But Ashcroft was not cautious enough. Both Comey and the man he selected as special counsel to direct the investigation, U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald of Chicago, are political appointees who were tapped by President Bush. The fine reputations of Comey and Fitzgerald notwithstanding, this is still a situation of the Bush team investigating the Bush team.

Special and independent counsel prosecutions have two common characteristics that, to Ashcroft, may lend them particular appeal: They last forever, and they almost never get their man.

No, but WMD, in case you hadn't noticed, is a rather big concern for us at the moment. So before picking up the phone and calling Novak you'd think Hopper might have done a little checking and made sure her exposure as CIA wouldn't cause that much damage, right? Make sure she was just an analyst?
For all who have eyes to see, the White House has made pretty clear where they stand from the beginning. They're going to see if they can brazen it out.

Allen calls Toensing a "legal expert" and "the chief counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when Congress passed the law protecting the identities of undercover agents."
But that's a rather incomplete description, now isn't it?
Toensing, of course, is not only a pricey DC defense lawyer. She's also a professional Republican, one tightly connected to the DC GOP power structure, and someone you could find at pretty much any point in the late nineties as an anti-Clinton "legal expert" on every chat show under the sun.
Using Toensing as the legal expert on this question is like bringing Bruce Lindsey in as your commentator to discuss Lewinsky.