We knew it was coming but it has now been made official. The Justice
Department is set to launch an investigation into who leaked the secret
eavesdropping program to the press. This is according to the

Associated Press:

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of
classified information about President Bush’s secret domestic spying
program, Justice officials said Friday.

The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the
probe, said the inquiry will focus on disclosures to The New York Times
about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency
since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

View complete article

here.

The hypocrisy of the administration shines through in this action. The
President was eager to get an investigation going, which he made obvious in his
press conference last week. I keep wondering what would happen if this was
leaked by a close adviser of Bush. Will he once again resort to a song and dance
changing the story of what would merit an offence worthy of termination?

I have mentioned this before and it bears repeating again. The President
should also be investigated as an accomplice to the crime of the leak. He has
known about this article for over a year and even summonsed the editor of the
New York Times to the Oval Office in order to try and get the article killed.
Instead he had over a year to plan for it. In that year, evidence of the leak
could of been destroyed and people also had time to forget exactly what
transpired. Even worse is the fact that the Valerie Plame case has been going on
and can be used as a lesson of what to do and not what to do before going to the
grand jury. The fact is Bush is now an accomplice to the leak after the fact.

I keep wondering why the New York Times even held onto this story. It appears
that they may have planned on killing it, but why the change of heart a year
later? Going through every possible scenario I could think of, there is only one
that stuck out in my head. The New York Times did agree to kill the story.
Unfortunately, they were put in an awkward position with their readers after the
Judith Miller saga. The New York Times started looking more like a mouth piece
for the administration. They decided to do something about it and that something
was publish an article the President himself tried to stop. After all, if Bush
knew the article was going to be published at a later date then shouldn’t he
have directed the Justice Department to start a silent investigation ahead of
the publication? The logical answer is – yes.