CIA WHISTLEBLOWER FACES ETHICS PROBE

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The House ethics committee agreed to investigate whether Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) violated his oath of secrecy by identifying aCIA sourceconnected with thedeath of an American citizen in Guatemala. Torricelli, whom House Speaker Newt Gingrich has threatened to expel from the intelligence committee, made no apologies on the House floor today. "I did what I thought was right," he said, adding that his duty to keep the classified information secret conflicted with his personal morality and his oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. TIME national security correspondent Douglas Waller says the probe, the product of two weeks of House negotiations, averts a partisan blowup in Congress: "Everybody's punting it to the ethics committee, which in the past has taken an interminably long time to reach a conclusion." Democrats on the intelligence panel, he adds, had planned to close ranks if Gingrich had yanked Torricelli himself.