 On September 26, 2003, the CIA requested that the Justice Department investigate what is now known as the Plame affair.Then-Attorney General of the United States John Ashcroft initially headed up the investigation.On 13 August 2005 journalist Murray Waas reported that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials had recommended appointing a special prosecutor to the case because they felt that Karl Rove had not been truthful in early interviews, withholding information from FBI investigators about his conversation with Cooper about Plame and maintaining that he had first learned of Plame's CIA identity from a journalist whose name Rove could not recall.