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It Appears that Ashcroft Gave the White House 24 Hours to "Clean Up" Their Files Before A Memo Was Sent to Save Documents: Who Will Investigate the Justice Department for Potentially Facilitating Obstruction of Justice?

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
by Robert E. Reynolds

You may want to go to NPR's web site to get the transcript and the exact wording of Nina Totenberg's comments on the Morning Show, 6a.m. EDT segment, Thurs. 10/2/03.

She was discussing the limits on the Justice Dept. professionals, for instance that they can not on their own call a journalist before a Grand Jury.

She stated that at the request of the White House, the DOJ deferred for 24 hours the request that all documents, email, logs be held and preserved in the investigation of the Plame outing.

This is one more reason for a Special Counsel.

If it can ever be shown that documents or other material was destroyed in that period it may be the basis for a charge of obstruction of justice.

The person who made the request should be revealed to the public and the DOJ and Ashcroft made to explain why they complied with this request.

Robert E. Reynolds, Orange Park Fl

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

* * *

Buzzflash,

I regard to your reader's observation. I went to the NPR website and transcribed the relevant section.

NPR October 2, 2003 (Morning Edition with Bob Edwards)

"Poll Supports Independent Probe of CIA Leak"

Bob Edwards: Attorney General Ashcroft is resisting the idea of some sort of independent counsel. Do you think he'll be able to maintain that position?

NPR legal correspondent, Nina Totenberg: Well no administration ever wants an independent overseer, and there are very good career people who are in charge of this investigation, but it could get hairy. Yesterday I talked to a former justice department official who wondered to me why the White House had asked the Justice Department if they could wait a day, earlier this week, before directing the White House staff to preserve all phone and email records, and why, similarly, the Justice Department had agreed to let the White House wait that day. In the last analysis career people can't make some of the decisions that will have to be made, like whether to call a reporter before a grand jury. The Attorney General under Justice (Department) regulations is required to make that decision. A career person can't make it. And if a leaker is identified and not prosecuted it could raise problems with the CIA. Will the agency believe that a decision not to prosecute was made fairly, or will it, as one former Justice Department
official put it to me, open a chasm of distrust between the two agencies. As I said no administration likes to open itself up to outside investigators. And the temperature isn't that hot yet, despite that poll you cited at the beginning, but it could get that hot, and we just can't know right now whether the temperature will get that hot for a long time and make it impossible to continue the course that the administration now has chosen
to take.