Yesterday I reported that the Justice Department had written Congress that, against the advice of Alberto Gonzales, the president had shut down an internal department investigation into the administration's wireless wiretapping program. Bush's was an unprecedented and arbitrary (and still unexplained) move.

Democrats in the Senate want to know more. So yesterday Sens. Russ Feinfold (D-WI), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Dick Durbin (D-IL) sent a letter following up.

In particular, the senators want to know the stated rationale behind Bush's decision. They also want to see documentation relevant to the stifled investigation. Why?

As they write in the letter: "Given the serious questions that have been raised about the Justice Department's credibility, we continue to believe it is important to review documents supporting the assertions in [the Justice Department's] letter."

In other words: we don't believe anything you say now, so just save your breath and hand over documentation.

President Bush shut down an internal Justice Department investigation into the administration's warrantless wiretapping program against the advice of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, according to a letter sent by a senior Justice Department official to Congress yesterday. To Democrats, it's yet another example of why Gonzales should step down.

The investigation, launched in January 2006 by the Department's internal watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) -- an office created in the wake of the Watergate scandal to prevent similar abuses by DoJ officials -- would have examined whether Department officials had properly reviewed the legality of the NSA's Terrorist Surveillance Program, which dates back to 2001.

But the probe was shut down when Bush denied investigators the security clearances necessary for the investigation. Such a denial was unprecedented and arbitrary.

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When it rains...

Following up on National Journal's story earlier today, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) sent a letter (pdf) to Alberto Gonzales asking him to respond to the story's allegation:

"It would be an extraordinary abuse of authority if you advised the President on this matter after learning that your own conduct was to be investigated... The decision by the President to shut down the OPR investigation by denying security clearances to key Department personnel was itself extremely unusual, controversial and, in our view, improper. But the issue of your role in advising the President on this question raises what may be even more serious concerns."

Murray Waas, over at National Journal, adds to Alberto Gonzales' woes. It's another one of those complicated simple stories, and the gist is this: Gonzales knew that an internal Justice Department investigation would likely end up focusing on him, nevertheless, he went to Bush and got him to shut it down.

From National Journal:

Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.

Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.

It is unclear whether the president knew at the time of his decision that the Justice inquiry -- to be conducted by the department's internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility -- would almost certainly examine the conduct of his attorney general....

Current and former Justice Department officials, as well as experts in legal ethics, question the propriety of Gonzales's continuing to advise Bush about the investigation after learning that it might examine his own actions. The attorney general, they say, was remiss if he did not disclose that information to the president. But if Gonzales did inform Bush about the possibility and the president responded by stymieing the probe, that would raise even more-serious questions as to whether Bush acted to protect Gonzales, they said.

Update: Here's some background on how baseless and brazen Bush's removal of security clearances for the investigators was.

Every day it's something new. Today it's the Justice Department's Inspector General who throws more gasoline on the bonfire. From The Washington Post:

A Justice Department investigation has found pervasive errors in the FBI's use of its power to secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records in national security cases, officials with access to the report said yesterday.

The inspector general's audit found 22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations -- some of which were potential violations of law -- in a sampling of 293 "national security letters."...

Fine found that FBI agents used national security letters without citing an authorized investigation, claimed "exigent" circumstances that did not exist in demanding information and did not have adequate documentation to justify the issuance of letters.

The PATRIOT Act, of course, gave the FBI an extraordinary amount of flexibility in seeking information without the nuisance of probable cause. The bureau only need certify that the records are "sought for" or "relevant to" an investigation "to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities."

"In 2005 alone," the Post reports, citing the audit, "the FBI issued more than 19,000 such letters, amounting to 47,000 separate requests for information."

But the FBI apparently ignored even those flimsy requirements. The most glaring abuse appears to concern the so-called "exigent letters":

The report identified several instances in which the FBI used a tool known as "exigent letters" to obtain information urgently, promising that the requests would be covered later by grand jury subpoenas or national security letters. In several of those cases, the subpoenas were never sent, the review found.

The review also found several instances in which agents claimed there were exigent circumstances when none existed. The FBI recently ended the practice of using exigent letters in national security cases, officials said last night.

Just a coincidence that they ended the practice right before the IG's report was released, I guess.

As a result of the laxity with NSLs, the FBI seems to be swimming in personal information: "In an unknown number of other cases, third parties such as telephone companies, banks and Internet providers responded to national security letters with detailed personal information about customers that the letters do not permit to be released."

Now, although officials tell the Post that the "known problems may be the tip of the iceberg in an internal oversight system that one of them described as 'shoddy,'" the inspector general's report apparently states that these were not "manifest deliberate attempts to circumvent statutory limitations or departmental policies." In other words, the FBI agents didn't know they were breaking the law or the rules. What's worse, they apparently didn't care enough to check.

Update: The Post reports:

Members of Congress vowed today to conduct investigative hearings -- and consider reining in parts of the Patriot Act -- following revelations of pervasive problems in the FBI's use of national security letters to secretly obtain telephone, e-mail and financial records in terrorism cases.