His days as a special agent with the FBI are over. Chad Joy, who created a hornet's nest of hassles for the government as a conscience-stricken whistleblower, has left the agency, according to Eric Gonzalez, an agency spokesperson in the bureau's Anchorage office.

Gonzalez declined to comment on precisely when or why Joy left the FBI, but did confirm the main target of Joy's complaint -- lead agent Mary Beth Kepner -- remains on staff working active cases. He would not say whether Kepner's current case load includes work on the political corruption probe dubbed "Polar Pen," which has netted indictments and convictions against Alaska politicians, lobbyists and businessmen, and a governor's chief of staff.

Joy came forward one month after a federal jury found U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens guilty of failing to report lucrative gifts on his Senate financial forms, complaining that Kepner mishandled sources and was overly casual with sensitive information and that information helpful to Stevens was withheld from the defense. (Citing a barrage of missteps in the case by prosecutors, the case against Stevens was later thrown out at the request of the Justice Department.)

The merits of Joy's complaint are being investigated in two as-yet-unresolved inquiries into the actions of the government's trial team. The U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility is conducting an internal review, and the angry trial judge in the Stevens case has ordered a separate special investigation to determine whether the actions of the prosecutors -- sloppy at best, willful at worst -- were criminal.

All six prosecutors under scrutiny remain at work, although some have transferred to different districts. According to the website MainJustice.com, three of the four attorneys from the DOJ's Public Integrity Section have managed to keep their hands on high-profile cases. The website reports that William Welch II, the former chief of the Justice Department's public corruption unit, relocated to Massachusetts after stepping down and now works there as senior litigation counsel under the criminal division. In April, he signed the indictment of a former national security agent accused of leaking information to a reporter. Brenda Morris, the tenacious and fiery prosecutor who conducted the cross-examination of Stevens on the witness stand, has moved to Atlanta, where earlier this year she emerged in a case involving Alabama lawmakers and gambling legislation. A third prosecutor, Nicholas Marsh, transferred to the Office of International Affairs, where he was involved "in requesting the extradition of Roman Polanski to face sentencing in the U.S. for having sex with a minor three decades ago," the report also notes.

Meanwhile, the two assistant U.S. attorneys from the District of Alaska who worked the Stevens case -- Joe Bottini and Jim Goeke -- continue to work as federal prosecutors but do not appear to be working on any of the public corruption cases. Like Welch, Morris, Marsh and attorney Edward Sullivan, they have been pulled off of those cases. More recently, Bottini has been involved in cases alleging Social Security fraud, bank robbery, drugs and guns. The same goes for Goeke, although he has transferred to an office in Yakima, Wash.

While the DOJ prosecutors on the Stevens case wait to learn whether they themselves may face charges for their trial tactics, speculation has persisted that fallout from the botched Stevens case will halt pending corruption investigations against other politicians past and present, including Stevens' son, Ben Stevens, and U.S. Rep. Don Young. Both the FBI and the DOJ are silent on whether specific individuals remain under investigation, and said Tuesday they would not confirm nor deny whether any person was a former or current target of their probes. However, Gonzalez did say, more broadly, that operation Polar Pen very much remains active.