearances. And.. five private individuals who made up the
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board have been briefed on the
NSA program and have en granted authorization to receive the
clearances in question."
Regarding the clearances apparently granted to the president's Privacy
and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, Justice Department officials told
me in interviews that ordinarily private citizens on such boards are
considered much greater security risks than full-time civil service
government employees, such as Jarrett and his staff. Unlike government
employees, they do not risk the loss of their jobs or pensions or the
ends of their careers if they are caught leaking.
The board's only Democratic member, former Clinton administration
counsel Lanny Davis, resigned his position in May. In his resignation
letter, Davis alleged that "at least some administration officials and
a majority of the board" believe that the board should be "wholly part
of the White House staff and political structure, rather than an
independent oversight entity." [Disclosure: Davis once briefly
represented me in a minor legal matter as a private attorney.]
Was Marshall Jarrett more of a potential security risk than Freedom of
Information officers and private citizens sitting on private boards?
In considering that question, one should consider his resume:
Jarrett has been a career federal prosecutor and administrative
officer of the Department of Justice for twenty seven years. He was a
First Assistant U.S. Attorney in West Virginia. He was the head of the
Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of
Columbia. He also served a stint as the deputy chief of the Justice
Department's elite Public Integrity Section, which oversees the
prosecution of political corruption cases.
Although Jarrett's investigation was closed down, the Inspector
General's investigation is apparently just getting underway. The
attorney general who once oversaw an investigation largely of
officials of his own Justice Department is under investigation himself
with the witnesses being those Gonzales once pursued.
And one of Jarrett's major obstacles is now moot: the White House
already granted security clearances to the Inspector General's office
in 2006 for other inquiries regarding the administration's
eavesdropping program. Thus, it did not need new ones when it
undertook its more recent inquiry as to whether Gonzales misled
Congress about the program.
If the fears of Gonzales's new legal team are well-founded, the major
question ultimately facing the Inspector General is whether to ask the
Justice Department's Public Integrity Section to begin a formal
criminal inquiry, or even to suggest the appointment of a special
prosecutor.
Such an inquiry may not focus narrowly on whether Gonzales made
misleading statements to Congress. It could examine the termination of
the OPR investigation by President Bush, and whether Gonzales informed
Bush that he was a focus of the OPR probe. It could examine whether
Gonzales misused information he learned from the leak probe to squash
dissent from his own subordinates or influence their potential
testimony about him.
Because of the involvement of President Bush, the appointment of a
special prosecutor may not be as remote as many believe.
According to one senior career federal law enforcement official, not
directly involved in the probe: "That could prove to be a nightmare
for this administration that they could have never imagined."
Related:
"Internal Affairs", National Journal, March 15, 2007.
"Writing Letters", New York Sun, July 19, 2006.
Breaking Politics News
Alberto Gonzales was briefed extensively about a criminal leak
investigation despite the fact that he had reason to believe that
several individuals under investigation in the matter were potential
witnesses against him in separate Justice Department inquiries.
While Attorney General, Gonzales oversaw the probe into the disclosure
of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program to the
New York Times. However, many of those under scrutiny in that
investigation were likely to be crucial witnesses about whether
Gonzales himself had violated the law while promoting the program as
White House counsel and testifying about it to Congress.
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine is currently
investigating whether Gonzales gave false or misleading testimony
about the eavesdropping program while under oath.
Earlier, the Justice Department's Office of Professional
Responsibility (OPR) attempted to investigate whether Gonzales and
other government attorneys acted within the law in authorizing and
overseeing the program. President Bush personally intervened in the
spring of 2006 to shut down that investigation by preventing OPR
investigators from gaining the necessary security clearances.
Senior federal law enforcement privately question the propriety of
Gonzales receiving such sensitive information about subordinates being
scrutinized in one inquiry when those same individuals were likely to
be witnesses about alleged misconduct by Gonzales for the other
investigations.
A senior law enforcement official said, "Most of the people who have
been looked at [during the leak investigation] are never going to be
charged. Most did nothing wrong."
Yet, during the course of the leak investigation, the official said,
people were asked about their contacts with the press, whether they
disagreed with aspects of the Bush administration's eavesdropping
program, and even their personal politics. The official said that
special care should have been taken in briefing Gonzales -- a
political figure who also was the nation's chief law enforcement
official -- and indeed was to some degree. But the fact that some of
those investigated had information about potential wrongdoing against
Gonzales was even worse.
Of serious concern, the law enforcement official said, was that the
"investigative files in the [leak] case are the equivalent of raw
intelligence files for someone like Gonzales."
Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University,
said in an interview that Gonzales's conduct was improper.
"Gonzales should have stayed out of the leak investigation once it
began to focus on potential witnesses against him. By overseeing it,
Gonzales put himself in a position to hurt the careers and reputations
of subordinates whose cooperation was needed in the separate
investigation of him. They are likely to recognize this added
vulnerability -- it's hard enough as it is to provide evidence against
your boss -- which will in turn intimidate them from saying anything
that invites retribution from Gonzales."
Charles Wolfram, a professor emeritus of ethics at Cornell University
Law School, similarly said, "As a matter of legal ethics, Gonzales had
a clear conflict of interest. It seems to be flat out wrong that he
should be supervising and getting information about people taking
shots at him at witnesses in these other investigations."
How much of a serious concern was it to law enforcement officials that
Gonzalez continued to oversee an investigation of people who have
accused him of wrongdoing?
Gonzales' own legal team preemptively leaked word this month that the
former Attorney General had retained George Terwilliger, a former
deputy attorney general during the first Bush administration, to
defend him during various investigations of his own conduct by the
Justice Department and Congress.
Gonzales' attorneys were reportedly concerned that the Justice
Department's Inspector General might send a criminal referral to the
Justice Department's Public Integrity Section or even recommend the
appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Gonzales. (The
Inspector General does not have authority to prosecute crimes
himself.)
As a result of the briefings that Gonzales received during the leak
probe, he now has an advantage that no private citizen under
investigation could conceivably have: access to government records
about his accusers even while investigations of him are ongoing.
"What happens if the Inspector General is going to come out with a
report, or worse, refer to someone?" said the senior federal law
enforcement official who criticizes Gonzales' briefings. "If not the
first thing, then it is the second thing any good attorney is going to
want to know: What do you have to discredit your accusers? What do we
have to give to the press?" In this instance, the official pointed
out, "You have a former attorney general being represented a federal
deputy attorney general. You have people who understand how to play
this game better than anyone.
"The question then is whether Alberto Gonzales is going to be able to
say to his own attorney, 'I can't tell you what I learned about my own
accusers. That would have been an abuse of my authority as Attorney
General.'"
Do witnesses against Gonzales feel intimidated in the way that law
enforcement officials and ethics experts say might be the case?
Some former government officials who have been questioned as part of
the leak probe, as well as attorneys representing officials
questioned, said as much in interviews for this story. None wanted to
speak for the record because they did not want to anger prosecutions
investigating them or their clients.
But at least one former Justice Department official, who was
questioned during the leak probe, has spoken out publicly: Jack
Goldsmith, who, as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal
Counsel, questioned the legality of some aspects of the warrantless
surveillance program, and directly clashed with Gonzales over the
program when Gonzales was White House counsel.
Goldsmith declined to be interviewed for this story. But in his
recently published memoir of his time serving in the Bush
administration, "The Terror Presidency", Goldsmith disclosed that he
been subpoenaed by FBI agents last April to testify under oath about
the leak probe before a federal grand jury.
"What angered me most about the subpoena I received," Goldsmith wrote,
was "the fact that it was Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department that
had issued it... I had spent hundreds of very difficult hours at OLC,
in he face of extraordinary White House resistance, trying to clean up
the legal mess that then-White House counsel Gonzales, David Addington
[Vice President Cheney's then-counsel], and others had created in
designing the foundations of the Terrorist Surveillance Program.
"It seemed rich beyond my comprehension for a Gonzales-led Department
of Justice to be pursuing me for possibly illegal actions in
connection with the Terrorist Surveillance Program."
In response to such concerns, Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice
Department's National Security Division, said via email: "I'm sorry,
but we will not be able to provide you any comment whatsoever on the
ongoing leak investigation."
White House press secretary Dana Perino also declined comment on the
propriety of Gonzales' continued involvement in the leak probe, any
information he might have given President Bush about the probe, and
conversations between Bush and Gonzales to shut down the OPR probe.
"The White House does not comment on private conversations that the
president has with his senior advisers and his Cabinet. And that has
been, and will continue to be, our standard operating procedure,"
Perino said. "The attorney general is one such close adviser to the
president."
Perino also asserted that the discussions between Bush and Gonzales
were appropriate because "the terrorist surveillance program is a
highly classified national security tool to fight the global war on
terror."
Terwilliger, Gonzales' attorney, did not return phone calls seeking
his comment for this story.
During much of the same time that Gonzales oversaw the leak
investigation, the Justice Department's Office of Professional
Responsibility was attempting to conduct an entirely separate
investigation into whether Gonzales and other government attorneys
acted within the law in approving and overseeing the eavesdropping
program.
President Bush personally intervened in spring 2006 to shut down that
particular investigation by not allowing OPR investigators to be
granted the necessary security clearances. Gonzales has told Congress
that Bush consulted with him on the matter, and that Gonzales actually
advocated that the security clearances be granted so the OPR probe
could continue -- but that Bush overrode that advice.
The OPR inquiry was shut down not long after the head of OPR, Marshall
Jarrett, had informed superiors that his team was about to interview
witnesses and review records that would directly contradict sworn
testimony to Congress by Gonzales, according to Justice Department
records and interviews. The testimony in question was Gonzales's
assertion that there had been no "serious disagreement" within the
Bush administration regarding the legality of the eavesdropping
program.
It is unknown exactly when Gonzales learned that his own conduct would
be a focus for OPR investigators, but Jarrett first complained to his
superiors in a Jan. 20, 2006 memo that his investigation was being
stymied because of the delay in obtaining security clearances. In the
same memo, Jarrett named specific witnesses he wanted to interview and
documents he wanted to review. Those witnesses and documents indicated
that senior Justice Department officials had reservations about the
legality of some aspects of the administration's eavesdropping
program.
Two weeks after Jarrett asked for his security clearances, on Feb. 3,
2006, Gonzales appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was
asked whether anyone within the Bush administration had raised
questions about the legality of the eavesdropping program.
Gonzales said: "There has not been any serious disagreement about the
program that the President has confirmed."
Of course, it would later become famously known that there were indeed
a score of top Justice Department officials who had very serious
disagreements with Gonzales over the legality of the program.
Gonzales has denied having purposely mislead Congress. (His
explanation of why his testimony is truthful is included in this New
York Times story.)
But three senior government officials -- former Deputy Attorney
General James B. Comey, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Goldsmith --
have all since testified before Congress that they disagreed sharply
about legal aspects of the eavesdropping program. Comey and Goldsmith
have publicly described the intense confrontation when Alberto
Gonzales and Andrew Card pressed a severely ill John Ashcroft to
reauthorize the program from his hospital bed at George Washington
University Medical Center. (Watch video of Comey's testimony here.)
Goldsmith, who was in the hospital room at the time, described the
scene to the New York Times:
"Ashcroft, who looked like he was near death, sort of puffed up his
chest. All of a sudden, energy and color came into his face, and he
said that he didn't appreciate them coming to visit him under those
circumstances, that he had concerns about the matter that they were
asking about and that , in any event, he wasn't the attorney general
at he moment; Jim Comey was. He actually gave two-minute speech, and I
was sure at the end of it he was going to die."
But none of this was known when the OPR investigation was effectively
terminated -- or at least not known officially, because Jarrett could
not question Comey or Goldsmith without security clearances.
On March 21, 2006, six weeks after Gonzales's notorious testimony,
Jarrett took his case directly to the no. 2 official at the Justice
Department, then-Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, according to
Department records. Some time subsequently, President Bush, after
consulting with Gonzales, apparently made the final decision to deny
OPR security clearances to continue.
In his memo to McNulty, Jarrett pointed out that others throughout the
Justice Department and elsewhere in government, often with less
pressing needs. were routinely granted clearances regarding the
eavesdropping program.
Jarrett noted, for example, "the Criminal Division's request for the
same security clearances for a large team of attorneys and FBI agents
that was investigating who initially leaked details of the NSA
eavesdropping program to the New York Times."
In contrast to the nettlesome Jarrett, both Bush and Gonzales were
determined to ferret out who in government leaked details of their
eavesdropping to the media. No resources were to be spared. Security
clearances were readily granted.
Jarrett also noted in the same memo that clearances were being granted
even to Department employees handling routine Freedom of Information
requests, as well as private citizens on a presidential board, while
he and his staff were denied them:
"We have also learned that individuals involved in the Civil
Division's response to legal challenges to the NSA program and
responses to Freedom of Information Act litigation have received the
same clearances. And.. five private individuals who made up the
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board have been briefed on the
NSA program and have en granted authorization to receive the
clearances in question."
Regarding the clearances apparently granted to the president's Privacy
and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, Justice Department officials told
me in interviews that ordinarily private citizens on such boards are
considered much greater security risks than full-time civil service
government employees, such as Jarrett and his staff. Unlike government
employees, they do not risk the loss of their jobs or pensions or the
ends of their careers if they are caught leaking.
The board's only Democratic member, former Clinton administration
counsel Lanny Davis, resigned his position in May. In his resignation
letter, Davis alleged that "at least some administration officials and
a majority of the board" believe that the board should be "wholly part
of the White House staff and political structure, rather than an
independent oversight entity." [Disclosure: Davis once briefly
represented me in a minor legal matter as a private attorney.]
Was Marshall Jarrett more of a potential security risk than Freedom of
Information officers and private citizens sitting on private boards?
In considering that question, one should consider his resume:
Jarrett has been a career federal prosecutor and administrative
officer of the Department of Justice for twenty seven years. He was a
First Assistant U.S. Attorney in West Virginia. He was the head of the
Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of
Columbia. He also served a stint as the deputy chief of the Justice
Department's elite Public Integrity Section, which oversees the
prosecution of political corruption cases.
Although Jarrett's investigation was closed down, the Inspector
General's investigation is apparently just getting underway. The
attorney general who once oversaw an investigation largely of
officials of his own Justice Department is under investigation himself
with the witnesses being those Gonzales once pursued.
And one of Jarrett's major obstacles is now moot: the White House
already granted security clearances to the Inspector General's office
in 2006 for other inquiries regarding the administration's
eavesdropping program. Thus, it did not need new ones when it
undertook its more recent inquiry as to whether Gonzales misled
Congress about the program.
If the fears of Gonzales's new legal team are well-founded, the major
question ultimately facing the Inspector General is whether to ask the
Justice Department's Public Integrity Section to begin a formal
criminal inquiry, or even to suggest the appointment of a special
prosecutor.
Such an inquiry may not focus narrowly on whether Gonzales made
misleading statements to Congress. It could examine the termination of
the OPR investigation by President Bush, and whether Gonzales informed
Bush that he was a focus of the OPR probe. It could examine whether
Gonzales misused information he learned from the leak probe to squash
dissent from his own subordinates or influence their potential
testimony about him.
Because of the involvement of President Bush, the appointment of a
special prosecutor may not be as remote as many believe.
According to one senior career federal law enforcement official, not
directly involved in the probe: "That could prove to be a nightmare
for this administration that they could have never imagined."
Related:
"Internal Affairs", National Journal, March 15, 2007.
"Writing Letters", New York Sun, July 19, 2006.
Breaking Politics News
