Watergate Deja Vu?

The investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame is getting very interesting. You will recall that she is the wife of Joseph Wilson, who was publicly critical of the Bush Administration for continuing to allege, in support of the decision to invade Iraq, that Iraq sought uranium from Niger, in spite of the fact that Wilson’s investigation at the request of the CIA showed that was not true.

Wilson contends the outing of his wife was done as retaliation for him challenging the Bush Administration and that the Administration used the outing to chill other potential critics. Knowingly disclosing the identity of an undercover CIA agent is a crime, and because of the concern of the public at the time, a Special Prosecutor with a reputation for honesty and toughness, Patrick Fitzgerald, was appointed to investigate and possibly prosecute.

Fitgerald has been working through the secret process of the grand jury to gather evidence. As part of that process he subpoenaed reporters to disclose their confidential sources for the leak of Plame’s identity. The reporter who first published the identity was Robert Novak, who apparently satisfied the grand jury either by giving the name of the “two senior administration officials” he reported as his sources, or by claiming the Fifth Amendment. Two reporters, Cooper and Miller, refused to disclose their sources and were threatened with jail time. Cooper has now disclosed that one of his sources was none other than Karl Rove, aka “Bush’s brain”, a Bush deputy chief of staff and political strategist whose tactics are often less than forthright.

Watergate brought down Nixon, not because of the crimes committed by his subordinates, but because of his encouragement and support of efforts to coverup the crimes. Those of us who believe the Bush administration is founded on the principle that the end justifies the means are not surprised that Rove is involved in the outing and coverup and we also expect it may very well be shown that Bush himself is involved, if not in the crime then at least in the coverup.

When the outing story initially got hot enough and would not go away, the White House finally said they would cooperate fully with the prosecutor and would fire anyone involved in the outing. At the weekly press briefing today, Press Secretary Scott McClellan adopted a Watergate type stonewalling when questioned about Rove and the firing possibility. Rove has “lawyered up”, as all these trial-lawyer bashing Republicans are quick to do. His lawyer is saying Rove did not know Plame was undercover and he did not use her actual name, but just said she was the wife of Wilson. It looks like Rove may have had a brain lapse when he rushed to retaliate against Wilson. He apparently determined she was influential enough at the CIA to recommend her husband for this important job, but did not stop to think she might also have been serving at the CIA in a covert role. Apparently he also failed to grasp that telling to whom an undercover agent is married might facilitate determining the identity of the agent. Or maybe he did grasp these matters but thought he could get away with it.

Bush is as big a hypocrite as Nixon was. Nixon used to say things like, “Pat and I were just reading in the Bible last night”, but when the Supreme Court finally forced the release of transcripts of the tapes of the Nixon conversations in the Oval Office, it was the overwhelming number of “[expletive deleted]” entries in Nixon’s language that finally showed his diehard believers that he was a phoney and not morally or mentally fit to continue as President. I always thought the inadvertently recorded comment Bush made in Indiana during the 2000 campaign, pointing out to Cheney an “asshole” New York Times reporter, did not get the consideration it deserved, for showing the hypocrisy of the “born again” Bush. [“Born Again”, by the way, was the title of the book convicted Watergate White House Counsel, Charles Colson, wrote about his religious rebirth in prison.]

One day, in the aftermath of a flurry of successful prosecutions of operatives like Rove and maybe some Cheney aides, we may see Bush boarding the helicopter on the White House lawn leaving in disgrace after having resigned the Presidency, as Nixon did.