Fergie's Tech Blog

Dirty Tricks: U.S. Justice Dept. Concealing Leak Report

An AP newswire article by Lara Jakes Jordan and Matt Apuzzo, via The Washington Post, reports that:

The Justice Department is fighting in court to keep secret a government report concluding that it leaked confidential and damaging information against a former prosecutor accused of bungling a high-profile terror trial.

Justice attorneys say they can't disclose all the contents of the December 2004 report by the department's inspector general without violating employees' privacy.

However, ex-Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard G. Convertino of Detroit said the Justice Department violated his own privacy rights by revealing to the media that he was the subject of an internal ethics inquiry after he criticized the Bush administration's counterterrorism strategy.

Two people who have seen the full report confirmed it rules out Convertino as a suspect in the leak case. Those people described the report's findings to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because it is sealed under a Justice Department protective order.

posted by Fergie @ 1/12/2007 01:54:00 PM