Baseball - Federal Prosecutor In BALCO Investigatio

The federal prosecutor who has been leading the BALCO steroids investigations announce that he has resigned.

Kevin Ryan, the U.S. Attorney for California’ Northern District, has been handling the investigations in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) doping scandal. The lab is at the center of the scandal which also involves some of the biggest stars in sports.
Ryan was appointed to the post in 2002 and not has not said anything about when would be his last day at the job.
The BALCO case has resulted in 5 guilty pleas and a federal grand jury is investigating whether slugger Barry Bonds committed perjury when he told a grand jury in 2003 that he had not knowingly taken any performance enhancing drugs. Two reports of the San Francisco Chronicle are facing a jail sentence for refusing to tell prosecutors as to who leaked testimony to the grand jury to them.
A US attorney spokesman said that Ryan has reached a mutually agreeable decision with Washington to step down. The spokesman declined to say whether President Bush had asked Ryan to resign.
After an little known provision in the USA Patriot Act was reauthorization in 2006 allowing the U.S. attorney general to appoint replacements without Senate confirmation, Ryan is one of the eleven top federal prosecutors who have resigned or announced their resignations.
Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein complained on the Senate floor that the White House using the provision to oust federal prosecutors and replace them with Republican allies.
However, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has denied this claim.