As we mentioned earlier today, House Oversight's subpoenas for Bush and Cheney's interview records from DOJ Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's inquiry into the Valerie Plame leak case were rebuffed by the Justice Department.

Since then, we've obtained a copy of the letter dated June 24 that the Justice Department sent to Congress, declining to comply with the subpoena.

Their reasons? The ever-ready assertion of executive privilege because the write ups of the FBI interviews with White House officials during the Plame leak investigation contain accounts of of internal White House deliberations, including those involving how to respond to the fallout from the infamous 16 words on Niger yellowcake in the President's 2003 State of the Union address:

However, these reports also contain considerable information detailing the internal White House deliberations and communications of senior White House staff concerning how they should respond on behalf of the President to public assertions challenging the accuracy of a statement made in the President's State of the Union Address.

The DOJ was also concerned that by releasing their interview records with Bush and Cheney, they would create a disincentive for future voluntary interviews from the executive branch. . . despite the fact that it's all been done before. In 1999, the FBI surrendered interview records of former President Bill Clinton and former Vice-President Al Gore:

We are aware that in 1999 the Department made available to this Committee the FBI reports of interviews with President Clinton and Vice President Gore that were taken during the Department's campaign finance investigation. We consider that situation to be fundamentally different from the present situation. We understand that the intrusion on Executive Branch confidentiality interests was significantly less because the Clinton Administration interview reports presumably did not involve the substance of internal White House deliberations and communications concerning official White House business, but rather concerned campaign-fundraising political activities.

The full text of the letter, after the jump.

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Two weeks ago, Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued subpoenas for FBI paperwork regarding interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

And now the Justice Department has responded: Think again, Henry.

In the latest subpoena denial from the administration, Attorney General Mukasey informed the Committee that it will not be issuing documents to comply with the congressionally issued subpoena.

But Waxman is giving them one last chance. In a letter to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald on Friday, he informed Fitzgerald that the DOJ has until July 3rd to release the requested documents.

A strange thing happened at a House Oversight hearing today, with a witness accusing a congressman of hacking a secure website, and claiming he was currently being investigated by the FBI.

The Committee hearing examined questionable practices at Pedernales Electric Cooperative. During the interrogation Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) cited documents that he said came from "secret, password-protected website" of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, in testimony today in front of the Committee

In response, NRECA President Glenn English, a former Congressmen from Oklahoma, claimed that the NRECA counsel had told him that Cooper was in the process of being investigated by the FBI for taking unauthorized information from their website.

As Roll Call reports, the allegation upset the hearing and unleashed a flurry of denials:

Cooper responded that someone had given him authorization and provided him with a password to download the documents, but English said that only he or a limited number of other officials from the organization could authorize access. Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) immediately gaveled the hearing to a close.

An FBI spokesman said the bureau "doesn't comment on accusations made by others concerning its investigative activity."

Cooper spokesman John Spragens said, "This is a bogus attempt to intimidate Congress from trying to investigate an industry. The idea that a Congressman would be under investigation for conducting an investigation is laughable. That's why we have the Constitution."

Spragens added, "We have no reason to think that Congressman Cooper is under investigation."