New Investigation Launched

It's about the non-warranted NSA wiretapping. But it's not the angle progressives or those worried about government intrusion would have hoped; via the WaPo:

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a domestic surveillance program authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, officials said today.

Justice prosecutors will examine whether classified information was unlawfully disclosed to the New York Times, which reported two weeks ago that the National Security Agency had been conducting electronic surveillance on U.S. citizens and residents without court-approved warrants.

[...]

The Justice Department has also opened a probe into whether classified information was illegally disclosed to The Washington Post, which reported on a network of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

The disclosure of the domestic spying program by the NSA, which is normally confined to overseas operations, has setoff a firestorm of criticism from civil liberties advocates and prompted plans for hearings on Capitol Hill. The secret program has also angered some judges on a special court that is supposed to oversee clandestine surveillance within the United States, including one who submitted his resignation.

Farhad Manjoo, manning the wheels of steel (or, really, the keyboard of clacketyclack) over at Salon's War Room for the vacationing Tim Grieve, notes:

As the investigation unfolds, though, it'd be wise to remember one thing. Though Bush has called the leak of details of the NSA program "shameful," this leak was morally and ethically quite different from the leak of Valerie Plame's identity. In that case, someone in the Bush Administration was talking to reporters about Plame and her husband Joe Wilson in an effort to damage them; it was a scurrilous act, and the journalists who dealt with those officials weren't very easy to defend.

The eavesdropping leak, though, was just the opposite: The leakers here were disclosing something of vital interest to Americans. The journalists here were trying to get that story to the public. The real story here doesn't have to do with the press, or with the whistleblowers -- the real story is the Bush plan to wiretap Americans without legal oversight. As we go down the rabbit hole of another leak investigation, let's keep that in mind.