NEWS:BUSH TREASON PROBE TO EXPAND; PUT ON FAST TRACK
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WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — In a signal Friday that the inquiry into who leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer was moving rapidly, White House employees were given until Tuesday to turn over all documents that might aid investigators.
IN A NEW MEMO obtained by NBC News, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales told employees Friday that to comply with deadlines set by the Justice Department, all materials had to be turned in to his office by 5 p.m. Tuesday.
The order covers all electronic records, correspondence, computer records, notes and calendar entries that could relate to the investigation of who disclosed the CIA officer’s identity to syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, who identified the woman on July 14. Employees must sign a form saying they have turned in materials or did not have any items related to the investigation.
The Justice Department has expanded the scope of its investigation beyond the White House, sending letters Thursday night to the State and Defense departments requesting that they also preserve telephone logs, e-mail messages and other documents that could become evidence in the inquiry, U.S. officials told NBC News.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan confirmed the request to the Defense Department; Secretary of State Colin Powell likewise confirmed that his agency had been approached. Both promised full cooperation.
A senior administration official told NBC News that both departments were given until next Friday to comply.
NEW CALLS FROM DEMOCRATS
Democrats stepped up their calls for an independent investigation of the leak of the CIA officer’s identity, charging that political ties between Attorney General John Ashcroft and White House senior political adviser Karl Rove represented a serious conflict of interest.
A company controlled by Rove, whom the CIA officer’s husband has accused of at least condoning the leak, was paid more than $300,000 by Ashcroft’s 1994 Senate campaign in Missouri for direct mail work and other services, The New York Times reported Friday, citing campaign finance data.
Rove, President Bush’s top political adviser, also played a role in two earlier Ashcroft campaigns for governor.
Disclosure of the ties between Rove and Ashcroft has emboldened Democrats to push harder for a special counsel to investigate the leak.
“Given allegations about the involvement of senior White House officials and the past close association between the attorney general and one of those officials, the investigation should be headed by a person independent of the administration,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement issued Thursday. “If there ever was a case for the appointment of a special counsel, this is it.”
The White House responded by saying the accusation that Bush administration officials were responsible for leaking the officer’s name was based on “unsubstantiated rumors.”
‘SEEKING PARTISAN POLITICAL ADVANTAGE’
“Unfortunately, there are some that are looking through the lens of political opportunism,” McClellan said Thursday. “There are some that are seeking partisan political advantage.”
The agent’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, has said he believes the leak to Novak came from the White House both as retribution for his public questioning of Bush’s rationale for going to war with Iraq and as a way to intimidate other administration critics into remaining silent. He originally blamed Rove, but later backtracked, saying that he believed Rove “condoned” the leak.
The FBI team assigned to the case has already begun conducting interviews of CIA officers, other U.S. officials told NBC News on condition of anonymity. The officials declined to say whom the agents had interviewed.
Interviews of White House staffers could begin as early as Friday, the officials said. Two unidentified senior White House officials have been cited as the source of the leak in news reports.
ACCUSER’S CREDIBILITY CHALLENGED
McClellan reiterated Thursday that administration officials were cooperating with the investigation. “The sooner the Justice Department gets to the bottom of this, the better,” he said.
Earlier versions of this story cited a CNN report that Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., noted senior White House political adviser Karl Rove's ties to Attorney General John Ashcroft and said, "Recusal is something Ashcroft ought to consider." The senator's office issued a statement late Thursday disputing the CNN report and maintaining that Specter did not recommend that Ashcroft recuse himself.
But McClellan refused to disavow efforts by prominent Republicans to discredit Wilson, a strategy a Republican aide in Congress described to The New York Times as “slime and defend.”
Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie accused Wilson this week of being a “partisan Democrat” and noted that Wilson had donated money to the presidential campaign of Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
McClellan has been among those making such statements, accusing Wilson on Wednesday of “backing away” from his accusations and “changing ... the issue all of a sudden.”
Thursday, he accused Democrats of “looking through the lens of political opportunism. ... I don’t need to go into names. We all know who they are.”
For Bush, how damaging a leak?
The Justice Department has indicated that it has not ruled out the option of naming a special counsel to investigate the leak independently, but Bush and other prominent Republicans have rejected the idea.
But a new Washington Post-ABC poll released Wednesday showed that 69 percent of Americans believe a special counsel should be appointed.
POOL OF POTENTIAL LEAKERS IS BIG
U.S. officials said the team conducting the investigation was experienced in investigating leaks and was being led by John Dion, a 30-year career prosecutor who has headed the Justice Department’s counterespionage section since 2002. FBI agents from the counterintelligence and inspections division and from the Washington field office are doing the legwork, the officials said.
Law enforcement experts said the investigators’ first task would be to narrow the list of government officials who were aware of the agent’s identity — a number believed to be in the hundreds. That was expected to be a difficult task.
Former Attorney General Janet Reno, testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June 2000, said the pool of potential leakers in any administration was extremely big.
“Almost inevitably, we find that the universe of individuals with authorized access to the disclosed information is so large as to render impracticable further efforts to identify the leaker,” Reno said. “Almost all leak investigations are closed without having identified a suspect.”
The investigation could also be hampered by the increasingly apparent tension between the CIA and the administration. U.S. officials told NBC News on condition of anonymity that Bush’s senior advisers were angrily accusing the CIA of leaking word of the probe last week to embarrass the White House.
Relations between the agency and the White House have been described as difficult ever since CIA Director George Tenet, under pressure from the White House, publicly accepted responsibility this summer for allowing Bush to make a since-discredited claim in his State of the Union address, even though the CIA itself had more than once warned the White House against using the material.
The claim, that Iraq was looking for enriched uranium in Africa as part of a nuclear weapons program, was discredited among others by Wilson, who looked into the matter for the CIA last year and wrote publicly in July that some intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program had been “twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Theodore Roosevelt
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