"The indictment of I. Lewis ''Scooter" Libby and the efforts to expose a CIA agent outlined by a federal prosecutor yesterday add to a growing body of evidence that the Bush administration approached foreign policy like a political campaign, dividing people into friends or foes.
This leadership strategy involves rallying intense groups of supporters and striking out against critics. It helped win President Bush many close votes in Congress in his first term and a narrow, hard-fought reelection victory.
But when the White House applied the same approach to building the case for the Iraq war, it found itself in battles not just with Democrats but also with parts of its own government, including the CIA.
The fierce prowar leanings of Libby, combined with the partisan warfare perfected by presidential adviser Karl Rove, led to a legal and political disaster for the administration.
Now Libby, a key planner of the war, stands accused of covering up his efforts to expose a CIA agent who had worked as a covert operative. The administration's apparent goal in exposing the agent was to retaliate against the agent's husband for disputing a piece of evidence cited by the president against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Like most presidential scandals, which have struck recent presidencies with regularity in second terms, this one may end up being remembered as much for what it says about the administration and its leader as for the activities of any individual.
Much as the Iran-contra scandal in 1987 came to emblemize Ronald Reagan's lack of oversight of his administration's activities, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal was cited as proof of Bill Clinton's disregard for personal and ethical boundaries, the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson may eventually be seen as a byproduct of President Bush's partisan approach to governing.
''What this is about is politics, and this is the way that they operate," said presidential historian Robert Dallek, author of biographies of Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy. ''Who sets the tone? The president."
The administration's chief political architect, Rove, has stressed the importance of rallying core supporters, rather than seeking to appease moderates, suggesting that battles are won by the intensity of support as much as by sheer numbers of supporters.
Such tactics are reasonably familiar in domestic politics. But the Bush administration also seemed to approach the Iraq war in the manner of a political campaign, an unusual, if not unprecedented, approach to foreign affairs.
At first, the assertion that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction was presented as the sober conclusion of intelligence analysts, in the same way that the CIA used surveillance photos to ascertain that Soviet missiles were being sent to Cuba in 1962. Secretary of State Colin Powell's 2003 presentation to the UN, including aerial photos, even evoked UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson's famous UN presentation during the Cuban missile crisis.
But recent evidence -- from the memoirs of former White House terrorism adviser Richard A. Clarke to disclosures of dissenting opinions from intelligence analysts that weren't aired -- suggests that behind the scenes, the determination to remove Hussein was less the product of CIA surveillance than of administration officials backing an aggressive effort to remove a longtime US enemy. They believed that the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks had signaled the need for a tougher US posture in the world.
At times, the administration abandoned the language of diplomacy and attacked its critics in the world -- from UN arms inspectors to nations that refused to back the war in the UN Security Council -- in terms usually reserved for political campaigns.
Then, as the prewar assertions came under attack amid a fruitless search after the invasion for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the administration apparently decided to retaliate against its critics. Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, husband of Valerie Plame Wilson, was one such critic. He repeatedly called into question Bush's assertion that Hussein had sought to buy nuclear materials from the West African nation of Niger.
The indictment of Libby reveals just how much Joseph Wilson's criticism was on the minds of officials at the highest levels of the administration. And his wife's employment at the CIA seemed deeply significant to an administration worried that intelligence analysts were plotting against the White House.
Vice President Dick Cheney discussed Wilson's wife's employment with Libby, according to the indictment. So did an unnamed undersecretary of state. So, too, did a White House official cited only as ''Official A" in the Libby indictment. Libby also discussed both Wilsons in a meeting with a CIA briefer. By citing so many people talking about the Wilsons, the indictment introduces the possibility of a wide scheme to discredit them -- one that could yet ensnare more administration officials.
But mostly, it puts renewed focus on the administration's actions in the run-up to the war in Iraq." |
