ERIC LICHTBLAU
Ashcroft Briefed Regularly on Inquiry Into C.I.A. Leak
Wed Oct 22 17:03:14 2003
64.140.158.2

Ashcroft Briefed Regularly on Inquiry Into C.I.A. Leak
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/22/politics/22LEAK.html?ex=1067400000&en=d4716df94c7b4260&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

Published: October 22, 2003

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 — Attorney General John Ashcroft's top aides have regularly briefed him on key details in the investigation into the disclosure of a C.I.A. officer's identity, including the identities of those interviewed by the F.B.I., a senior Justice Department official told members of Congress on Tuesday.

Mr. Ashcroft's regular, detailed briefings suggest that he has taken a more hands-on role in the politically charged investigation than the department had acknowledged. Senate Democrats said the arrangement threatened to compromise the independence of the investigation, a contention that Justice Department officials rejected.

Mr. Ashcroft has been given all the details needed "for him to understand meaningfully what's going on in the investigation," Christopher Wray, a political appointee who heads the Justice Department's criminal division, said at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee under sharp questioning from several Democrats who want Mr. Ashcroft to recuse himself from the case.

That information, Mr. Wray said, includes the names of those interviewed since the Justice Department opened its investigation three weeks ago into whether senior Bush administration officials illegally leaked the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer to the syndicated columnist Robert Novak. The officer's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, has been a vocal critic of the administration's Iraqi policies, and Mr. Wilson has suggested that the White House publicized his wife's work at the C.I.A. in an effort to intimidate him.

Mr. Ashcroft and his aides have stressed repeatedly that the department's career attorneys are being left to run the investigation free of political hindrance.

But Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said he was troubled to learn from Mr. Wray at Tuesday's hearing that the attorney general is receiving regular reports on the status of the inquiry and has been told whom the F.B.I. is interviewing. Mr. Schumer said the attorney general's close personal and political ties to the White House pose a potential conflict if Mr. Ashcroft knows the White House officials investigators plan to interview.

"When the line prosecutors know that the attorney general knows what they are doing, it could hamper their independence," Mr. Schumer said in an interview. "It means someone is watching over them, and that's not what we want in a case like this. It has a chilling effect, and it makes the case for Ashcroft recusing himself stronger."

But Mr. Wray, who was recently confirmed by the Senate, oversees John Dion's investigation. Mr. Wray said he had personally briefed the attorney general on the case, but he rejected the suggestion that political pressure could compromise the investigation.

"I can assure you that it has been made painfully clear to everyone involved that no punches are to be pulled in this investigation and that anybody who thinks that we are going to be pulling any punches in this investigation doesn't know the lawyers and the agents working on this investigation very well," he told Mr. Schumer.

The exchange reflected an intense acrimony between Democrats and senior Justice Department officials at the four-hour hearing where Democrats attacked both the leak investigation and the government's use of the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.

At the hearing, Mr. Wray and two top federal prosecutors said that the Patriot Act was a vital tool for the Justice Department to gain and share intelligence about terrorist suspects. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who heads the judiciary committee, blamed "intellectual babbling" and distortions and misrepresentations by opponents of the measure for public unease about it.

Several Democrats acknowledged that although they have misgivings over whether the law went too far in sacrificing civil liberties, they believed some of the public debate over the issue came from public confusion and occasional misinformation.

But Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the panel, said Mr. Ashcroft has fueled that problem by attacking critics of the Patriot Act in ways that the senator said he found "arrogant, dismissive and condescending."
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GUEST EDITORIAL: Investigating the CIA leak
http://www.lenconnect.com/articles/2003/10/21/news/news07.txt

Fox News
U.S. Sec. of State Colin Powell on 'FOX News Sunday'
Sun Oct 19 18:50:32 2003
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