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Patrick Fitzgerald Quickly Asked for Wider Probe
A little over a month after he was appointed as special counsel in charge of the Leakgate investigation, Patrick Fitzgerald asked Deputy Attorney General James Comey for the authority to expand his investigation beyond the original allegations that the White House had illegally leaked the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame. In a February 6, 2004 letter posted to Fitzgerald's official web site, Mr. Comey acknowledged Fitzgerald's request to broaden his probe into the areas that now seem most likely to yield indictments of senior White House officials. "At your request," said Comey, "I am writing to clarify that my December 30, 2003, delegation to you of 'all the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department's investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity' is plenary and includes the authority to investigate and prosecute violations of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, your investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses." The brief five week period between Fitzgerald's appointment as special counsel and his request to widen the Leakgate investigation raises questions about whether he concluded early on that White House officials had broken no laws in leaking Plame's identity - the original crime Fitzgerald was charged with investigating.
Story Continues Below On Friday, the New York Times reported that Fitzgerald had "almost from the start" shifted the focus of his probe to issues that were "peripheral" to the Leakgate investigation. The February 2004 Comey letter tends to confirm the Times report - suggesting that Fitzgerald sought to broaden his probe after determining that the underlying allegations were baseless. Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Inside Cover Stories
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