As the Fredo turns....

"Alberto Gonzales was briefed extensively about a criminal leak investigation despite the fact that he had reason to believe that several individuals under investigation in the matter were potential witnesses against him in separate Justice Department inquiries."

A senior law enforcement official said, "Most of the people who have been looked at [during the leak investigation] are never going to be charged. Most did nothing wrong."

Yet, during the course of the leak investigation, the official said, people were asked about their contacts with the press, whether they disagreed with aspects of the Bush administration's eavesdropping program, and even their personal politics. The official said that special care should have been taken in briefing Gonzales -- a political figure who also was the nation's chief law enforcement official -- and indeed was to some degree. But the fact that some of those investigated had information about potential wrongdoing against Gonzales was even worse.
Of serious concern, the law enforcement official said, was that the "investigative files in the [leak] case are the equivalent of raw intelligence files for someone like Gonzales."

Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University, said in an interview that Gonzales's conduct was improper.