Wordcruncher

The Perfect Political Storm: The Crime at the Eye

You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.

- Generally attributed to Abraham Lincoln (undocumented). Also attributed to P.T. Barnum.

…here comes a raging rush of people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by; and as they went by I see they had the king and the duke astraddle of a rail -- that is, I knowed it WAS the king and the duke, though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the world that was human -- just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier-plumes.

…We asked some stragglers about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent; and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and the house rose up and went for them.

- Mark Twain

There are times when one senses a moment of historical importance is at hand. Such a moment is upon the American political narrative.

The perfect storm has been raging at sea and is headed directly for the American political landscape. It roils with crime, espionage, intrigue, propaganda, patsies, corruption, revenge, conspiracy and deceit. It threatens a direct hit that would bring a revolutionary type of upheaval, a death to the status quo. It fuels endless speculation about when and where it may hit. It may even just spin furiously, but harmlessly, at sea.

But there is no doubt that it is there.

At the eye of the storm is the central crime or crimes committed when Valerie Plame’s CIA status was leaked to the media; the seriousness of the crime(s) fuels the entire storm.

While the grand jury investigation into the outing of a CIA officer has been admirably prosecuted without leaks, we do know the legal opinions of the judges who refused to lift contempt of court charges against Time’s Matthew Cooper and The New York Times’ Judith Miller, thereby ordering the reporters to testify to the grand jury:

In February, Circuit Judge David Tatel joined his colleagues’ order to Cooper and Miller despite his own, very lonely finding that indeed there is a federal privilege for reporters that can shield them from being compelled to testify to grand juries and give up sources. He based his finding on Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which authorizes federal courts to develop new privileges “in the light of reason and experience.” Tatel actually found that reason and experience “support recognition of a privilege for reporters’ confidential sources.” But Tatel still ordered Cooper and Miller to testify because he found that the privilege had to give way to “the gravity of the suspected crime.”

Judge Tatel’s opinion has eight blank pages in the middle of it where he discusses the secret information the prosecutor has supplied only to the judges to convince them that the testimony he is demanding is worth sending reporters to jail to get. The gravity of the suspected crime is presumably very well developed in those redacted pages. Later, Tatel refers to “[h]aving carefully scrutinized [the prosecutor’s] voluminous classified filings.”

Some of us have theorized that the prosecutor may have given up the leak case in favor of a perjury case, but Tatel still refers to it simply as a case “which involves the alleged exposure of a covert agent.” Tatel wrote a 41-page opinion in which he seemed eager to make new law -- a federal reporters’ shield law -- but in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to do it in this particular case. In his final paragraph, he says he “might have” let Cooper and Miller off the hook “[w]ere the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security.”

Tatel’s colleagues are at least as impressed with the prosecutor’s secret filings as he is. One simply said “Special Counsel’s showing decides the case.”

All the judges who have seen the prosecutor’s secret evidence firmly believe he is pursuing a very serious crime, and they have done everything they can to help him get an indictment.

Once the CIA had conducted an internal investigation into the crime(s) and referred the case to the Department of Justice, it was seriousness of said crime(s) that prompted Attorney General John Ashcroft to recuse himself (though not before notifying the White House first) and empower a special counsel with full prosecutorial leverage to investigate any other crimes or circumstances. As Deputy Attorney General James Comey said at the Department of Justice press conference announcing Mr. Fitzgerald’s appointment as special counsel:

I have today delegated to Mr. Fitzgerald all the approval authorities that will be necessary to ensure that he has the tools to conduct a completely independent investigation; that is, that he has the power and authority to make whatever prosecutive judgments he believes are appropriate, without having to come back to me or anybody else at the Justice Department for approvals. Mr. Fitzgerald alone will decide how to staff this matter, how to continue the investigation and what prosecutive decisions to make.

If the narrative of history were like a novel (and we know it is often that and more; why else would truth be stranger than fiction?) there would be no better foreshadowing of this climactic chapter than Hurricane Katrina, in which floodwaters horribly drowned New Orleans and cleansed American eyes of the false image of its leadership.

The levee of public trust has been breached, and Republican halls of power are taking on water. What impact will a direct hit from this grand jury investigation, and subsequent prosecutions, have? The question may significantly -- perhaps even historically -- alter no less than the president’s administration, the Republican leadership, the intelligence communities and the media.

Like coastal residents, key players in the unfolding drama are even hunkering into defensive positions, preparing for impact. “Former White House aids” are leaking stories selling vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis Libby up the river. The Washington Post reports that the administration is considering staff changes and that, ever mindful of image over substance, Republicans are bracing for the real danger:

Senior GOP officials are developing a public relations strategy to defend those accused of crimes and, more importantly, shield Bush from further damage, according to Republicans familiar with the plans.

Meanwhile, the thunder rolls and the tide swells. Who and what will be washed away? Who and what will be washed clean?