Cover-Up Exposed?

" 'We had to draw the line somewhere,' said a senior Justice Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of lack of authorization to comment. 'There was already lots of oversight on this program, and we had to consider the interest' in protecting the program's secrecy by limiting the number of people who knew its details. . . .

"Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who had also sought an O.P.R. investigation of the surveillance program, said Tuesday that she was shocked that Mr. Bush had blocked the clearances of lawyers from that office.

" 'The president's latest action shows that he is willing to be personally involved in the cover-up of suspected illegal activity,' Ms. Lofgren said."

Murray Waas writes in the National Journal: "The statement by Gonzales stunned some senior Justice Department officials, who were led to believe that Gonzales himself had made the decision to deny the clearances after consulting with intelligence agencies whose activities would be scrutinized, a senior federal law enforcement official said in an interview."

Andrew Zajac blogs for the Chicago Tribune: "When questioned by skeptical lawmakers during confirmation hearings in early 2005 about his ability to make his own calls as Attorney General after serving as White House counsel for four years, Alberto Gonzales insisted that he had the chops to be an independent player and that he understood the difference between being on the president's team and operating as 'the peoples' lawyer' -- or at least that he could balance those roles. . . .

"Those who harbored doubts about Gonzales' willingness to buck President Bush likely had an I-told-you-so moment this morning when Gonzales said the president himself stopped a Justice Department investigation connected to the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program."

In a New York Sun opinion piece, Waas writes that "the government has in effect curtailed an investigation of itself" and "hardly anyone has noticed. It has not caused much interest in Congress, or on the nation's editorial pages, or the even in the blogosphere, which takes pride in causing a stir about things that should but nobody else has yet taken notice."

Keith Olbermann of MSNBC thinks the timing of Gonzales's announcement -- on such a heavy news day -- was anything but a coincidence.

Hinchey, the Democratic congressman whose letter originally sparked the investigation, wrote another letter, this one to the White House: "We respectfully request that you grant OPR the necessary security clearances and allow the oversight system to do its work. If the NSA program is justified and legal, as you yourself have indicated, then there is no reason to prevent this investigation from continuing."

About That Hearing

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Here is Gonzales's prepared testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, heavy on Sept. 11 allusions.

Under tough questioning, several controversial issues came up.

Charlie Savage writes in the Boston Globe that "Gonzales defended the president's practice of issuing 'signing statements' to reserve the right to bypass laws he considers unconstitutional. Bush has issued signing statements to challenge more than 750 laws, a figure cited in a series of Globe stories.