Bush Blocked Justice Department Investigation (7/18/2006)

[LiberalFighter]

National Journal 7/18/2006

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today that President Bush personally halted an internal Justice Department investigation into whether Gonzales and other senior department officials acted within the law in approving and overseeing the administration's domestic surveillance program.

The investigation, by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, was halted when lawyers who were going to conduct the investigation were denied the security clearances that would have allowed them to view classified documents related to the surveillance program. President Bush made the decision to deny the security clearances for the investigators, Gonzales said in his testimony today.

A senior Justice official said that the refusal to grant the clearances was "unprecedented" and questioned whether the clearances were denied because investigators might find "misconduct by those who were attempting to defeat" the probe from being conducted. The official made the comments without knowing that Bush had made the decision to refuse the clearances.

H. Marshall Jarrett, OPR's lead counsel, wrote Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, on April 21, 2006, to point out that while OPR was denied security clearances to conduct its inquiry, requests from prosecutors and FBI agents tasked with investigating who first leaked details of the NSA surveillance program to the New York Times were "promptly granted."

[LiberalFighter]

1. I hope Leahy and the Judiciary Committee remember this from last year

[LiberalFighter]

2. Former OPR Director, Michael Shaheen

Michael Shaheen, who headed the OPR from its inception until 1997, said in a telephone interview in May that his staff "never, ever was denied a clearance" and that OPR had conducted numerous investigations involving the activities of attorneys general. "No attorney general has ever said no to me," Shaheen said.

[AndyA]

3. It's Watergate all over again.

IMPEACH! IMPEACH!! IMPEACH!!! It's all about covering up crimes...

[LiberalFighter]

4. Internal Affairs (3/15/2007) Follow-up by National Journal

DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE
Internal Affairs
http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0315nj1.htm">Aborted DOJ Probe Probably Would Have Targeted Gonzales

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.

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.

Current and former Justice Department officials, as well as experts in legal ethics, question the propriety of Gonzales's continuing to advise Bush about the investigation after learning that it might examine his own actions. The attorney general, they say, was remiss if he did not disclose that information to the president. But if Gonzales did inform Bush about the possibility and the president responded by stymieing the probe, that would raise even more-serious questions as to whether Bush acted to protect Gonzales, they said.

[hootinholler]

5. Thanks for the reminder! n/t