HAS AN INQUIRY EVER CONTRACTED?:

Prosecutors Are Said to Have Expanded Inquiry Into Leak of C.I.A. Officer's Name (DAVID JOHNSTON and RICHARD W. STEVENSON, 4/02/04, NY Times)

Prosecutors investigating whether someone in the Bush administration improperly disclosed the identity of a C.I.A. officer have expanded their inquiry to examine whether White House officials lied to investigators or mishandled classified information related to the case, lawyers involved in the case and government officials say.

In looking at violations beyond the original focus of the inquiry, which centered on a rarely used statute that makes it a felony to disclose the identity of an undercover intelligence officer intentionally, prosecutors have widened the range of conduct under scrutiny and for the first time raised the possibility of bringing charges peripheral to the leak itself. [...]

The broadened scope is a potentially significant development that represents exactly what allies of the Bush White House feared when Attorney General John Ashcroft removed himself from the case last December and turned it over to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago. [...]

Mr. Fitzgerald is said by lawyers involved in the case and government officials to be examining possible discrepancies between documents he has gathered and statements made by current or former White House officials during a three-month preliminary investigation last fall by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. Some officials spoke to F.B.I. agents with their lawyers present; others met informally with agents in their offices and even at bars near the White House.

There was likely nothing wrong with the original leak, but--as with Martha Stewart--you have to have sense enough not to mislead the Feds. They take it poorly.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 2, 2004 3:42 PM