This morning, CREW called to open an investigation into whether White House officials obstructed justice by destroying documents relevant to the criminal investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity. As CREW's chief counsel Anne Weismann stated "the FBI, as the nation’s top law enforcement authority, has an obligation to investigate." The Associated Press has already reported on CREW's request:

An ethics advocacy group has asked the FBI to investigate the White House e-mail controversy, saying electronic messages about the Valerie Plame affair may have been destroyed.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is basing its request on a White House document describing an effort to recover a week's worth of missing e-mail in 2003 from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

White House technicians eventually retrieved e-mail from the missing week, but it is unclear whether other e-mail from the vice president's office that week has not been found. Federal prosecutors sought the e-mail in the probe of who in the Bush administration leaked Plame's CIA identity.