First Door on the Left

Justice Dept. Probing Domestic Spying Leak

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush’s secret domestic spying program, Justice officials said Friday.

The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, said the inquiry will focus on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The Times revealed the existence of the program two weeks ago in a front-page story that acknowledged the news had been withheld from publication for a year, partly at the request of the administration and partly because the newspaper wanted more time to confirm various aspects of the program.

Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for The Times, said the paper will not comment on the investigation.

Revelation of the secret spying program unleashed a firestorm of criticism of the administration. Some critics accused the president of breaking the law by authorizing intercepts of conversations _ without prior court approval or oversight _ of people inside the United States and abroad who had suspected ties to al-Qaida or its affiliates.

The surveillance program, which Bush acknowledged authorizing, bypassed a nearly 30-year-old secret court established to oversee highly sensitive investigations involving espionage and terrorism.

Therein, I believe, lies one of the big differences between Democrats and Republicans. To the Republicans, it matters not that our president broke the law. What matters to them is that somebody had the courage to reveal to the citizenship that the president broke the law. They believe that the president, so long as he is a Republican, is above the law.

To the Democrats, the law of the land reigns supreme. The president is just as accountable as any other citizen.

So the Republicans will be wasting our tax dollars on yet another wrong investigation. Rather than investigating the patriots who revealed to us that laws were being broken, they should be investigating the people who broke those laws.