But the covert inquiry burst into public view abruptly after an effort by the Police Department's Intelligence Division backfired.
Making "covert inquiries" as to how the other guests felt, he noted that "physically desirable was the universal answer among all those questioned, including Vidia [Naipaul]".
She added that she was serving in a covert intelligence unit on a "highly-sensitive" inquiry about airport security at the time the information about her was leaked to Mulcaire.
He defended his close relationship with Mr. Bush, depicted by Mr. Blair's adversaries — and by some of his former aides in their testimony before the inquiry — as having involved a covert plan by Mr. Blair to circumvent hostile opinion both in Britain and at the United Nations.
In a case where a foreign intelligence service allegedly ran a covert action against the United States' political system, aborting the inquiry would be scandalous.
Mr. Libby is accused of disclosing, was not a covert agent as defined in the federal law that prompted the inquiry by the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
The chairman of the Victoria Climbié inquiry today criticised Haringey council for what he called a "covert attempt" to influence the public investigation into the girl's death.
Two well-known cases that used special counsels were the inquiry into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a covert operative, which resulted in the conviction of I. Lewis Libby, and an investigation into the destruction of terrorist interrogation tapes by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The disclosure of the inquiry late on Friday by CBS News revealed what had been for nearly a year a covert national security investigation conducted by the F.B.I., according to the officials, who said that news reports about the inquiry compromised important investigative steps, like the effort to follow the trail back to the Israelis.
A Time magazine reporter, Matthew Cooper, was subpoenaed Tuesday for a second time in an inquiry into the disclosure of the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert C.I.A. officer.
