Feds Focusing on Investigation of NSA Leak to New York Times

The federal criminal investigation of the leak of the existance of the extra-legal NSA warrantless eavesdropping program is "rapidly expanding", according to today's New York Times.

The duplicitous New York Times is still a little fuzzy on the timeline of the case:

The investigation, which appears to cover the case from 2004, when the newspaper began reporting the story, is being closely coordinated with criminal prosecutors at the Justice Department, the officials said.

The newspaper was investigating the story back in 2004, but most certainly did not report the story until December 2005.

The inquiry is progressing as a debate about the eavesdropping rages in Congress and elsewhere. President Bush has condemned the leak as a "shameful act." Others, like Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, have expressed the hope that reporters will be summoned before a grand jury and asked to reveal the identities of those who provided them classified information.

Mr. Goss, speaking at a Senate intelligence committee hearing on Feb. 2, said: "It is my aim and it is my hope that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information. I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserve nothing less."

I believe that the people of this country deserve nothing less than Porter Goss to be brought before a grand jury to answer questions about his breakfast meeting with the head of Pakistan's InterServices Intelligence (ISI) on the morning of September 11, 2001.

A Federal Bureau of Investigation team under the direction of the bureau's counterintelligence division at agency headquarters has questioned employees at the F.B.I., the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the office of the Director of National Intelligence, the officials said. Prosecutors have also taken steps to activate a grand jury.

The interviews have focused initially on identifying government officials who have had contact with Times reporters, particularly those in the newspaper's Washington bureau. The interviews appeared to be initially intended to determine who in the government spoke with Times reporters about intelligence and counterterrorism matters.

There is speculation that the reason the New York Times finally published the NSA leak story after holding it for a year had nothing to do with the imminent publication of James Risen's book, which had been delivered to the publisher months before December 2005.

According to one speculative account, the Times became aware of a major terrorist attack that was going to be conveniently ignored (or worse) by the "war president", and decided to send a message to the White House by publishing the story.

The untimely death of David Rosenbaum of the NYT Washington Bureau could then have been a message of it's own.