(Continued from page 23)

members of both parties on Capitol Hill.
• Dempsey and other military leaders have said they are open to legislative solutions to a problem they acknowledge is serious. Still, they are deeply concerned that too drastic an overhaul by Congress will lead to unintended and alarming consequences.
• Curbing too sharply a commander's ability to decide how and when to punish or pardon service members will send a message there is lack of faith in the officer corps, and that in turn will undermine the efficiency and effectiveness of the military in peacetime and war, Dempsey warned in a recent letter to Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ronald Machen and James Cole have pursued their share of headline-makers, taking on between the two of them an All-Star baseball pitcher, government contractors, members of Congress, a federal judge and a mayoral campaign.
• The two Justice Department officials are accustomed to overseeing big cases and riling defendants with their decisions. But it's their involvement in a White House crackdown on national security leaks -- including the secret gathering of telephone records of Associated Press reporters and editors and the emails of a Fox News journalist -- that has invited unusually broad and bipartisan condemnation.
• Attorney General Eric Holder says he removed himself from the AP leak investigation, leaving Machen, the U.S. attorney for Washington assigned to run the case, and Cole, the Holder deputy who made the decision to seek the phone records, as focal points for anger over the intrusion into newsgathering operations.
• Lawyers describe both men -- whose careers have blended public service with private practice -- as methodical and aggressive, with track records that include tough demands for documents they think are needed to construct a case, but also displays of restraint and negotiation.
• "There are real stakes on both sides," former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, who worked with Machen at the law firm of WilmerHale, said of leak investigations. "You have the national security imperative on one side, and you have the equities and interests of a free press on the other."
• ___

(Continued on page 25)