Appointment of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
On September 26, 2003, at the request of the CIA, the Department of Justice and the FBI began a criminal investigation into the possible unauthorized disclosure of classified information regarding Valerie Wilson’s CIA affiliation to various reporters in the spring of 2003. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft initially headed up the investigation. On August 13, 2005 journalist Murray Waas reported that Justice Department and FBI officials had recommended appointing a special prosecutor to the case because they felt that Rove had not been truthful in early interviews, withholding from FBI investigators his conversation with Cooper about Plame and maintaining that he had first learned of Plame's CIA identity from a journalist whose name Rove could not recall. In addition, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, from whose prior campaigns Rove had been paid $746,000 in consulting fees, had been briefed on the contents of at least one of Rove's interviews with the FBI, raising concerns of a conflict of interest. An October 2, 2003 New York Times article similarly connected Karl Rove to the matter and highlighted his prior employment in three previous political campaigns for Ashcroft. Ashcroft subsequently recused himself from the investigation, apparently at the end of December 2003.
U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed Special Counsel on December 30, 2003.
Letter from James B. Comey, Acting Attorney General, to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney:
By the authority vested in the Attorney General by law, including 28 U.S.C. 509, 510, and 515, and in my capacity as Acting Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 508, I hereby delegate to you 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, and I direct you to exercise that authority as Special Counsel independent of the supervision or control of any officer of the Department.
Fitzgerald began investigations into the leak working from White House telephone records turned over to the FBI in October 2003.
Fitzgerald learned of Armitage's role in the leak "shortly after his appointment in 2003".
Read more about this topic: Plame Affair Grand Jury Investigation
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