Oversight

• HOUSE OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEE: (06/03/08) — Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) wrote Attorney General Michael Mukasey to renew a request for interview reports done as part of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of the covert identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.

The Justice Department did provide the committee with redacted versions of interviews with Karl Rove, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and other senior White House officials. Now Waxman wants unredacted versions of the interviews.

“New revelations by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan raise additional questions about the actions of the president and vice president,” the letter states.

McClellan recently described the inner workings of the White House, including the environment surrounding the leaking of Plame’s name to the press, in his book, What Happened. Waxman noted McClellan’s assertion that “top White House officials who knew the truth — including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.”

• HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: (05/30/08) — Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) also picked up on McClellan’s book. He said he believed the issue may “require closer examination.”

Conyers has requested his counsels to meet with McClellan to determine if the information he described in his book warrants a committee hearing into the actions of White House officials regarding the disclosure of Plame as a CIA operative.

• SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: (06/04/08) — Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) sharply criticized the administration as having “made a mess of detainee policies” at a hearing on the topic Wednesday.

“Detainees have languished for years at Guantánamo, without access to meaningful judicial review,” Leahy said. “To date, not one accused terrorist has been tried, convicted and punished by the dysfunctional military commissions that the administration has established; but prosecutors and judges are being replaced in ways that leave the impression that the proceedings are being engineered to guarantee a result rather than ensure fairness.”