The current Attorney General is running into some of the same problems the former Attorney General had.  And, those problems persist throughout the Bush administration.  Congress wants information. Nothing happens.  Rep. Waxman is raising the specter of contempt against Mukasey:

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) on Tuesday threatened Attorney General Michael Mukasey with a contempt citation unless he provides the panel with documents related to the leak of the name of a CIA operative.

Waxman’s committee issued a subpoena last month requesting the reports of FBI interviews with President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

“You have neither complied with this subpoena by its returnable date nor asserted any privilege to justify withholding documents from the committee,” Waxman wrote in a letter to Mukasey. “In light of your actions, I am writing to inform you that the committee will meet on July 16, 2008, to consider a resolution citing you for contempt of Congress. I strongly urge you to comply with the duly issued subpoena before then.”

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, the former press secretary to President Bush told the world what CREW has known for a long time: "This is a very secretive White House."  For several years, we've been battling the Bush/Cheney administration over their attempt to keep secrets.  McClellan's statement is actually an understatement from our perspective:

Former presidential spokesman Scott McClellan on Friday said President Bush has lost the public's trust by failing to open up about his administration's mistakes and backtracking on a promise to tell all about the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. 

"This White House promised or assured the American people that at some point when this was behind us they would talk publicly about it. And they have refused to," McClellan told the House Judiciary Committee. "And that's why I think more than any other reason we are here today and the suspicion still remains."

The former White House press secretary suggested that Bush could do much to redeem his credibility on the Plame matter and his reasons for going to war in Iraq if he would embrace "openness and candor and then constantly strive to build trust across the aisle."

"This is a very secretive White House," McClellan said. "There's some things that they would prefer not to be talked about."

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan is testifying before the House Judiciary Committee today.  The session, which is being covered live by the cable news channels, has recessed for a series of votes.  We'll continue to monitor the hearing, but here' the early AP report:

President Bush's former spokesman told a House committee Friday he doesn't know whether any White House officials broke the law when they revealed CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, then tried to cover up the leak....

...He also suggested that Bush could do much to redeem his own credibility and that of politicians in general if he would embrace "openness and candor and then constantly strive to build trust across the aisle."

Scott McClellan will be the first major player in the Bush administration to testify under oath on Capitol Hill about the Valerie Plame leak.  The newly minted author accepted an invitation to appear before the House Judiciary Committee:

President Bush's former spokesman, Scott McClellan, will testify before a House committee next week about whether Vice President Dick Cheney ordered him to make misleading public statements about the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.

McClellan will testify publicly and under oath before the House Judiciary Committee on June 20 about the White House's role in the leak and its response, his attorneys, Michael and Jane Tigar, said on Monday.

In his new book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," McClellan said he was misled by others, possibly including Cheney, about the role of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the leak. McClellan has said publicly that Bush and Cheney "directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby."

The statements prompted House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., to invite McClellan to the hearing "concerning reported attempts to cover up the involvement of White House officials in the leak of" Plame's identity.

Plame's CIA identity was leaked to the news media by several top Bush administration officials in 2003, including Libby and former top White House political adviser Karl Rove. Last July, Bush commuted Libby's 2 1/2-year sentence, sparing him from serving any prison time after being convicted of perjury, obstructing justice and lying to the FBI.

CREW called on FBI Direct Robert S. Mueller 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.

CREW’s chief counsel, Anne Weismann explained our position:

There is now credible evidence that someone in the White House may have obstructed justice by destroying documents related to the leak of Ms. Wilson’s identity. Confronted with this evidence, the FBI, as the nation’s top law enforcement authority, has an obligation to investigate.

CREW's request relies in large part on evidence recently disclosed by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which documents that for the period September 30 through October 6, 2003, there were no e-mails for the entire Office of the Vice President (OVP) on either the White House servers or on a back-up tape created on October 21, 2003, with the exception of e-mails that had not yet been erased from individual OVP employee mailboxes. According to a declaration submitted by the Office of Administration’s Chief Information Officer in CREW v. EOP, the practice at the White House since 2003 has been to make copies of all e-mails through a journaling function of Microsoft Exchange and store those journaled e-mails in .pst files on White House servers. Yet when OA employees sought to find OVP e-mails in response to a subpoena from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, there were no journaled e-mails on either the servers or a back-up tape for a critical period just after the Department of Justice had opened its criminal investigation and the White House had been ordered to preserve all potentially relevant documents. 

On February 4, 2008, CREW had asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the disappearance of millions of White House e-mails, but the Department disregarded that request, instead sending a form letter suggesting that CREW contact the FBI with any information about possible crimes.

Previously, CREW had brought evidence concerning former Rep. Mark Foley's (R-FL) possible sexual exploitation of teenage pages to the FBI, but the agency failed to investigate the matter and later lied about the evidence CREW had provided, as an internal investigation by DOJ's inspector general confirmed. As a result, CREW has little confidence that the FBI will take today’s request seriously either.

The NY Times headline is accurate, but also missing are emails surrounding the start of the war with Iraq among who knows what else.  As CREW's Anne Weismann said yesterday,

..The White House has admitted that although it has long known about the missing emails, it did nothing to recover them, or discover how and why they went missing in the first place. The missing emails are important historical records that belong not to the Bush administration, but to the American people. As a result, the public deserves a full accounting and hopefully, now that the matter is before a federal court, we will get one.

The Times article did include another statement from a Bush spokesperson on this issue:

If the e-mail messages were not saved, the White House might have violated two laws requiring preservation of federal records or presidential records.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said, “There is no basis to say that the White House has destroyed any evidence or engaged in any misconduct.”

Mr. Fratto said that despite the recycling, some tapes should contain e-mail messages from before October 2003.

The recycling of backup tapes by the Bush White House represents a reversal in policy from the final year of the Clinton administration. The Clinton White House halted recycling of backup tapes in March 2000, when it was discovered that some e-mail from the office of Vice President Al Gore had not been preserved.

We compiled statements from officials in the Bush administration that conflict with their court filing here. 

Yes, it is official.  CREW released a statement today explaining the decision of the Wilsons to appeal the dismissal of the case:

Having had the opportunity to review Judge Bates’ decision, the Wilsons and their legal team have concluded that there are ample grounds for appeal and have taken the steps necessary to seek review by a higher court. The Wilsons believe that this case presents important issues regarding the abuse of government power for political ends and will continue to aggressively pursue all legal remedies. Hopefully, this case will deter future government officials from endangering our national security to further a partisan agenda.

As Melanie Sloan explained yesterday, "we have always expected that this case would ultimately be decided by a higher court."

Watch Melanie in action and you'll know this case is far from over:

During today's White House press briefing, Bush spokesman Tony Snow once again showed the administration's lack of respect for the intelligence community -- and their contempt for the rule of law. Mr. Snow managed to question the veracity of Ambassador Joseph WIlson. The transcript of the briefing is below.

Here is the response from Ambassador Wilson:

To claim that leaking the identity of a covert operative is simply part of the "Washington culture" suggests a deep disdain for those patriots who risk their lives to protect our national security. Mr. Snow's comment was insulting not just to Valerie Wilson, but to all covert operatives who believe that in return for their sacrifices, our government will do everything it can to protect them. A genuine and sincere apology from the White House -- not just to Mrs. Wilson, but the entire intelligence community -- is long overdue.

The president is now implicated in an ongoing cover-up and obstruction of justice, there remains, according to special counsel Fitzgerald, a cloud over the Vice President and Libby is a four time convicted liar, perjurer, and obstructor of justice. The administration once again, regrettably, attacks others rather than accepts responsibility for their actions and crimes. The American people know better. We know the difference between right and wrong even if the president, the vice president and their spokesmen do not.

And here's the latest salvo from the White House Press Secretary Tony Snow prompting that statement from Ambassador Wilson:

Q And also, let me ask you this. The President and other White House press secretaries would not touch this question of Joe Wilson during the height of the investigation. I'm going to ask you now, since the President is now basically saying this is over and he's done what he's done -- Joe Wilson asked for an apology for the American people because of the situation. Is the White House now willing to give the American people --

MR. SNOW: I'm not going to get into --

Q Why not?

MR. SNOW: Because --

Q Why not? It's over now. You didn't want to talk about it then. Let's talk about it now. Do you think the American people are owed something because of the breach?

SNOW: Number one, there is still considerable controversy about the facts of the case, including Joe Wilson's veracity. Number two, there is also...

QUESTION: (inaudible) question about his veracity?

SNOW: ... there is also -- just very quickly, you take a look at the Senate report, his characterization of who sent him over and what he told people when he was in Niger is at direct odds with what he tended to tell the American public.

Melanie Sloan appeared on MSNBC's Hardball last night to talk about the commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence by George Bush. She put it plainly, "it's outrageous":