http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-
rove27jul27,0,3614014.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials
EDITORIAL
Operation Coverup
July 27, 2005
Scandals metastasize. That is the pattern since Watergate. What starts
out looking like a small, isolated incident gradually reveals itself to
be part of a larger abuse of power. Meanwhile, an unraveling coverup adds
new elements. Is that happening now with the scandal over White House
leaks of the identity of a CIA agent?
Some folks say that as we learn more, the scandal is getting smaller, not
larger. Valerie Plame was a CIA functionary commuting openly to agency
headquarters, not a spy working behind enemy lines. The law against
revealing the identities of intelligence agents is complicated and
probably wasn't broken in this case. And the story line gets muddier:
Journalists may have revealed Plame's identity to White House honchos.
We don't buy it. However they came to learn about this juicy factoid,
people in the Bush administration misused an intelligence secret to
discredit a critic of its Iraq policy. And outing Plame, whether illegal
or not, did harm to our national security. Plame may work in Langley,
Va., but she worked with others who work in more dangerous locales. You
only need to imagine how Republicans would have treated such a leak in
the Clinton administration to dismiss their protestations that it's all
no big deal.
It's a good bet that there has already been some lying under oath. One
theory about the puzzling tenacity and ferocity of special prosecutor
Patrick J. Fitzgerald — why he is sending journalists to jail for
refusing to provide information he already has about an activity that
probably wasn't even a crime by people other than the ones he is
persecuting — is that he's switched his attention from the leak itself to
perjury by White House officials who were asked about it earlier in the
investigation.
Perjury is your classic coverup method, and still is used when other
methods have failed. Advances in the science of spin since Watergate,
however, have made a high-risk, Nixon-style coverup unnecessary in many
situations.
President Bush says he won't publicly comment about the Plame case while
the investigation continues. But the reason the investigation continues
is partly his fault. He should have determined early on who leaked
Plame's CIA identity to members of the press, and dealt with it.
Why didn't Bush two years ago just ask Karl Rove and a few others in the
administration whether they had leaked Plame's identity to Bob Novak and
the others? Why doesn't he ask Rove now? Is it because he knows the
answer? Or because he doesn't want to have to fire Rove?
As a precaution against such a catastrophe, Bush now says he will fire
anyone found to have broken the law by outing an undercover intelligence
operative. Previously he had said he would fire anyone who outs an
intelligence officer, period.
The coverup, in short, is going well.
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