Murray Waas and Shane Harris have a new story at the National Journal and its a humdinger implying Attorney General Gonzales put the kibosh on the Justice Department’s internal investigation of the NSA spying scandal:
An internal Justice Department inquiry into whether department officials — including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft — acted properly in approving and overseeing the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program was stymied because investigators were denied security clearances to do their work. The investigators, however, were only seeking information and documents relating to the National Security Agency’s surveillance program that were already in the Justice Department’s possession, two senior government officials said in interviews.
The only classified information that OPR investigators were seeking about the NSA’s eavesdropping program was what had already been given to Ashcroft, Gonzales and other department attorneys in their original approval and advice on the program, the two senior government officials said. And, by nature, OPR’s request was limited to documents such as internal Justice Department communications and legal opinions, and didn’t extend to secrets that are the sole domain of other agencies, the two officials said.
It is not clear who denied the OPR investigators the necessary security clearances, but Gonzales has reiterated in recent days that sharing too many details about the surveillance program could diminish its usefulness in locating terrorists, and he indicated that giving OPR investigators access to the program could jeopardize it.
More from the Waas and Harris article below the fold . . .
To summarize: Gonzales already had received information and documents regarding the NSA spying program in connection with DoJ’s approval and oversight of that program. The Justice Department investigators from its Office of Professional Responsibility (“OPR”) only wanted to look at the documents that Gonzales and the other DoJ lawyers who approved the NSA’s warrantless spying had in their possession, the same documents that they presumably reviewed in connection with their decision to approve the legality of the program (a legality questioned by nearly all outside legal experts). Yet, mysteriously the OPR investigators were denied security clearances, thus effectively ending their investigation. And who was the person who had spoken out most vociferously against the Justice Department’s own internal probe?
That’s right, our very own Attorney General. Can you spell conflict of interest people? Can you smell a cover-up?
Gonzales said that Justice attorneys examined and approved the surveillance, and that decisions on whether to share information about it are weighed in light of national security needs. “We don’t want to be talking so much about the program that we compromise [its] effectiveness,” the attorney general said at a public appearance last week.
Gonzales asserted to other senior officials that only people who have been “read into the [NSA] program,” meaning they know its details and have pledged not to divulge them, should be allowed access, one of the two senior officials said in an interview. Traditionally, the decision on whether to grant access to a highly classified program is made by the agency that runs it, in this case the NSA.
Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., and three other Democrats — John Lewis of Georgia, Henry Waxman of California, and Lynn Woolsey of California — requested the OPR investigation after the surveillance program was revealed in late 2005, and asked the agency to determine whether it complied with existing law. OPR investigates “allegations of misconduct involving department attorneys that relate to the exercise of their authority to investigate, litigate, or provide legal advice,” according to the office’s policies and procedures.
Justice attorneys approved the NSA’s warrantless eavesdropping in 2001, and Gonzales has vehemently defended President Bush’s powers to order it ever since.
So what happened when OPR investigators started snooping around Bush’s pet Big Brother Spy Program, the one Gonzales insists is perfectly legal?
[OPR’s lead counsel, H. Marshall] Jarrett didn’t say which official or agency denied the requests for clearances. Asked whether the NSA had done so, agency spokesman Donny Weber pointed to Gonzales’s public comments last week. Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, when asked which agency or person denied the security clearances to OPR investigators, also said Gonzales’s comments of last week addressed that question.
After the clearances were denied, a reporter asked Gonzales, “Did Mr. Jarrett come to you and ask you to assist him in getting those clearances?” Gonzales replied, “It would not be appropriate, and I would not get into internal discussions or the give and take that happened between the attorney general and other folks within the Department of Justice.”
“You were aware of this personally?” the reporter asked.
“Again, I’m not going to comment on anything,” Gonzales replied.
In this case, I think it’s safe to say that a no comment from Abu Gonzales is the equivalent of “Hell yes I denied those security clearances!” Especially in light of the fact that NSA was directing all questions about the denial of those clearances to the Attorney General’s public comments on the matter.
But I’m sure these things happen on occasion, right. I mean, a denial of security clearances to DoJ attorneys must have occurred many times before in the past. Then again . . .
Michael Shaheen, who headed the OPR from its inception until 1997, said 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. He added that, over the past several years, the OPR’s muscle has degraded, in part because it was stripped of its authority to pursue criminal investigations. But under the Bush administration, the weakening has been especially pronounced, Shaheen said. “I just think that the White House has so frightened everybody…. If I were still at OPR and was told I couldn’t have security clearances, the first word out of my mouth … would have been, ‘Balderdash!’ “
Well, as we all know by now, 9/11 changed everything. Including the ability to investigate wrongdoing by our most senior public officials and violations of our constitutional rights. Meanwhile, Rep. Maurice Hinchey, the Congressman that requested this investigation in the first place isn’t giving up just yet:
In an interview, Hinchey argued that Gonzales and other Bush administration officials have an obligation to cooperate in every manner possible with any OPR investigation: “The Justice Department has an Office of Professional Responsibility to assure that the highest ethical standards are met by those who enforce our laws. That’s why we have Jarrett…. The idea that they are not going to give him the necessary security clearances to do his job and the proper oversight is absurd.”
Regarding Gonzales, Hinchey said: “The attorney general has said that he does not have to allow an investigation to go forward because he has talked about the legal underpinnings of the NSA program. He has not done that because it does not have any. It is devoid of any legal underpinnings.”
Hinchey has drafted a resolution of inquiry requesting that Bush, Gonzales, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld turn over documents relating to the OPR investigation’s closure and the denial of security clearances. The resolution asks for “telephone and electronic-mail records, logs and calendars, personnel records, and records of internal discussions.” Hinchey said he planned to get other members of Congress to sign on to the resolution this week.
Devoid of any legal underpinnings. Isn’t that the very definition of a dictatorship?
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Justice Department Investigation of NSA
Denial of security clearances to Justice Department investigators re: NSA probe