Everyone’s favorite blogger, Josh Marshall, has a fascinating new update on the Plame Game affair. Unfortunately, the news raises more questions than it answers.
In late-September, we learned that the Department of Justice was launching an investigation into the scandal, in response to pressure from the CIA. Rep. John Conyers, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, was requesting information about the status of the inquiry and received some interesting information.
I’ll let Marshall explain:
On September 30th of last year [Conyers] sent a letter to the CIA requesting a description of what contacts the Agency had had with Justice about the Plame matter prior to the commencement of the investigation.
Then last Friday, January 30th, the CIA responded in a letter we’ve just added to the TPM Document Collection.
According to the letter the CIA first contacted Justice by phone on July 24th, 2003. They followed up on July 30th, 2003 with a letter advising them of a possible violation of criminal law and informing them that they had opened their own investigation.
The folks at the CIA seem not to have gotten an altogether satisfactory response to the July 30th letter because they again sent the letter, by fax, on September 5th, 2003.
Then on September 16, 2003 they contacted Justice yet again to inform them that they (i.e., CIA) had completed their investigation. They provided a memo summarizing their findings and requested that the FBI begin a criminal investigation of the matter.
Finally on September 29th, Justice notified the CIA that they had in fact begun an investigation.
Why did it take so long? Why did the CIA have to press so hard?
Why indeed. The CIA believed a crime had been committed when someone at the White House leaked the name of an undercover agent. It appears that the agency had to keep writing to the Justice Department, effectively badgering them into taking this seriously. Why didn’t the DoJ respond earlier? Was there any political pressure from anyone at the White House? From John Ashcroft?
Marshall has a copy of the letter Conyers received from the CIA. As I said, it raises a lot of questions.