The best political story of the year — White House officials illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent to counter her husband’s political criticism — hasn’t gone away, it’s just stopped making headlines.
That is, until today.
Kudos to the Washington Post for bringing a much-needed update to the most breathtaking Bush scandal of them all. In a front-page piece, the Post’s Mike Allen and Dana Milbank report that the Justice Department has “added a fourth prosecutor to the team investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer’s identity, while the FBI has said a grand jury may be called to take testimony from administration officials, sources close to the case said.”
The story had effectively disappeared from public attention for the last few months after dominating the political world for a few weeks. The investigation wasn’t producing leaks and media scoops since October, but the Justice Department investigation has nevertheless been ongoing. Indeed, the Post explains that far from fading away, the inquiry appears to be expanding, or as Allen and Milbank put it, “continues intensively behind closed doors.”
According to administration officials and people familiar with some of the interviews, FBI agents apparently started their White House questioning with top figures — including President Bush’s senior adviser, Karl Rove — and then worked down to more junior officials. The agents appear to have a great deal of information and have constructed detailed chronologies of various officials’ possible tie to the leak, people familiar with the questioning said.
The Justice Department has added a prosecutor specializing in counterintelligence, joining two other counterintelligence prosecutors and one from Justice’s Public Integrity section.
Agents investigating the matter have been increasingly apparent at CIA headquarters in Langley over the past three weeks, officials said. “They are still active,” a senior official said.
One interesting new detail that I hadn’t heard before was the concern from the CIA that the Bush administration continues to leak classified information against Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson, beyond the original leak to Bob Novak in July.
At issue are bogus accounts seeking to prove that Plame was involved with sending Wilson to Niger to investigate claims of Iraq trying to purchase uranium yellowcake. In addition to having leaked Plame’s identity to Novak, the CIA is reportedly “angry” that the administration also distributed a still-classified document to conservative news outlets detailing a CIA meeting in which Wilson’s trip was discussed. Apparently, the administration believes it helps implicate Plame in arranging for Wilson’s visit to Africa, but the CIA has challenged the accuracy of the memo.
Of course, either way it doesn’t really matter. Wilson, Plame, and the CIA have explained that Plame wasn’t responsible for sending her husband to Niger, but the claim is an unneccessary tangent.
The issue is simple: Which White House officials were responsible for illegally leaking Plame’s identity? We already know why Bush aides committed this crime, we also know how and when. We just don’t know who. (We also don’t know if Bush personally knew about it, but I doubt we’ll ever know for sure.) The administration can whine all it wants about Plame’s motivations and Wilson’s political beliefs, but none of this matters. Some folks at the White House committed a crime and they should be held responsible. Period.
This added report is interesting, though, because it is yet another example of illegal and spiteful leaks coming from the White House as part of an agenda to undermine political enemies.
So what happens next? The investigation will continue, interviews will be conducted, and maybe, if we’re all really lucky, a grand jury will be called and indictments will be issued.
Of course, there’s still the matter of timing. In less than a week, we’ll officially be in an election year. Having his White House under an ongoing criminal investigation is not Karl Rove’s idea of an effective re-election strategy.
“The only fear I’ve heard expressed is that the investigation will be too slow or too fast and will kick into a visible mode in a way that is poorly timed for the election,” a Republican source told the Post. “If they prosecuted someone tomorrow, I don’t think the White House would care. And they can do it in December 2004. They just don’t want it to become an issue in the election.”
Stay tuned…