FBI investigating top senator in 9/11 leaks probe
Shelby was ranking Republican on joint intelligence committee
From Kelli Arena
CNN Justice Correspondent
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Republican senator is under investigation in the leak of classified al Qaeda communications that apparently referred to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, law enforcement sources said Saturday.
The Justice Department referred the case of Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama to the Senate Ethics Committee on Thursday, the sources said, adding that the FBI's criminal investigation was not complete.
Shelby was critical of the Bush administration's classification of portions of a congressional report, released in July 2003, on the attacks.
The House and Senate ethics committees were briefed Thursday on the investigation, the sources said.
Shelby's office could not be reached for comment, but he has previously -- and vigorously -- denied involvement in any leaks.
In June 2002, CNN and other news organizations reported on messages intercepted by U.S. intelligence on September 10, 2001, that consisted of Arabic-language telephone conversations between people in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.
One of the intercepts said, "The match begins tomorrow." The other said, "Tomorrow is zero hour." The intercepts, however, were not translated and analyzed until September 12, the day after the attacks. Sources said the intercepts would have been studied within 48 hours, regardless of the attacks.
The translated messages were provided to CNN by several congressional sources and discussed at a joint House-Senate intelligence committee meeting the same week.
The leaks so infuriated the Bush administration that Vice President Dick Cheney called leaders of the joint committee to complain. The committee leaders, Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep. Porter Goss, both of Florida, then called on the Justice Department to investigate.
Shelby, now the chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, was the ranking Republican on the joint committee. Joining with many of his Democratic colleagues, he criticized the Bush administration's classification of nearly 30 pages of the committee's report.
"Ninety-five percent of that information could be declassified," he said at the time. "I think [the pages] are classified for the wrong reason."
The pages were being withheld, he said, because the information "might be embarrassing to some international relations."
