The Justice Department’s own ethics officer commences an investigation as to whether the attorney general and his top aides acted within the law in approving a covert domestic wiretapping program authorized by the president. But the inquiry is shut down before the first witness in interviewed. The attorney who is to lead the inquiry, a 20- year veteran of the Justice Department, is simply informed by his superiors that he and his staff have been denied security clearances necessary to do their work. The government has in effect curtailed an investigation of itself.

Even though the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility was told that it could not investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, his predecessor, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, and other government attorneys acted properly in “authorizing, approving, and auditing” the Bush administration’s and National Security Administration’s domestic eavesdropping program, hardly anyone has noticed. It has not caused much interest in Congress, or on the nation’s editorial pages, or the even in the blogosphere, which takes pride in causing a stir about things that should but nobody else has yet taken notice. The issue finally attracted some attention yesterday with Mr. Gonzalez’s testimony before Congress.

But Rep. Maurice Hinchey, Democrat of New York, is a man of persistence and industry. Instantly recognizable on Capitol Hill for his slicked-back helmet of gray hair, Hinchey is also known as someone not easily deterred. As a young man, he had few expectations beyond working in the cement plant where his father worked, and later, where he worked. When he worked as a toll collector on the New York State Thruway, he purposely sought out the graveyard shift, working from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. He was working his way through college as an English major, and the graveyard shift meant fewer cars and fares to interrupt his reading Chaucer, the 18th century novelist Laurence Sterne, or the works of the 18th century philosopher and empiricist David Hume.

Mr. Hinchey made his first race for the New York Assembly because there was nobody else who wanted to undertake the effort. The last Democrat who won in Ulster County had been in 1912, and before that, during the Civil War. Mr. Hinchey served eighteen years in the New York Assembly, waiting his turn, before first being elected to Congress in 1992 in a previously predominantly Republican district.

Mr. Hinchey wrote a letter to the Justice Department seeking an inquiry as to whether the Justice Department had acted properly in approving and overseeing the NSA wiretapping program. That’s what Democrats are relegated to doing nowadays, writing letters. Republicans control the executive branch and both houses of Congress. When it comes to oversight, Democrats can write letters, and that’s about it.

Mr. Hinchey was as surprised as anyone not only when he received a response to his letter — that there was actually going to be a formal investigation. The head of the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, H. Marshall Jarrett, wrote back to Mr.Hinchey last February: “I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your…. letter, in which you asked this office to investigate the Department of Justice’s role in authorizing, approving, and auditing certain surveillance activities of the National Security Agency, and whether such activities are permissible under existing law. For your information, we have initiated an investigation. Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention.”

But then last month, Mr. Jarrett wrote Mr. Hinchey again: “We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program. Beginning in January 2006, this office made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. On May 9, 2006, we were informed that our requests had been denied. Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation.”

“I knew it was too good to be true,” Mr. Hinchey told me, shortly after hearing the news, “They were never going to let this go forward.”

Alberto Gonzalez, the attorney general of America, is not only Mr. Jarrett’s boss, but also someone who has just escaped investigation by Mr. Jarrett’s office.

Asked during a press briefing, “Did Mr. Jarrett come to you and ask you to assist him in getting these clearances?” Mr. Gonzalez replied that it would not be “appropriate” to “get into… the give and take that happened between the attorney general and other folks within the Department.”

Mr. Hinchey wrote Mr. Jarrett again in May asking who had denied him his office their security clearances. Mr. Jarrett responded on June 8 that while he appreciated Mr. Hinchey’s “continued interest” the matter, he would not be able to respond because to do so “would require me to disclose client confidences and internal Justice Department deliberations, which I am precluded from doing.”

Undeterred, Mr.Hinchey introduced a formal House resolution of inquiry demanding that the Bush administration provide all information to the House explaining why the Jarrett investigation was stymied. Along straight party lines, however, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee voted down his resolution.

Yesterday, Mr. Hinchey learned an answer to at least one of his questions. Asked during an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee whether he had been the person responsible for denying Mr. Jarrett his security clearance, Mr. Gonzalez stunned the senators by saying that “The president of the United States makes the decision.”

Mr. Hinchey now has other questions he wants answered.

But once again, Maurice Hinchey’s only recourse is to write another letter.