Political Bloviation

Bush Thwarted Probe Into NSA Wiretapping

President Bush effectively blocked a Justice Department investigation of the National Security Agency’s warrant-less surveillance program, refusing to give security clearances to attorneys who were attempting to conduct the probe, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday.

Bush’s decision represents an unusually direct and unprecedented White House intervention into an investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal affairs office at Justice, administration officials and legal experts said. It forced OPR to abandon its investigation of the role Justice officials played in authorizing and monitoring the controversial NSA eavesdropping effort, according to officials and government documents.

“Since its creation some 31 years ago, OPR has conducted many highly sensitive investigations involving Executive Branch programs and has obtained access to information classified at the highest levels,” the office’s chief lawyer, H. Marshall Jarrett, wrote in a memorandum released yesterday. “In all those years, OPR has never been prevented from initiating or pursuing an investigation.”

In testimony yesterday to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said that in matters involving access to classified programs, “the president of the United States makes the decision.”

If there was wrong doing in the handling of the NSA domestic wiretapping program, then this constitutes obstruction of justice. They don’t trust anyone to review what they’re doing. If it’s legal and appropriate, then they should have nothing to fear. Why are they afraid of an investigation by the Justice Dept.? When it becomes necessary to prevent an investigation by underhanded means, there’s something to hide

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