David Corn: How Obama's FBI Nominee James Comey Triggered the Plamegate Investigation

[babylonsister]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/fbi-nominee-james-comey-triggered-plamegate-investigation


How Obama's FBI Nominee James Comey Triggered the Plamegate Investigation
It's another reason why the Cheney gang should be ticked off about Comey.

—By David Corn
| Mon Jun. 3, 2013 3:00 AM PDT


The pending nomination of James Comey to become FBI chief is a poke in the eye with a very sharp stick for the Cheney crowd. Comey, deputy attorney general during the W. years, has drawn criticism from civil libertarians for being part of an administration that waterboarded (though Comey reportedly opposed the justification of this practice), yet Comey is best known for saying no to a top-secret surveillance program much beloved by Vice President Dick Cheney and his lieutenants. He successfully defied the Bush-Cheney White House on this point in a dramatic encounter in a Washington hospital room, when top Bush advisers tried to bum-rush an ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft into authorizing an extension of the program after Comey, then the acting attorney general, had refused. But Cheney and his crew have another good reason to be aghast at the thought of Comey leading the FBI: he was the guy who started the independent Plamegate investigation that ended up tainting Cheney and convicting Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, of serious crimes.

snip//

It is a federal crime for a government official to knowingly reveal the identity of a clandestine officer. Novak's two sources, we now know, were Richard Armitage, a senior State Department official then, and Karl Rove, Bush's top White House adviser. But this was not public information at the time, and a few months after the Plame leak, the Justice Department, acting at the request of CIA chief George Tenet, began an investigation of the leak.

Enter James Comey.

As Michael Isikoff and I reported in our book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, the ongoing Plamegate investigation was a hot topic in October 2003 when Comey, whom Bush had nominated to be deputy attorney general, appeared on Capitol Hill for his confirmation hearing. At this point, Democrats were demanding a special prosecutor for the case, noting that because the trail possibly led to the White House, Ashcroft could not be trusted to conduct an independent investigation.

During the hearing, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), held up a chart entitled "A Tangled Web…?" that showed the various connections between Ashcroft and White House officials, including Rove. Schumer, who had helped Comey become US attorney in New York two years earlier, pressed Comey on whether he would support the appointment of a special counsel in the leak case. Comey wouldn't comment on the particulars of the case or make a commitment. But he did say he believed in erring "on the side of caution" on ethics issues. "I don't care about politics," he noted. "I don't care about expediency. I don't care about friendship. I care about doing the right thing."

snip//

Comey, in a way, sicced Fitzgerald on the Cheney gang—and allowed Fitzgerald to target Libby for trying to cover up for Cheney. And thanks to Fitzgerald's unrelenting efforts, the public saw that the Bush White House was not honest—the administration had insisted Rove was not involved in the leak—and that top Bush officials, including the vice president, had risked national security for partisan gain. (Fitzgerald, coincidentally, was on Obama's short list for FBI director.) Comey's role in the CIA leak story may or may not be a qualification for FBI chief. But it does show how government can work when top law enforcement officials play it straight.

[Thinkingabout]

1. Comey appears to be an upstanding person, something very unusual in todays time. In times when he

could have fallen in line and agreed to go along but he did not. This would be the type of FBI director this nation needs.

[RussBLib]

2. so ... is there a statute of limitations on torture and other war crimes?

It's way past time to prosecute some Republicans that were in high office. Lord (fos*) knows the Republicans go after every Democrat for anything and everything, and if there is nothing, they'll just make shit up. We have hard evidence of Bush/Cheney complicit in war crimes and yet, the government just sits ... and does nothing. That is so wrong on so many levels.

*Figure Of Speech