Readers have been emailing all day about the NSA leak probe that was announced in December of 2005, specifically to the status. I covered this on the show yesterday as a sort of “feeling” I have as the secrecy of the Alexandria Grand Jury proceedings is unprecedented. Yet the proceedings are ongoing, but so far not complete from all we can gather.

Let’s review the time line in the NSA leak probe so far. I’m just hittting the main points:

December 2005 – Story breaks (yours truly posted two days early based on a tip) that the DOJ would be intiating a probe into The New York Times story about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

This probe would be spear headed by the DOJ under AG Gonazales, who would later say on a May 2006 appearance on ABC’s This Week that in regards to whether specifically reporters could be prosecuted for publishing leaks, “There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility,” . He would go on to say, “That’s a policy judgment by the Congress in passing that kind of legislation…. “We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected.”

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 ‚Äî and likely to intensify ‚Äî 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.

Basically it accuses Gonzales of stonewalling, but as you read the story, and specifically with what has taken place with Sampson, it appears that rather than stonewalling Gonzales may have been busy pulling the knives out of his back for the last year. In short, this is worse than I thought with respect to reasons why so many seem intent on making sure Gonzales takes the plung, and takes it quick.

So where does that leave us on the NSA probe? Again, once the FGJ convened in Alexandria it cannot be released without ithe jury returning indictments or a finding that requires no further action. As I’ve said many times before NO ONE knows exactly what is going on there because they don’t call it the “Grand Jury without windows” for nothing. That particular room is where in 2003 an 18-count indictment against Abdurahman M. Alamoudi was rendered. You’ll remember that hitheto that result not much was in the news – if anything – about the preceedings. Nothing gets out of there. So we’re just going to have to wait it out.

Still I’ve just got this feeling that based upon on the movement towards Gonzales – fevered and incomprehensible movement – that perhaps more was uncovered than anyone thought possible.