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Spy name leak: Justice Department begins probe

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington SEPT. 30. The United States Justice Department has launched a full-fledged probe to find out who leaked the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative; and the President, George W. Bush, has instructed his White House staff to cooperate with the department.

The White House employees were informed about the probe at their morning staff meeting and the White House Counsel sent an e-mail to all of them to make every effort to preserve all materials related to the probe such as e-mail, notes and telephone conversation logs.

"The President has directed the White House to cooperate fully with this investigation. The President wants to get to the bottom of this," the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said.

The Justice Department's investigation follows a complaint by the CIA that one of its operatives' identity had been disclosed; this after the former Ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson, questioned Mr. Bush's claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa. Mr. Wilson's wife was then identified as an operative of the CIA working on weapons of mass destruction.

Leading Democratic presidential candidates had called for an investigation into the issue by an independent counsel; and analysts say that the whole thing smacks of something worse than Watergate of the Richard Nixon era.

The White House had been firm that no one in it is responsible for the leak.

"It is ridiculous," said Mr. McClellan to suggestions that the President's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, may have been behind the leak.

The President, in the view of his spokesman, considered the leak as a "very serious matter".

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