Coincidence or pattern?

A CIA spokeswoman, Michele Neff, flatly denied that her agency has resisted the FBI's efforts to hunt down leakers. "That's simply not the case," she said yesterday. "Why would we not want to get to the bottom of the leaks? The Office of General Counsel works closely with the Department of Justice on investigations regarding unauthorized disclosures."

Mr. Dion, the Justice Department official who received the memos detailing the difficulties, and the current head of the CIA's Office of General Counsel, John Rizzo, declined requests to be interviewed for this article.

When the Justice Department launched its investigation in the fall of 2003 to learn who leaked Plame's identity, it was John Dion, head of the department's counterespionage section, who led the charge until Fitzgerald -- the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois -- came on board as special counsel in December 2003. Fitzgerald was chosen by former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who has since left the department. Plame's identity and covert status were revealed in a piece by syndicated columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. The column cited two senior administration officials as sources, which sparked an uproar and an investigation into whether the White House released Plame's name as retaliation for her husband Joseph Wilson's criticism of the administration. Dion, a career prosecutor with the Justice Department since 1973, worked closely with FBI Special Agent John Eckenrode and other agents in the months following the leak. "I think of him as someone very wise and careful. Very well-respected by the intelligence community. That's his bread and butter," the former DOJ official says of Dion. Topping a long list of past career successes is Dion's involvement in the prosecutions of infamous spies Robert Hanssen of the FBI and Aldrich Ames of the CIA. Nathan Muyskens, a partner with Troutman Sanders, says the counterespionage section is known for having career prosecutors such as Dion with great reputations. "He's not someone who would ever be driven by any kind of political ambition," says Muyskens, who served as an associate independent counsel in the case of former Secretary of Agriculture Michael Espy. When Fitzgerald took over the reins of the investigation, Dion remained on the team, as did Ron Roos, Dion's deputy, and Bruce Swartz, deputy assistant attorney general of the Criminal Division at Main Justice.