The bureaucratic war on the Bush administration
In today's New York Sun Josh Gerstein reports on the government's reponse to his Freedom of Information Act request regarding the Justice Department's leak investigations: "Leak probes stymied, FBI memos show." The story is mystifying. As I read it I wondered why no grand jury has been convened and evidence gathered the old-fashioned way. Then Joe diGenova is quoted expressing the same mystification at the conclusion of the article:
A former prosecutor who has accused career CIA officials of waging a leak campaign to undermine President Bush, Joseph diGenova, said yesterday that he suspected the resistance to the investigations was part of that effort. He also questioned why the leak cases were dropped.The fact that the MSM have left this story to the New York Sun is reflective of the Bureuacratic-MSM Complex that has weakened and undermined the Bush administration's efforts to defend the United States in the war being waged against us."Stopping a leak investigation, assuming it's a serious leak, just because the victim agency won't cooperate is the most absurd thing I've ever heard in my life," Mr. diGenova said. "A grand jury subpoena should issue….It seems to me there should be some sort of Congressional investigation of those instances."
The disclosed records also suggest that many investigations into leaks of top-secret data are abandoned without pursuing some obvious, if intrusive, investigative techniques, such as seeking testimony or phone records from members of the press. Other components of the Justice Department have recently used those tactics in less sensitive cases, such as leaks about planned federal raids of Islamic charities and about a grand jury investigating steroid use in baseball.
"There is a stunning lack of balance in the way all these cases are approached," Mr. diGenova said.
UPDATE: This story needs to be read in conjunction with DOJ's failure to pursue Sandy Berger more vigorously. Many people are expressing puzzlement over why a Republican Justice Department would allow these investigations to fizzle out. The question I would ask is whether DOJ is any more "Republican" than the State Department or the CIA. It may well be that the handful of Republicans at the top of DOJ are helpless to push these investigations. You can imagine the headlines: "White House attempts to influence Justice Department leak investigation!" I'm not asserting as a fact that this is what is going on, because I don't know. But it is not obvious that the Justice Department is significantly different from the other federal bureaucracies that are dominated by Democrats.
A friend writes to point out this quote of the former DIA Middle East head who opposes Bush’s policy: The fact that the [Central Intelligence] agency was leaking isn’t denied by some. "Of course they were leaking," says Pat Lang. "They told me about it at the time. They thought it was funny. They’d say things like, 'This last thing that came out, surely people will pay attention to that. They won’t re-elect this man.'"
This is a scandal hiding in plain sight, dying on the vine because it fails to fit any accepted narrative in which the MSM is a principal.
To comment on this post, go here.
