Focus: Crisis in the White House
Bush under fire
Leaks, scandal, war and a floundering economy are
rocking the foundations of a once invincible White
House. Paul Harris reports from New York on why the
Democrats suddenly scent victory
guardian.co.uk
Sunday October 5, 2003
The Observer
The first email was already waiting for most White House
staffers when they switched on their computers last Tuesday. It
was terse. The Justice Department was investigating the leak of
the identity of an undercover CIA officer. Staff were ordered to
'preserve all materials that might be relevant'.
A second email, sent late last Tuesday night, was longer but
brutally specific. It demanded emails, phone records, letters,
diary entries and calendars all be saved. Just to hammer home
the point, the email added 'even if (their) destruction might
otherwise be permitted'.
The message was simple; a witch hunt is going on in
Washington. A fall guy - or two - needs to be found to explain
who blew the cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame as an act of
revenge against her anti-war husband.
It sounds like an obscure row, but it is not. The scandal goes to
the heart of an administration that is now widely seen as in
crisis. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, had
gone public with allegations that the Bush administration had
exaggerated its case for war against Iraq. In the Bush White
House there can be no bigger sin.
Now Plame's career is over and other whistleblowers may think
twice about voicing their criticism in public. But the leak has
backfired spectacularly. The word inside Washington's gossipy
Beltway is of 'Wilsongate'. This was no ordinary piece of spin. A
crime has been committed; exposing a spy carries up to 10
years in jail. Somebody will have to pay.
But, more importantly, the scandal has cracked the illusion that
the Bush administration is invincible. Deep fissures have been
exposed at the highest level of a government that only a year
ago appeared certain to secure a second term. A spotlight has
been turned on the murky goings-on at the heart of the White
House political operation and it has revealed a history of dirty
tricks and webs of political patronage that could compromise the
investigation. It could not have come at a worse time.
Bush was already in trouble. The daily killing of GIs in Iraq has
sapped support for the war. Bush's poll figures are starting to
sink alarmingly. Last week's CIA update on the hunt for
weapons of mass destruction drew a blank. And - perhaps most
importantly of all - America's economy is failing to create the
jobs that are desperately needed in key battleground states in
next year's elections.
For Democrats, stunned by the turnaround in fortune, there is
now a strong smell of blood in the political waters. Whisper the
possibility; could Bush be a one-term President?
'It is great schadenfreude ,' said Will Marshall, head of the
influential Democratic think-tank, the Public Policy Institute.
'Now the chickens are finally coming home to roost.'
In a week of frenzied allegations, denials and outrage, one key
figure has not spoken; Valerie Plame. Spooks rarely go public.
But the pictures of her on Wilson's desk in his Washington
office show a glamourous 40-year-old blonde - the mother of
three-year-old twins. Until this summer her friends around
Washington thought that she was an energy consultant. Now
they know that she is a spy.
The facts of the scandal are simple. Wilson was sent to Niger in
February 2002 to investigate allegations that Iraq was seeking to
buy uranium in Africa. He concluded that the story was a crude
fake and passed the information on to the CIA. But a year later
Bush used the allegations prominently to justify going to war
against Saddam. Wilson went public with his doubts in July and
a week later at least two administration officials touted Plame's
identity around six Washington reporters. One - conservative
columnist Robert Novak - took the bait.
But, as the CIA referred the matter to the Justice Department
last week, the simple leak exploded into a scandal. There is
more than Plame's identity at risk. As a covert operative she
made trips abroad to exploit her expertise in unconventional
weapons. Her network of foreign agents could now be
dangerously exposed. 'Lives are at stake. Outing someone like
this is a "holy grail" issue for the CIA,' said Mel Goodman, a
former senior CIA analyst.
Relations between the administration and the intelligence
community are at a low ebb. 'It is bad. There were already so
many other tensions before this week,' said Richard Betts, a
consultant to the National Security Council.
Bush's administration was quickly forced on to the defensive.
The flat denials at the start of the week changed instead to a
promise of full co-operation. Tuesday is now the deadline for
White House officials to hand over all their documents. Staff at
the State and Defence departments have received similar
instructions. Then the interviews will begin and the investigators
have the power to bring in lie detectors.
The key question is simply who authorised the leak. Wilson
himself has pointed the finger in one direction - Bush's special
political adviser, Karl Rove. He described last week how several
reporters had told him that Rove had said: 'Joe Wilson's wife is
fair game.' Rove has denied the charge. Presidential spokesman
Scott McClellan dismissed the notion. 'This is ridiculous,' he
said.
But the allegation has thrust Rove into the spotlight from the
back corridors and smoky rooms where he does his usual work
as Bush's most trusted fixer and adviser. Few political
relationships - except perhaps Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell
- are as close in modern times as Rove and Bush.
He is a political animal who has been the guiding force in
propelling Bush first to the governorship of Texas and then to the
White House. He is a lifelong Republican and ruthless to his
enemies. Bush dubs him 'the man with the plan' and the 'boy
genius'. His enemies deride him as 'Bush's brain'.
But Rove has a murky history. In the 1970s he was investigated
for running 'dirty tricks' seminars for Republican activists at the
time of Watergate. In 1986, while running a Texas governorship
campaign, he announced that a bugging device had been found
in his office. The discovery hurt Rove's Democrat opponent, who
promptly lost the election. Yet it was never discovered who
planted the bug and - despite his denials - it is widely believed
that Rove put it in his office himself.
One man who has fallen victim to Rove is Jim Hightower, who
faced off against Rove's Republican candidate in a Texan
election in 1989. Rove leaked extensively to the local press that
Hightower was facing an FBI investigation. The allegations
decimated Hightower's polls and he went on to lose the election.
Hightower was never charged, by the FBI or anyone else.
For Hightower, last week's scandal bears all the hallmarks of
Rove's tactics. 'No kind of political action like this is going to be
taken without Rove's office putting the stamp of approval on it,'
he told The Observer. 'He may not have made the actual phone
calls, but that's irrelevant.'
Critics accuse Rove of bringing such tactics into the White
House. Certainly he has made the Bush administration one of
the most leak-proof ever to take power in Washington. Unlike
the more open - and leaky - Clinton era, speaking to reporters is
seen as a punishable offence for many Bush officials. Many
announcements of bad news - such as last week's poverty
increase - are now released late on Friday ahead of the weekend
newspapers, which are not as widely read in America as in
Britain.
But there are other possible culprits. Some commentators are
pointing to a growing rift between Bush and the hawkish wing of
his administration in the shape of Vice-President Dick Cheney
and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. While Bush has
recently sought to distance his government from linking Iraq with
the 11 September terrorist attacks, Cheney has persisted.
It was also members of Cheney's staff, including top aide Lewis
'Scooter' Libby, who pushed the Niger uranium story long after
Wilson had investigated the matter. Cheney and Libby are both
said to have been furious with Wilson's decision to go public. 'I
think the signal could have come from the Vice-President to go
after Wilson, to make sure that no one else speaks out,' Mel
Goodman said.
But whoever was responsible for the leak, it certainly came from
somewhere near the top. In an operation as tightly controlled as
the Bush administration, it is unthinkable that this was a junior
staff member working 'freelance'.'This is not a normal leak, this
is scorched-earth politics,' said Larry Haas, a White House
communications aide under Bill Clinton. 'This kind of strategic
decision is taken at a very senior level.'
But the investigation of the leak has also exposed another facet
of the tightly knit Bush administration - patronage. In resisting
calls for a special counsel, the investigation is in the hands of
Attorney-General John Ashcroft. Bush appointed Ashcroft to his
job, meaning he is now effectively being asked to investigate his
own boss. Rove has also worked for several of Ashcroft's
campaigns in the past. He was also influential in getting him
appointed to his current post when Bush's first choice fell
through.'They will never appoint a special counsel. This shows
ruthlessness gone awry,' said Joe Conason, author of Big Lies,
a book on the Bush administration and its use of the media.
Now an administration that seemed unbeatable after 11
September is facing a need to act. What the mounting
casualties in Iraq could not achieve, Bush's sliding poll numbers
may do. Rove, whose instinct for the public mood is renowned,
will know that some form of change is going to be needed soon.
'It will either be personnel or policy,' said Goodman. If it's the
former, then leading hawks such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, or
their top officials, could soon be fearing for their own jobs.
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