02Jan04-Not far enough to assure integrity
ATTORNEY GENERAL John Ashcroft was clearly one of the worst possible choices to oversee an investigation into allegations that a White House official leaked sensitive information to silence a critic of the Iraq war.
Ashcroft not only had a personal and professional investment in the public perception of the Bush administration -- and this issue cuts to the very heart of its integrity -- he also had past alliances with Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser whose name has been floated as a potential suspect in the case. Rove, who had been a paid consultant to several of Ashcroft's election campaigns in Missouri, has vigorously denied any complicity in the revelation to a newspaper columnist that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative.
The disclosure about Plame, reported by syndicated columnist Robert Novak in July, came just after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times that stated that he had been on a fact-finding trip to Niger in 2002 that failed to substantiate accusations that Iraq had imported enriched uranium from the African nation. The Wilson piece was a major embarrassment to the Bush administration, since the president cited an attempted uranium sale as evidence of the need for a pre- emptive war against Iraq.
The outing of Plame was more than reckless. It not only posed a potential threat to her life, it showed a blatant disregard for the nation's intelligence operations. Revealing the identity of a covert CIA officer is a felony.
While some leaks are in the public interest -- and this nation has a proud tradition of sources willing to risk their careers to expose government duplicity or wrongdoing -- this one had the foul scent of political punishment.
It was obvious that Ashcroft, as a Cabinet member, was in a no-win situation as overseer of this highly sensitive investigation. But the attorney general stubbornly refused to recuse himself from the case as the investigation proceeded over the past three months.
Finally, Ashcroft announced this week that he would turn the reins over to Deputy Attorney General James Comey, a former Manhattan prosecutor who is in his third week on the job in the nation's capital.
"The attorney general, in an abundance of caution, believed that his recusal was appropriate based on the totality of the circumstances and the facts and evidence developed at this stage of the investigation," Comey said, adding that the issue was "one of appearance."
But Ashcroft was not cautious enough. Both Comey and the man he selected as special counsel to direct the investigation, U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald of Chicago, are political appointees who were tapped by President Bush. The fine reputations of Comey and Fitzgerald notwithstanding, this is still a situation of the Bush team investigating the Bush team.
As we said at the time this scandal broke, the public would be best served by vigorous independent investigation. Either an outside counsel should look into these serious allegations, or Congress should commit the resources necessary for a thorough inquiry of its own.
sfgate.com |
