On the cusp of a scandal?
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Libby indictments echo Watergate, 'Rolling Stone'
By Richard Larsen
Editorial
The Ventura County Star
November 1, 2005
venturacountystar.com
One word kept coming to mind Friday as special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald detailed five felony indictments against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- Watergate.
For those younger than 40 not familiar with the story, Watergate refers to the scandal that began at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Five men were arrested there June 17, 1972, as they attempted to bug the offices of Democratic National Committee Chairman Larry O'Brien. The Nixon administration, trying to deflect attention, referred to this incident as a third-rate burglary.
Because of dogged reporting led by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post, that third-rate burglary proved to be the tip of the iceberg of the most egregious breach of public trust and the most blatant abuse of political power in the history of the United States.
The Watergate investigation implicated key White House aides, officials of the Committee to Re-Elect the President and the attorney general of the United States. It also led into the Oval Office and brought about the resignation of President Nixon, who otherwise would most likely have been impeached and possibly found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.
"Plamegate," as the effort to out CIA operative Valerie Plame has become known, has the potential to become a more egregious abuse of political power than Watergate because it deals with compromising national security. Outing Plame could very well have given hints to enemies on how the CIA operates, not to mention jeopardizing the operatives for whom Plame was responsible.
Plamegate has another serious outcome because it seems to have begun as part of a campaign to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband. In a July 2003 Op-Ed piece in The New York Times, Wilson criticized the Bush administration over its reliance on intelligence that proved faulty and that led this nation into a war it needn't have fought. Within weeks, his wife had been outed.
Mere coincidence?
Hardly. As Fitzgerald's detailed time line of his case shows, Libby had discussed Plame with an undersecretary of state (later identified as Mark Grossman), a senior CIA officer and Vice President Dick Cheney, for whom Libby worked as chief of staff. All these discussions took place several weeks before Wilson's Op-Ed piece appeared.
Shortly before Robert Novak revealed Plame's name in his July 14, 2003, column, Libby spoke with someone identified as "Official A" in the White House about the impending column. Many believe this official to have been White House adviser Karl Rove.
As Watergate revealed, when this many people seem to be involved in something that has overtones of less-than-stellar behavior, more than mere coincidence might exist; there is every likelihood that the actions taken might be less than legitimate and that efforts to minimize what happened could be the beginnings of a cover-up.
Libby, of course, will have his day in court. The charges will be upheld or not. But sometimes, as Bob Dylan wrote in his song "Subterranean Homesick Blues":
You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows.
Speaking of Dylan, sometime Friday, his song "Like a Rolling Stone" began slipping through my thoughts, possibly because I have watched Martin Scorsese's film about Dylan's early career, "No Direction Home," at least three time in the past month. Dylan's lyrics always had much to say about what was going on in society (no matter how much he tries to deny it). Plamegate offers the perfect opportunity to be a bit Dylanesque. So, with apologies to Dylan and a nod toward his talent with words, here's a slightly rewritten version of his "Like a Rolling Stone":
You never turned around to see the smirks from neocons, those clowns,
When they all came down and did tricks for you.
You never understood that it ain't no good,
You shouldn't let other people plan your wars for you,
When you could have taken the high road with your diplomat,
The former general who knew about Iraq.
Ain't it hard when you discover that
You weren't really where it was at
After he rejected from Libby the lies you believed.
How does it feel?
How does it feel?
To be on your own,
With no conservative drones,
Like a complete unknown,
Like a Nixon clone?
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-- Richard Larsen is a deputy opinion page editor at The Star. His e-mail address is rlarsen@VenturaCountyStar.com. His blog can be read at blogs.venturacountystar.com |
