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It's the coverup, stupid

The administration's zeal to punish those who would not support its premise for war with Iraq comes back to roost.

Once again, it is an apparent coverup that has ensnared a top Washington official and thrown an already embattled White House into further turmoil. The charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff until he resigned Friday, are not technicalities. They are serious charges, and the indictment describes an aggressive effort by a thin-skinned, vindictive administration to go after a critic of a war it still struggles to defend.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who spent two years investigating the leaking of a CIA agent's name, did not charge Libby with violating the law by passing Valerie Plame's name to reporters. He suggested at a news conference that making that case proved impossible because of Libby's alleged lies about his conversations with journalists Tim Russert of NBC, Matt Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of the New York Times. The indictment suggests Libby tried to protect himself and the administration by contending he learned of Plame's identity from reporters instead of from government sources, including his boss. While those conversations within the government would not be illegal, they would draw a more direct line to Cheney and make it more difficult for Libby to argue he did not knowingly blow a CIA employee's cover.

The portrait left by Friday's developments is of an arrogant administration that responds to critics with spite and ruthless attacks. It underscores its determination to defend bad information that misled the public about the need to go to war in Iraq, and the depth of the administration's contempt for a CIA that did not wholly support the war effort. The timeline in the indictment details that Libby and others in the administration were keenly interested in Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson. He had been sent by the CIA to Niger to investigate allegations of Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium and believed those claims - stated as fact by the president in his 2003 State of the Union address - to be false.

The alleged efforts by Libby and others to discredit Wilson were well under way before his critical op-ed column appeared in the New York Times in July 2003. But it was after that column appeared, according to the indictment, that Libby confirmed to Cooper and Miller that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. The case graphically exposes the symbiotic relationships between Washington journalists and unnamed government sources all too eager to attack their critics under the cloak of secrecy.

A number of loose ends remain. The indictment refers to the source who discussed with columnist Robert Novak the identity of Wilson's wife only as "Official A." Novak's column was the first published account to identify her as a CIA employee. Fitzgerald also said his investigation is not yet complete. That leaves top Bush adviser Karl Rove, who appeared before the grand jury four times and also had conversations with reporters about Plame, twisting in the wind a bit longer.

Libby's indictment ended a week which saw American casualties in Iraq surpass 2,000 and Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers withdraw after strong criticism from all sides. But the Bush administration has no one to blame for its difficult predicament but itself.

[Last modified October 29, 2005, 01:44:11]