Remember the NSA Leaks?

Macsmind has an update and a tie in with the Gonzales nonscandal:

At this same time the story broke that the probe would include members of Congress who had been briefed on the NSA program and indeed supeanes were issued and testimony gathered.

All of this was being conducted on a level of incredible secrecy. Even those who knew exactly what was going on began to say that they could comment no further. This entry from source watch quotes an La Times story from December 2005, (buyer beware), but is correct in this particular assertion.

“The officials said that all federal probes into leaks of classified information were sensitive. But the level of sensitivity surrounding the current probe is extraordinary — and likely to intensify — because of the presumption that few government officials had access to the program’s details. Most of those potential witnesses are high-ranking administration officials, in the NSA or other intelligence agencies, or in top-level posts in Congress or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” Josh Meyer wrote in the December 31, 2005, Los Angeles Times.”

In July of 2006, former NSA ‘whistle blower’ Russell Tice received a subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury that had been seated in Alexandria Virginia that month to testify of what he knew about the leak to the Times Through his attorney Tice gained a postponement of his appearance, and it’s not know whether or not he actually was called back.

Note: This particular GJ was given an initial term of 18 months (from July of 2006), that would mean that there is still a lot of time left before it expires.

In December of 2006 the Ny Sun ran a story that said the FBI claimed that nearly a quarter of it’s files pertaining to leak investigation going back to 2001 were “missing”. None of these closed leaked investigations were tied to the Grand Jury in Alexandria as the FBI in that particular case had already completed it’s part, nonetheless it pissed me off and showed that the FBI still had it’s share of crap to weed out.

In January of 2007, the Ny Sun again ran a story detailing how leak probes were stymied by a lack of cooperation by “victim agencies” such as the CIA, which is like, “Gee! Who would have thunk it so?

Which brings us to March of 2007 and the AG ’scandal’. On March 9th, The top Republican on the House’s main investigative committee, Rep. Thomas Davis of Virginia wrote a letter to AG Gonzales referencing the FBI’s contention that three leak investigations had been closed because of lack of the aforementioned lack of cooperation. You can read the letter here.

Is someone trying to shut Gonzales down?