If you’ve somehow missed the story, here’s a primer: the Bush
administration is in hot water. A senior White House official
illegally and intentionally gave top-secret CIA information to a
senior political correspondent and the Washington Post in an effort
to hurt one of Bush’s political enemies. The CIA agent was exposed
and potentially put in serious danger. Now the director of the CIA,
George Tenet, has asked the Justice Department to investigate the
matter. And the Bush administration, in typical fashion, has done
little more than blow it off. Could this be the next Watergate?
Columnist Robert Novak published a story July
14, 2003, using “senior administration officials” as a source, in
which he exposed Valerie Wilson as an undercover CIA agent. All
evidence suggests that the leak was intended to either punish or
discredit former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson. He just happens to
be one of the most outspoken critics of the Bush administration’s
policies there. He helped to expose the Bush team’s story, in which
they claimed Saddam Hussein attempted to buy uranium from Niger, as
patently untrue. Oh, and one other thing — he’s Valerie
Wilson’s husband.
According to the Intelligence Identities
Protection Act of 1982, it is a felony for an official in
possession of classified information to expose the identity of a
covert officer. To expose an undercover agent is to destroy her
career and quite possibly put her in significant danger. But
someone at the White House either did not know about this law or
thought they could get away with breaking it. At the time Novak’s
article was published, the administration showed no interest
whatsoever in determining who in the White House had supplied Novak
(and reportedly three other journalists) with the felonious
information. So much for national security …
Fingers have been pointed in the press, and a
lot of them are pointed squarely at top Bush adviser Karl Rove. In
an off-the-record interview with Chris Matthews, host of NBC’s
Hardball, Rove said either that Wilson’s wife was “fair game” or
that it was reasonable for the press to scrutinize her position
(the details are uncertain, and Matthews isn’t talking).
Now, of course, Bush is on record as saying “I
want to know.” Even so, he has hedged by saying that we may “never
know” the identity of the leaker, even if we try really, really
hard to find out.
Perhaps this is because he realizes how
damning it would be if a “senior administration official” turned
out to be someone in his inner circle.
The administration’s use of bullying and
intimidation in its search to justify the war on Iraq is finally
coming into the national spotlight, in a particularly poignant
form. Someone in the White House has violated a basic principle of
national security, but the whole justification for the war was
national security itself.
Now, if this were the Clinton administration,
Republicans like John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush
would be calling for a special counsel, Congressional hearings and
impeachment. They’ve done it once before — over something far
less serious than CIA operatives and national security.
But now those same Republicans are in power in
the White House, and their party comrades in Congress don’t seem to
care much about this particularly egregious violation. The time has
come for answers and for an inquiry at the highest levels of
government. It’s too bad one of those bodies best suited to deal
with the issue — Congress — has not shown the same sort
of vehemence on this issue that it has with others of less
importance in the past.
And, unfortunately, the independent-counsel
law is long since expired.
So it is now incumbent upon the Justice
Department, which has accepted Tenet’s request, to give this matter
a real investigation. To do this, John Ashcroft, head of the
Justice Department, must appoint some special investigator in his
stead. Consider a case in point: Vanessa Leggett, after writing on
a murder case that prosecutors believed was already
shut-and-closed, was imprisoned for five-and-a-half months because
she refused to divulge her sources (a journalist’s well-respected
constitutional right). Ashcroft looked on in stony silence during
that time despite public pleas from First Amendment advocates.
And yet Novak has received no reprimand
whatsoever and has seen fit not to talk about the incident or his
sources. All of this in spite of the fact that journalists lose
their protections when they knowingly allow sources to use them to
commit a felony.
How is it that a journalist who has possibly
written as an accessory to felony receives no legal attention,
while Vanessa Leggett, who merely published a story, languished in
prison for five-and-a-half months?
Ashcroft’s evident bias does not end there.
When the Justice Department informed the White House of the
investigation on the evening of Monday, Sept. 29, they permitted
the White House to wait until Tuesday morning to notify the staff
that they must safeguard information relevant to the investigation.
The White House could then spend the night ridding itself of
“problematic” information. What a nice present from their buddies
at the Justice Department.
Whether the White House wants to admit it or
not, President Bush is facing a scandal of potentially momentous
proportions. Something very illegal and questionable has happened
in the highest levels of our government, and Americans have a right
to know the truth.
It’s time for all of us to make as much noise
as possible about this. For while it may be too late to save
Valerie Wilson, it’s not too late to find out how Bush has misled,
lied and intimidated on his path to war on Iraq.
Rob Hunter ([email protected]) is
a junior. Paul Temple ([email protected]) is a
senior. Both are majoring in political science and
philosophy.