In June 2004, during the heat of his re-election battle, President Bush said if anyone in his administration had leaked information outing a CIA operative, they’d be history.
But Monday, Bush began to waffle as Democrats zeroed in on his top adviser, Karl Rove, as well as the top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. “If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration,” he said.
That’s a far cry from September 2003, when spokesman Scott McClellan said plainly, “If anyone in this administration was involved in [the leak], they would no longer be in this administration.” By qualifying the accountability, Bush is not only backtracking, he’s begun to parse words in a legal trick worthy of his predecessor.
What is next? It depends on what your definition of “is” is.
McClelland wouldn’t clarify what would trigger the punishment. An indictment? A confession? A conviction in court? What if an aide sprang the leak but only a legal loophole foreclosed prosecution?
In a July 2003 column by Robert Novak, Valerie Plame was unmasked by two “senior administration officials” as a CIA agent working on WMD issues. It’s long been speculated that Plame’s identity was leaked in retaliation after her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, wrote an article criticizing the justifications for invading Iraq.
It’s a federal crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a clandestine CIA agent. At the outset, Bush wasn’t worrying about the letter of an obscure law; he knew such a leak was unacceptable and he wasn’t about to stand for it.
Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper identified Plame in a 2003 story and last weekend he said Rove was the first person to tell him about Wilson’s wife. Rove didn’t use her name. Cooper asked Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the next day whether Plame had arranged for Wilson to travel to Africa to investigate allegations that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium for nuclear weapons. Libby replied: “Yeah, I’ve heard that, too.” GOP officials say the description of events exonerates Rove and Libby rather than fixing blame upon them.
The administration until now has gone out of its way to say that Rove was not involved. In the fall of 2003, McClellan said of Rove and Libby, “I spoke with those individuals … and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this.”
Given Bush’s comments Monday, it sounds as if the administration in 2003 and 2004 was more interested in deflecting controversy than demanding accountability. Rove and Libby should come forward and explain their roles, and the president should stand by his determination to fire anyone who leaked Plame’s identity – regardless of their political prominence.
