Do witnesses against Gonzales feel intimidated in the way that law enforcement officials and ethics experts say might be the case?
Some former government officials who have been questioned as part of the leak probe, as well as attorneys representing officials questioned, said as much in interviews for this story. None wanted to speak for the record because they did not want to anger prosecutions investigating them or their clients.
But at least one former Justice Department official, who was questioned during the leak probe, has spoken out publicly: Jack Goldsmith, who, as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, questioned the legality of some aspects of the warrantless surveillance program, and directly clashed with Gonzales over the program when Gonzales was White House counsel.
Goldsmith declined to be interviewed for this story. But in his recently published memoir of his time serving in the Bush administration, "The Terror Presidency", Goldsmith disclosed that he been subpoenaed by FBI agents last April to testify under oath about the leak probe before a federal grand jury.
"What angered me most about the subpoena I received," Goldsmith wrote, was "the fact that it was Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department that had issued it... I had spent hundreds of very difficult hours at OLC, in he face of extraordinary White House resistance, trying to clean up the legal mess that then-White House counsel Gonzales, David Addington [Vice President Cheney's then-counsel], and others had created in designing the foundations of the Terrorist Surveillance Program.
"It seemed rich beyond my comprehension for a Gonzales-led Department of Justice to be pursuing me for possibly illegal actions in connection with the Terrorist Surveillance Program."
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