White House Is Told to Hand Over Records
October 4, 2003
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 - The Justice Department is demanding
that the White House turn over "all documents that relate
in any way" to the unauthorized disclosure of a C.I.A.
officer's identity, and the White House on Friday gave its
employees until next Tuesday to comply.
The demand signals that the F.B.I.'s investigation into the
question of who leaked the identity of the C.I.A. officer
is focusing squarely on the White House and is moving into
a critical early phase, as investigators seek a paper trail
of all relevant documents.
The Justice Department has also directed the C.I.A., the
State Department and the Pentagon to retain all records
that might be relevant to the investigation. But only the
White House is known to have been directed to turn over
records.
Investigators want access to all electronic records, phone
logs, documents, diaries or other items related to former
Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, his trip to Niger in 2002
in a search for Iraqi nuclear intelligence, his wife's
relationship with the C.I.A., or any contact with the
syndicated columnist Robert Novak and two other reporters
who wrote about the Wilson case. The Justice Department
notified the White House about the demand in a letter on
Thursday night, which the White House publicized on Friday.
The keen interest in Mr. Wilson's trip to Africa in
February 2002, taken at the request of the C.I.A., which
dispatched him to try to verify accusations linking Saddam
Hussein to a quest for nuclear weapons, has surprised
current and former law enforcement officials. The wide
scope of the records request suggested that the Justice
Department wanted to establish not only whether any
administration officials had disclosed classified
information, but also whether White House records could
link the motivation for that leak to information related to
Mr. Wilson's African mission.
In a memorandum sent to all White House employees on Friday
morning, Alberto R. Gonzales, counsel to the president,
said the Justice Department had "requested that we provide
these documents" to aid in its investigation.
But he also noted that prosecutors had imposed deadlines
for compliance, and a former prosecutor with experience in
leak investigations said the Justice Department's directive
was a request in name only.
"Anyone who does not immediately produce relevant documents
is risking an obstruction of justice charge," the former
prosecutor said.
Mr. Gonzalez told employees they had until 5 p.m. on
Tuesday to turn over to his office any documents relevant
to the investigation, and they must sign a letter
certifying that they had complied. A White House official
who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the Justice
Department had established a list of prioritized items that
it wanted to see first and that the White House expected to
turn over all relevant documents to the Justice Department
within the next two weeks.
With only three days for White House employees to turn over
records to Mr. Gonzales, the directive is likely to set off
a time-consuming scrub of White House records just as the
Bush administration is turning its attentions to the 2004
election campaign.
"These things are a major headache," said a former Clinton
administration official who worked at the White House at a
time when it was hit with numerous document requests as
part of investigations into Whitewater and other matters.
"If the things they're looking for aren't in your active
files, it's in a box somewhere and you have to go find it.
It's very time-consuming."
Mr. Novak reported in a syndicated July column that Mr.
Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the C.I.A.. Mr.
Wilson has suggested that the unauthorized disclosure was
designed by the White House to intimidate him after he had
challenged the credibility of its Iraqi intelligence. In an
Op-Ed article days earlier in The New York Times, the
former ambassador said his 2002 trip to Niger found nothing
to substantiate the accusation that Saddam Hussein had
bought uranium ore yellowcake in Niger and that the Bush
administration had exaggerated the intelligence as it
ramped up for war with Iraq.
George Terwilliger III, who served as deputy attorney
general in the first Bush administration, said he was
surprised that officials were seeking 18-month-old
information on Mr. Wilson's Niger trip. "One would hope
that this investigation would be quite focused and
expedited, and it's not immediately apparent to me how this
advances the investigation," Mr. Terwilliger said.
Mr. Wilson and others have suggested that they believe Karl
Rove, the president's chief political adviser, was behind
the leak, but the White House said earlier this week that
any accusations linking Mr. Rove to the episode were
"ridiculous."
Justice Department officials on Friday refused to discuss
the demand for documents or any other legal tactics in the
case.
"All I can say is this investigation will go wherever the
evidence takes us," said Mark Corallo, a department
spokesman.
As the leak investigation has dominated the White House
this week, Democrats have pushed for Attorney General John
Ashcroft to appoint a special counsel because they maintain
that the attorney general's close political ties to the
White House could compromise the investigation.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, stepped
up the attack on Friday in a letter to Mr. Ashcroft
questioning whether the investigation "is being mishandled
to the point where authorities will be unable to prosecute
those who committed this felonious breach of national
security."
The senator accused the Justice Department of being slow to
order the White House, the Defense Department and the State
Department to preserve records relevant to the
investigation. The delay, he said, "gave potential targets
of the investigation time to destroy evidence."
But Justice Department officials said they were moving
quickly to ensure a fair and complete investigation, and
the agencies they have contacted pledged their cooperation.
"The president has directed everyone to cooperate fully
with the Department of Justice," Scott McClellan, the White
House spokesman, told reporters aboard Air Force One on
Friday. "We want to get to the bottom of this, the sooner
the better."
nytimes.com
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