The American Spectator

Washington Prowler

p> GONZALES COMES OUT br> After what is expected to be Attorney General Alberto Gonzales 's coming out party on Monday, look for the media focus to turn to the House and Senate as the primary possible sources for the leaked NSA overseas monitoring program. /p>

Gonzales is expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee and make perhaps his most aggressive testimony since moving over to become Attorney General a year or so ago. In testimony that is being leaked to various outlets, Gonzales will push back hard against the likes of (unnamed) Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, Sens. Jay Rockefeller, Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy and Ted Kennedy, all of whom have attempted to make political hay of a program that has been determined to be legal, and which was detailed to both Republican and Democrat Senators and House members as required by law.

If Gonzales's appearance before the Judiciary Committee accomplishes anything, the Bush Administration is hopeful it will refocus media attention on exactly who it was that made perhaps the most damaging leak of national security activity in more than 30 years.

"The problem is because it's classified, we can't detail just how damaging the NSA leaks have been," says a career Department of Justice attorney. "But they were, and the American public needs to understand what is at stake here."

According to other DOJ and FBI sources, the investigation into the leak has been focused on Capitol Hill, where a number of interviews have already taken place. In fact, the FBI is still considering asking the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and its staff to sign blanket waivers and releases that would allow a full investigation and disclosure of their interactions with reporters and others who might have used the NSA's activities for political purposes.

"There is no question that people are going to be looking at us," says a Senate Democratic Party leadership aide. "Never mind that it might be a Republican with a conscience who leaked it. People are going to assume that it was a Democratic staffer who did it for his or her boss, or that it was the Senator himself. The fact that in this case people assume that it was a Democrat shows how far we've slipped in the minds of the American public. That's our problem, and we can't really blame the Republicans."

p> RUN, RYUN, RUN br> There is much talk that Rep. Jim Ryun

topics:
John Boehner, Law, NATO