30Dec03-Reuters-Ashcroft Steps Down from CIA Leak Probe
By Deborah Charles
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday stepped aside from the politically charged investigation into the leak of an undercover CIA officer's name in the build-up to Iraq war and the Justice Department named a special prosecutor to lead the probe.
Deputy Attorney General James Comey said Ashcroft had decided "in an abundance of caution" to step aside from the investigation. Comey named the U.S. attorney in Chicago, Patrick Fitzgerald, to lead the investigation.
The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into who disclosed the identity of a CIA officer whose husband had challenged President Bush's claims about Iraq's weapons threat.
Disclosing the identity of a clandestine intelligence officer is a federal crime as is leaking classified information to the media.
Democrats in Congress had demanded that Ashcroft, who was appointed by Bush to head the Justice Department, should step aside and name an outside counsel to run the probe.
Comey said he and Ashcroft agreed it would be better to have someone from outside Washington conduct the investigation.
"Both the attorney general and I thought it prudent -- and maybe we are being overly cautious -- but we thought it prudent to have the matter handled by someone who is not in regular contact with the agencies and entities affected by this investigation," Comey told a news conference. "He is an absolutely apolitical career prosecutor."
But while Fitzgerald does not work in Washington, as a U.S. attorney he is still a part of the Justice Department. Comey said the decision to name Fitzgerald instead of an outside counsel -- as some Democrats had suggested -- was in part to help keep the process moving.
Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York who led the call for Ashcroft to step aside and name an outside counsel, praised Tuesday's announcement.
"It is not everything we asked for but it comes darn close. In effect, this is very close to the special counsel we asked for," Schumer said, referring to the autonomy Fitzgerald has been given to conduct the probe without having to get Justice Department approvals.
"The American people can, as a result, feel more assured that there will be a full and thorough investigation, no matter where it leads," Schumer added.
CHARGES LEAK WAS ACT OF REVENGE
The investigation stemmed from the disclosure in July that the wife of a former U.S. envoy in Iraq and Gabon, Joseph Wilson, was an undercover CIA officer specializing in weapons of mass destruction.
Wilson has charged that the Bush administration officials made public his wife's name in an act of revenge after he accused the White house of exaggerating the weapons threat from Iraq, Washington's main justification for going to war.
Wilson went to Niger early in 2002 at the CIA's request to assess a report that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger. Wilson found the allegation to be highly doubtful and the International Atomic Energy Agency later dismissed it as based on forged documents.
But the charge found its way into Bush's State of the Union speech in January as part of the U.S. case against Saddam Hussein. Only after Wilson went public did the White house admit Bush should not have included it, blaming the CIA.
The furor over the leak broke as Bush faced low approval ratings and growing political pressure over the continued killing and disorder in Iraq.
In addition, no weapons of mass destruction have been found by U.S. teams in Iraq since the war ended.
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