Posted on 04/05/2004 9:58:13 AM PDT by tcuoohjohn
WASHINGTON — Prosecutors investigating whether someone in the Bush administration improperly disclosed the identity of a CIA officer have expanded their inquiry to examine whether White House officials lied to investigators or mishandled classified information related to the case, lawyers and government officials said.
The inquiry's original focus centered on a statute that makes it a felony to intentionally reveal the identity of an undercover intelligence officer, but prosecutors have now widened the range of conduct under scrutiny and raised the possibility of bringing charges peripheral to the leak itself.
The expanded inquiry comes as prosecutors appear to be preparing to seek additional testimony before a federal grand jury, said lawyers with clients in the case.
The probe's broadened scope is a potentially significant development that represents exactly what allies of the White House feared when Attorney General John Ashcroft removed himself from the case in December and turned it over to Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago.
Republican lawyers worried that the leak case might grow into a time-consuming and politically charged inquiry, like the sprawling independent counsel inquiries of the 1990s that distracted and damaged the Clinton administration.
Lawyers involved in the case and government officials say Fitzgerald is examining possible discrepancies between documents and statements made by current or former White House officials during a three-month preliminary investigation conducted last fall by the FBI and Justice Department.
The White House last year took the unusual step of denying any involvement in the leak on the part of several top administration officials, including Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan has said repeatedly that no one wants to get to the bottom of the case more than Bush.
But Bush himself has said he does not know if investigators will ever be able to determine who disclosed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to Robert Novak, who wrote in his syndicated column last July that Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was a CIA employee.
Wilson was a critic of the administration's Iraq policies. Democrats have accused the White House of leaking his wife's name out of revenge. Wilson, in a July 2003 opinion piece in the New York Times, disputed Bush's statement in his State of the Union address that January that Iraq was trying to develop a nuclear bomb and had sought to buy uranium in Africa.
Fitzgerald also is reportedly investigating whether the disclosure of Plame's identity came after someone discovered her name among classified documents circulating at the upper echelons of the White House. It could be a crime to disclose information from such a document.
John Dean has been missing the limelight, so he's trying to cash in on his Watergate notoriety again.
What did the sleazeball have to say?--any new talking points you noticed him spewing?
BTW, I found out what the Bronfmans' link to the Kennedys is last night: Joseph Kennedy's bootlegging partners included several of Samuel Bronfman's own bootlegging partners, notably Frank Costello, Abner Zwillman, and Joseph Reiner. The Edgar Bronfman, Sr. who hosted the VVAW fundraiser that Adam Walinsky arranged for Kerry ("Walinsky arranged a meeting of potential donors at the Seagram Building in New York City. Among those present were Seagram chief executive Edgar M. Bronfman Sr.") was the son of Samuel Bronfman. Both Bronfman and his son Edgar Bronfman, Jr. have been contributors to Kerry's campaigns.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.