Bush blocked probe

UPDATE: Senior Justice Officials "Stunned" Prez Ordered NSA Probe Blocked.


It was bad enough when the DOJ dropped it's investigation into potential wrong-doing by the White House involving the internal NSA spying but now we find out that Bush himself was the one who refused to allow lawyers for the DOJ have access to the necessary files. That's right... Bush stops the inquiry into his own wrong-doing.

As Christy at FDL says:

Let me say that again: the President himself refused to give the DoJ attorneys clearance to continue their investigation, thus killing any look at the scope or the legality of his Administration’s actions in spying on American phone calls, e-mails or other communications without a warrant and without going to FISA for approval as required by law.

Jane covered this in May:

Much as I have been enjoying myself this evening watching the latest installment of the current left/right blogger food fight (here and esp. here for history), it appears play time is over. The Bush Administration has killed the Justice Department’s investigation into its illegal NSA wiretaps by refusing to grant the attorneys security clearance:

The inquiry headed by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers’ role in the program.“We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,” OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey.

It’s right in line with what they did last week — finally agreeing to Nancy Pelosi’s request to draw up a list of the members of Congress who were briefed on the program, and then classifying it so she couldn’t see it. It was the childish move of a petulant, power-mad emotional 8 year-old.

And now we know that the order to deny security clearance to the Justice Department attorneys for clearances came from George Bush. Just what is the President so afraid that the DoJ attorneys will find out?