More Agents Are Added to Leak Case

[radfringe]

More Agents Are Added to Leak Case
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: October 10, 2003

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 — As Democrats accused the White House of trying to improperly influence an inquiry into a leak, officials said on Thursday that the F.B.I. was doubling the number of investigators on the politically charged case.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation plans to use about 12 agents and other personnel, twice the number first planned, to try to find the person who leaked the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, the officials said.

The White House began this week to turn over to the Justice Department what it considers relevant documents. Prosecutors have told at least three other agencies — the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department and the State Department — not to destroy records that might be connected to the case.

Because of the volume of records that may have to be reviewed, "it just made sense to increase our numbers," a senior F.B.I. official said. "Six people can't do this alone."

---snip---
The White House has promised its full cooperation, but Mr. Bush said this week that he had doubts about whether investigators would catch the leaker.

"I don't know," Mr. Bush said, "if we're going to find out the senior administration official" who told Robert Novak, as Mr. Novak wrote in his syndicated column in July, that Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was a C.I.A. employee. Mr. Wilson was a critic of the administration's Iraq policies.

Administration officials said the president's statement was a frank acknowledgment of the difficulty of conducting such investigations.

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, said in an interview that the comments threatened to undermine the inquiry by lowering expectations.

"If the president says, `I don't know if we're going to find this person,' what kind of a statement is that for the president of the United States to make?" Mr. Lautenberg asked. "Would he say that about a bank-robbery investigation? He should be as indignant as everybody else is over this breach."

Mr. Wilson said Mr. Bush "certainly seems far less certain about finding the leaker than he is about finding Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein."

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ummm just my opinion - but I doubt that Bush* could find his ass if his hands were stuffed in his back pockets

[ReadTomPaine]

1. Yes they needed the agents to make coffee for Rove's lawyers..

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Watergate

These are shadows of it, and that is good.

Denials counter denials, and spin

[dbt]

3. How many FBI agents were assigned to Clinton's pants?

The number assigned to investigate Traitorgate needs to be equal, because this case is at least as important as a blowjob!

:bounce:
dbt

[Norton]

4. How many foxes will be needed...

to find the hen-house perpe-traitor!

[truthisfreedom]

5. ignore everything bush says. follow the democrats.

don't be fooled by the news. he's in trouble. never mind the man playing in the curtains.