WHAT
WOULD FITZ DO?
Given the revelations over the weekend that the government
is back in the business of spying on American citizens, and the
gauntlet-throwing admission by Bush that he authorized such action, and
would do it again, the question now is, who can reign in this outlaw
administration, and who can do it before any more damage is done. My answer to
that question is: Patrick Fitzgerald.
Sadly, the Special Prosecutor’s mandate does not include
violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which
criminalizes domestic spying, but count me among those who believe that this
straight-shooting, law-enforcing, righteous American hero was probably one of
the most shocked, and possibly even outraged, recipients of the news that our
President believes he is above the law. As Fitzgerald has already concluded,
this attitude of arrogance and nose-thumbing is endemic in the Bush White
House. It manifests itself in the leaking of national security information and
in the belief that truth and the rule of law are considered dispensable by the
current occupants of the White House.
Fitzgerald already knows that Libby and Rove lie when it
suits them (and, of course, we all know that Bush, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et
al. have a history of doing so as well), and that they regard the law as
something that applies to them only when they decide it does. He also knows
that Cheney was in the Plame leak up to his ears, and that he knew, when he told
Libby about Plame’s employment, that she was a covert CIA operative (Paragraph
9 of the Libby Indictment). Whether Fitzgerald has enough now, with the
benefit of his second grand jury (and remember, I predicted that he wasn’t
finished
when he announced his first go-round of indictments — to modify the Libby
indictment, or to indict Rove and/or Cheney, he clearly has the power to send an
arrow through the lying heart of the renegade White House. An indictment of
Rove, even if it’s only for lying to federal agents and/or to a grand jury, will
burst the balloon inflated by the hubris of an administration that recognizes no
strictures on its conduct, legal or otherwise.
Remember, too, that we still don’t know what Fitzgerald
knows about Bob Novak’s source for the leak which first appeared in his column,
and set off the firestorm that culminated with Fitzgerald’s appointment. But,
we now have a clue about that, given Novak’s surprising
revelation that Bush knows who his source was, raising the possibility that
Bush himself may have been involved in the leak, and if so, that he may have
some criminal responsibility for breaking that law. And while Bush can’t be
indicted by a grand jury, he can certainly be named an unindicted
co-conspirator, which is, after all, the treatment Cheney received in the Libby
indictment.
Given that the Republican congress has shown itself to be
nothing more than a rubber stamp for Bush’s policies, whether it was treatment
of prisoners in Guantanamo, sweetheart contracts with Halliburton, kissing the
oil companies’ butts or the other demonstrable excesses of this administration,
there is absolutely no reason to believe the congress will be any more effective
at reigning in, much less holding to account, the Bush domestic wiretapping
program. This is especially so given that
some congressional leaders were, in fact, informed of this illegal program and
did nothing to stop it. The last thing we need here is another congressional
show hearing, as
Senator Specter is promising to do.
Mr. Fitzpatrick, where are you now that we need you?
Want to respond? Send us an email here.