What Fitzgerald Didn't Say
By JOHN TIERNEY
At last, Patrick Fitzgerald has spoken - and what a relief it was to the talking heads who have been speculating about his investigation. For two years they've been predicting great revelations about the perfidy that led America into the Iraq war. Instead, we learned two things yesterday from the special prosecutor:
1. When you've worked at the White House for a few years, having a law degree and a lawyer at your side during legal interrogations are apparently not enough to stop you from saying incredibly dumb things.
2. Being given the powers of a special prosecutor does not necessarily turn you into a crazed inquisitor.
The best news yesterday was what Fitzgerald didn't do. He didn't indict anyone for seemingly minor discrepancies in testimony. He didn't indict on vague conspiracy charges. He didn't indict anyone for leaking classified information, and in his news conference he acknowledged that it could be dangerous to criminalize the leaks that reporters depend upon.
Still, the biggest losers so far in this case - aside, of course, from Scooter Libby - are journalists. We've spent our careers assuring sources that we'll protect them, but now they can see how our testimony led to one source's indictment. If there's a trial, reporters will have to publicly betray Libby's confidences - and probably endure assaults on their integrity and accuracy from Libby's lawyers.
Journalists will argue that Libby is a special case who is getting what he deserves for dragging them into this mess. The special prosecutor said he had to compel their testimony because Libby had falsely fingered them as his source for the identity of a C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson.
Everyone might have come out ahead if Libby had just told what Fitzgerald says is the truth: that Libby heard about Wilson's identity from other officials. Even if Libby had confessed to revealing her identity, he probably would have avoided prosecution as long he hadn't realized that he was outing a covert officer. If the indictment is accurate, it looks as if he pursued a remarkably self-destructive strategy.
But then, so did all the journalists who turned this leak into a major story and clamored for a special prosecutor. Why were we so eager for someone to look into the secret practices of our own business? What made this leak so scandalous that it merited the risk of empowering someone who could turn into another Ken Starr?
The leak was imagined to be a deliberate crime, part of an elaborate plot to cover up the administration's efforts to hype prewar intelligence. But from the start there was always a much simpler explanation: that it was an accident by administration officials replying in kind to leaks from a critic. It was unrealistic to expect the investigation to yield any grand geopolitical lessons, and it didn't, as Fitzgerald noted in his best moment at yesterday's news conference.
"This indictment's not about the propriety of the war," he said. "And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel."
The indictment merely demonstrated that the cliché about the cover-up being worse than the crime is especially true when there was no crime to begin with. If the facts in the indictment are accurate, then Libby deserves to be prosecuted, and maybe his example will do some good in the future - at the very least, officials will be more careful about protecting the identities of covert operatives.
It's conceivable they might even be more careful in telling the truth to grand juries. Now that Libby has been indicted on the same charges that got Bill Clinton impeached - perjury before a grand jury and obstruction of justice - maybe someone will finally wise up the next time.
But those are pretty meager benefits to show for an investigation that has consumed Washington for two years without discovering any crimes that occurred outside the investigation. Before we clamor for a special prosecutor again, we should remember how little the last two have accomplished - and how much damage the next one could do.
For now we seem to have lucked out with Fitzgerald. He deserves credit for not trying to justify all his work with a rash of dubious indictments, and he'll deserve more credit if he resists the temptation to drag this investigation out much longer. Enough is enough. |
