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A Textbook Investigation — Why Now?
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A Textbook Investigation

by Bryan

Reading the transcript of the Fitzgerald press conference in Steve’s post, The wheels of the bus go round, round, round, took me back to a class room at the police academy.

Now, something needs to be borne in mind about a criminal investigation.

I recognize that there’s been very little information about this criminal investigation, but for a very good reason.

It may be frustrating when investigations are conducted in secret. When investigations use grand juries, it’s important that the information be closely held.

So let me tell you a little bit about how an investigation works.

Investigators do not set out to investigate the statute, they set out to gather the facts.

It’s critical that when an investigation is conducted by prosecutors, agents and a grand jury they learn who, what, when, where and why. And then they decide, based upon accurate facts, whether a crime has been committed, who has committed the crime, whether you can prove the crime and whether the crime should be charged.

Agent Eckenrode doesn’t send people out when $1 million is missing from a bank and tell them, Just come back if you find wire fraud. If the agent finds embezzlement, they follow through on that.

That’s the way this investigation was conducted. It was known that a CIA officer’s identity was blown, it was known that there was a leak. We needed to figure out how that happened, who did it, why, whether a crime was committed, whether we could prove it, whether we should prove it.

And given that national security was at stake, it was especially important that we find out accurate facts.

This is how you are taught to investigate an incident at the academy: gather the facts and then act in accordance with the facts.

The O.J. Simpson case is a prime example of how not to conduct an investigation. Before the facts had been gathered the investigators decided what the crime was and who committed it. They then gathered evidence that supported those assumptions. Things were missed and mistakes were made that compromised the case.