From AP via truthout.org :
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Domestic Spying Inquiry Restarted at DOJ
By Devlin Barrett
The Associated Press
Tuesday 13 November 2007
Washington - The Justice Department has reopened a long-dormant inquiry into the government's warrantless wiretapping program, a major policy shift only days into the tenure of new Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
The investigation by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility was shut down after the previous attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, refused to grant security clearances to investigators.
"We recently received the necessary security clearances and are now able to proceed with our investigation," H. Marshall Jarrett, counsel for the OPR, wrote to New York Rep. Maurice Hinchey. A copy of the letter, dated Tuesday, was obtained by The Associated Press.
Hinchey and other Democrats have long sought an investigation into the spying program, to see if it complies with the law. Efforts to investigate the program have been rebuffed by the Bush administration.
The OPR investigation was begun in February 2006, but was shut down a few months later when the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the security clearances to ask questions about the program.
The Office of Professional Responsibility was created to ensure that Justice Department lawyers do not violate any ethical rules. It is not authorized to investigate activities of the National Security Agency.
President Bush's decision to authorize the spy agency to monitor people inside the United States, without warrants, generated a host of questions about the program's legal justification.
The administration has vehemently defended the eavesdropping, saying the NSA's activities were narrowly targeted to intercept international calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the U.S. with suspected ties to the al-Qaida terror network.
A separate Department of Justice internal investigation was also launched by the agency's inspector general, but Democrats have criticized that review for not attempting to determine whether the program violates federal law.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will issue a ceremonial oath of office Wednesday to Mukasey, a retired federal judge who has promised to enforce laws fairly and independent of political pressure during his short term at Justice.
The White House said that President Bush also will speak at the ceremony, set for 10:10 a.m. EST, after which Mukasey will address his employees for the first time.
Mukasey was officially sworn in last Friday in a brief rite, a private ceremony with little pomp and publicity, allowing him to start receiving daily classified briefings from his national security aides. Roberts will re-enact the oath in front of hundreds of dignitaries and departmental attorneys - with potentially thousands of other employees across the country watching on the department's internal TV network.
Mukasey, the third attorney general of the Bush administration, has 14 months until the president's term is up to turn around the beleaguered department. Gonzales resigned in September amid charges that he allowed politics to illegally interfere with personnel decisions and lied to Congress about national security programs.
An ongoing department investigation also is looking at last year's firings of nine U.S. attorneys - and whether at least one of them was dismissed because he refused to target Democratic candidates shortly before the 2006 elections.
Mukasey, whom Bush nominated the day Gonzales left, has made clear to Congress that he will not tolerate political meddling at the department, and promised to fire anyone who allows it.
Mukasey is a retired chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. His confirmation hit a brief - but serious - snag after he refused to say point-blank that he considered a harsh interrogation tactic known as waterboarding to be a form of torture. The Senate narrowly confirmed him late Thursday, 53-40. Critics noted that marked the slimmest margin by which an attorney general was confirmed in more than 50 years.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Associated Press writer Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this story.
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