WP: Achenblog
Joel Achenblog
Posted at 08:04 AM ET, 07/25/2005
Leak Probe: Who's the Target?
Somewhere along the line the Valerie Plame leak probe became a daily story, something in which every incremental development -- even a new leak from another mysterious source "with close knowledge of the thinking of investigators," and so on -- is worthy of another trip through the trap door and down the chute into the dimly lit bunker of InvestigationWorld. You can read all these stories with Talmudic seriousness and never know what the heck is going on. What is special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald after? Or, more precisely, who? The articles seem to be edging closer and closer to the suggestion that the ultimate target may be someone much higher in the Administration than, say, Karl Rove or Scooter Libby. My own suspicion is that this case may go even higher than Bush -- that it may go all the way to Cheney.
Envision this: Fitzgerald cuts a deal, letting Bush walk with just maybe 6 months at a Club Fed and a little house arrest on the back end, in return for Bush testifying against Cheney. Cheney cuts his own deal, getting a reduced sentence in exchange for ratting out the Corporate Masters.
Or am I getting ahead of the story.
The major problem with analyzing the case is that we have almost no information and are therefore forced to interpret the data in a manner that a cynic would describe as "guessing." But the Post this weekend had a story that suggested that Fitzgerald is looking at discrepancies between Rove's and Libby's testimony, and the Times followed up Sunday with its own reading of the tea leaves (a piece that comes very close to asking, "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"). Also, Frank Rich yesterday argued that Alberto Gonzales has already become a casualty of the case, his Supreme Court aspirations dashed. Rich reminded everyone that Gonzales, informed of the investigation, waited 12 hours before sending out an e-mail informing staffers of the probe and telling everyone to save any relevant records. Gonzales said yesterday that he immediately told chief of staff Andrew Card about the investigation. Who did Card, in turn, tell? Pull the phone logs! Scour the hard drives! Yank the hidden video!
The best part of these second-term scandals is that they become civics lessons for all Americans. We learn the identities of obscure White House staffers, their names seared onto the brain pan, next to Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, Magruder, etc... We learn the protocols of investigations (how interesting that the president wasn't under oath when he was questioned by Fitzgerald in the Oval Office last year). We've already learned loads about the confidential-sources game. The story, if you'll pardon the cliche, has taken on a life of its own, and it's thriving, a crazy untamed weed. It's not going to go away on its own accord, not in the dog days of summer. It will run riot. That's just the nature of the game. That's how Washington works. This is what we do here.
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