Murray Waas does it again.
Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration’s warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.
Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.
It is unclear whether the president knew at the time of his decision that the Justice inquiry — to be conducted by the department’s internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility — would almost certainly examine the conduct of his attorney general.
Had it not been quashed, a Justice Department inquiry into the domestic eavesdropping program would likely have examined the actions of Alberto Gonzales.
Sources familiar with the halted inquiry said that if the probe had been allowed to continue, it would have examined Gonzales’s role in authorizing the eavesdropping program while he was White House counsel, as well as his subsequent oversight of the program as attorney general.
I covered this killing of security clearances at the time it was revealed, through a letter to a Democratic congressman. As you can see at the link, I used bold and red text for the relevant quotes, which is about as histrionic as this blog ever gets. This is perfect timing by Waas and should be covered in the hearings coming next week.
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