DOJ insider: "At the highest level, people want to know how big a mess this really is"

One reason for the ongoing battle between Sen. Chuck Grassley and the Department of Justice over the identities of as many as 13 to 16 current Obama Administration political appointees who provided legal counsel to suspected or convicted terrorists and enemy combatants being held in detention, is not so much what these lawyers did before joining the administration. Rather, says a Department of Justice source, it stems from the administration's own attempts to identify any official paper or email trails of those DOJ attorneys that would reveal not just past but current efforts -- since their appointment, in other words -- to influence administration or department policies on the legal treatment of suspected or indicted terrorists and enemy combatants.