The expansion of the inquiry's scope comes at a time when prosecutors, after a hiatus of about a month, appear to be preparing to seek additional testimony before a federal grand jury, lawyers with clients in the case said. It is not clear whether the renewed grand jury activity represents a concluding session or a prelude to an indictment.
The broadened scope is a potentially significant development that represents exactly what allies of the Bush White House feared when Attorney General John Ashcroft removed himself from the case last December and turned it over to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago.
[snip]
Mr. Fitzgerald is said by lawyers involved in the case and government officials to be examining possible discrepancies between documents he has gathered and statements made by current or former White House officials during a three-month preliminary investigation last fall by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. Some officials spoke to F.B.I. agents with their lawyers present; others met informally with agents in their offices and even at bars near the White House.
The White House took the unusual step last year of specifically denying any involvement in the leak on the part of several top administration officials, including Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, has repeatedly said no one wants to get to the bottom of the case more than Mr. Bush.
But Mr. Bush himself has said he does not know if investigators will ever be able to determine who disclosed the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame, to Robert Novak, who wrote in his syndicated column last July that Ms. Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was a C.I.A. employee.
Mr. Wilson was a critic of the administration's Iraq policies. Democrats have accused the White House of leaking his wife's name in retaliation because Mr. Wilson, in a July 6, 2003, Op-Ed commentary in The New York Times, disputed Mr. Bush's statement in his State of the Union address that January that Iraq was trying to develop a nuclear bomb and had sought to buy uranium in Africa.
Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)
