Received an alert via Clarice Feldman that the Ny Sun obtained FBI memos showing that because of a lack of cooperation from intel agencies such as the FBI, led to the closing of several leak investigations without action in early 2005.

“A lack of cooperation from one or more intelligence agencies led the FBI to abandon several recent criminal investigations into leaks of classified information to the press, records obtained by The New York Sun indicate.

In January 2005, a top FBI official asked the Justice Department to close three pending leak inquiries because the “victim agency” repeatedly refused to assist the probes. The FBI’s contact at the agency “has been uncooperative with the investigating field office and on numerous occasions failed to return phone calls or provide the case agent with requested documents pertinent to the investigation,” the memo said, adding that the agency “cancelled personnel interviews, security briefings and meetings at the last minute and failed to reschedule for another time.”

“None of the cases can proceed without the cooperation of the substantive unit at the victim agency, therefore the FBI considers all logical leads covered,” the FBI official wrote. Within days or weeks, the cases were closed.”

Now before any of my readers lose it, this hasn’t been the case with recent investigations, to include the still seated Grand Jury in Alexandria Va, looking into the SWIFT program leaks among 42 other still on-going investigations. Still I know this is frustrating, but one has to understand some of the politics that get played “in the game” some of the people involved play:

Example:

“In an exchange of e-mails in September 2005, FBI agents handling a leak investigation codenamed “May Apple,” complained about difficulties in getting basic information about who saw classified documents key to the case. A meeting was planned with agency lawyers to discuss requests that were pending for a year. “So close it if they stonewall him tomorrow and/or we learn the distribution list is too great, right? I bet the latter will at least point us to closing even if they are totally cooperative,” one agent wrote.
A few weeks later, the head of the FBI’s leak-sleuthing section, Michael Donner, wrote to the Justice Department’s counterespionage chief, John Dion, asking to close the probe. The FBI’s Washington field office “concluded that the investigation had languished due to repeated requests for information…that have not been fulfilled in a timely manner,” Mr. Donner wrote. “Due to noncompliance from the victim agency and wide dissemination of the classified information, the FBI was unable to determine the source of the leak.” In all of the released records, the FBI deleted the name of the agency or agencies about which the investigators complained. However, a former Justice Department official said the vast majority of leak probes originate at the CIA. In the “May Apple” case, references in the files to top-secret cables and to an Office of General Counsel also point to Langley, as the government’s other main user of cables, the State Department, does not have a general counsel’s post.”

Frankly at this point you’ll remember that CIA director Porter Goss was on the command at the Agency, and that’s where most of the leaks have been determined to have come from. Again, in case you missed my previous threads Goss was given the job to clean house, although it appears now that the place was a lot more dirty than originally thought.

“Mr. Goss took over in September 2004, months before the FBI’s moves to abandon the probes. However, it is unclear how much control he was able to establish over the agency. The former congressman and his staff clashed repeatedly with veteran CIA officials, some of whom quit. A top aide to Mr. Goss, Patrick Murray, who once oversaw an anti-leak task force for the Justice Department, reportedly crusaded against leaks at Langley. In May 2006, Mr. Goss abruptly resigned, offering no public reason for his departure. A former prosecutor who has accused career CIA officials of waging a leak campaign to undermine President Bush, Joseph diGenova, said yesterday that he suspected the resistance to the investigations was part of that effort. He also questioned why the leak cases were dropped.

“Stopping a leak investigation, assuming it’s a serious leak, just because the victim agency won’t cooperate is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Mr. diGenova said. “A grand jury subpoena should issue….It seems to me there should be some sort of Congressional investigation of those instances.”
diGenova is correct that it is absurd and questions need to be answered, but again there are still several investigations going forward and the time limits are being placed on principles to come clean.

‚Äù The FBI files were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought in July by this reporter. In November, a federal judge in San Francisco, citing the intense public interest in leak investigations, ordered the government to answer the requests within 30 days. The judge, Maxine Chesney, recently extended the deadline to April for some of the agencies involved.”

But then the article ends with this alarming news:

Last month, the FBI told Judge Chesney that 22 of 94 files believed to relate to recent press leaks were missing with no indication of who had removed them.”

Gonzales and the DOJ need to move quick and nasty to obtain whatever necessary warrants and subpeanos to find out who is fiddling while Rome burns and do it quick.

UPDATE: Scott at Powerline asks:

“This story needs to be read in conjunction with DOJ’s failure to pursue Sandy Berger more vigorously. Many people are expressing puzzlement over why a Republican Justice Department would allow these investigations to fizzle out. The question I would ask is whether DOJ is any more “Republican” than the State Department or the CIA.”

I’ve got that answer for Scott, it’s more than 2-1 liberal democrat in the lower echelons of the DOJ as it has been throughout time. Much as the Department of State, CIA, etc. While administrations can place their own at the top, a lot of those who dwell within are holdovers from previous administrations.

Note that party affilitation doesn’t make a prosecutor, lawyer or cop dirty, nor necessarily without influence, yet politics can do come into play and thats a fact. Remember Washington is in many ways a board game. Let’s just hope that the fools that sometimes play don’t cause us all to lose in the end.