**NOTE: Updated Sunday evening to reflect actual transcript from CBS News**
What did White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card learn from Alberto Gonzales and when did he learn it...and what did he do with that knowledge? This "whole new can of worms" (to quote CBS News' Bob Schieffer, on Sunday's Face the Nation) is to me the breaking news question of the day. Why? Because on the show, Alberto Gonzales admitted that he called Andrew Card right after he was notified that the Justice Department had opened its investigation of the Plame leak...even though he formally notified The White House staff 12 hours later.
Here's the transcript of Bob Schieffer talking to Alberto Gonzales about this subject:
SCHIEFFER: Let me also shift to this whole Karl Rove controversy and the leak of the CIA agent who was his wife -- her name. You were the White House counsel when all of this took place. And according to Frank Rich in The New York Times this morning, on September 29th, 2003, when you were the White House counsel, the Justice Department notified you that it had opened an investigation into who outed Joe Wilson's wife, but that you waited 12 hours to notify White House staffers that they had to preserve materials connected to that case. That, of course, would give people time to shred documents and do any number of things. Why didn't you immediately notify the White House staff that this Justice Department investigation was about to commence?
GONZALES: When I was the counsel, it was always my practice to work very, very closely and carefully with investigators and to seek permission with respect to every step that I took with respect to an investigation. In this particular case, we were notified by the Department of Justice late one evening. I guess it was about 8:00. And I specifically had our lawyers go back to the Department of Justice lawyers and ask them, `Do you want us to notify the staff now, immediately, or would it be OK to notify the staff early in the morning?' And we were advised, `Go ahead and notify the staff early in the morning. That would be OK.' And again, most of the staff had gone home. No one knew about the investigation. And we made...
SCHIEFFER: Well, let me just ask you the obvious question, Mr. Attorney General. Did you tell anybody at the White House, `Get ready for this, here it comes'?
GONZALES: I told one person in the White House that -- of the notification and...
SCHIEFFER: Who?
GONZALES: ...then immediately -- I told the chief of staff. And then immediately the next morning, I told the president. And shortly thereafter, there was a notification sent out to all the members of the White House staff.
SCHIEFFER: Mr. Attorney General, can I ask you why you didn't investigate this as the White House counsel when this first blew up?
GONZALES: I think that this is the kind of issue that I felt that we should wait and see whether or not there would be some kind of criminal investigation. And, of course, there was, and once the criminal investigation began, I've always felt that it would be counterproductive and would be in the way and might, in fact, hinder the criminal investigation. And that's why the decision was made and it wasn't just solely my decision.
SCHIEFFER: Do you regret making that decision? Did you -- do you regret that?
GONZALES: No, absolutely not. I think it was a -- the absolute right decision. We've got a very strong prosecutor that's now looking at that -- at this, and I -- whatever the facts are, he will uncover the facts and justice is going to be served in this case.
Well, my friends, Truth Marches On!
With this one little sidebar comment. This morning, after he appeared on Face the Nation, Alberto Gonzales also appeared on Wolf Blitzer's Late Edition. Assuming these shows are both broadcast live, I would have expected that Wolf Blitzer's staff would have watched Gonzales's appearance on Face the Nation (or, at least, would have read Frank Rich's piece in today's NY Times... which would at least have alerted them to the existence of this topic) and that Wolf Blitzer would have brought up the same "12 Hours" subject that Bob Schieffer did. Well, he didn't. He asked Gonzales several Plame-related questions, but he never mentioned the "12 Hour Gap." To me, that's pretty sloppy reporting. Please, Wolf, we need you to investigate this part of the story!