The New York Times reports that several tops officials at the Justice Department and FBI are privately criticizing Attorney General John Ashcroft’s decision to not to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate who within the Bush administration leaked the identity of a CIA operative. Ashcroft, a former Republican senator and governor of Missouri, has deep ties to some officials within the White House including President Bush’s senior advisor Karl Rove. Time Magazine recently reported that Ashcroft paid Rove’s former company nearly three quarters of a million dollars between 1984 and 1994 for offering direct mail services to Ashcroft’s campaigns in Missouri for governor and senator.