Word: counsel
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Following procedure, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales told all officials to preserve their documents relating to the leak. But the mood in the West Wing was anything but normal. In that small part of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that is open to the press, staff members were told to leave their doors open to show that everyone was at ease. Instead of planning policy, aides were cycling through their email in and out boxes back to February 2002 to meet Gonzales' order. Aides who may have known about the Wilson leak as it was happening were mulling whether to hire...
...Justice Department is trying to make a swift start, perhaps to forestall calls for a special counsel. The clamor faded a bit last week, but it will be back. So half a dozen agents are on the case, government sources told TIME, led by Inspector John Eckenrode, a seasoned veteran of leak probes and other sensitive investigations. Plame was interviewed by the FBI for the first time last Friday. But if the probers narrow their scope to a shortlist of possible leakers, the handling of the case could become very controversial very quickly. FBI agents have already been asking reporters...
...irony here is that a special counsel might actually help the White House keep the story off the front page. Damaging as they were in the Clinton years, well-managed special counsels have the one advantage of theoretically putting everything under a cone of silence and allowing a President to move on. Some legal experts have noted that special counsels are needed not to open probes but to end them. "DOJ won't be able to make this case," says a former Clinton Justice official, noting the difficulty of leak hunts, "but it also won't be able to close...
...Washington Post reports that "two top White House officials" called at least six reporters with the information on Plame before Novak's column ran. Attorney General John Ashcroft, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and FBI director Robert Mueller are informed the next day of Dion's decision...
...prosecutor's nightmare. Dozens of government employees probably knew that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative, and any one of them could have leaked the information. "Absent a confession, it's almost impossible to prove these cases," says Jeffrey Smith, the CIA's general counsel during the Clinton Administration...