There's not much information in this article by Mr. Cohen, but
I think it's interesting to track what kind of propaganda the
Matrix is feeding us. Revealing the identity of a covert
operative is a serious crime, as any of us would find out if
we were the perpetrator. Cohen's article seeks to excuse the
same crime, when the perp is the White House:
This was a clear case of nepotism, the leakers just as clearly
implied....This is rarely considered a crime. In the Plame
case, it might technically be one, but it was not the intent
of anyone to out a CIA agent and have her assassinated (which
happened once) but to assassinate the character of her
husband. This is an entirely different thing. She got hit by a
ricochet.
...I want Fitzgerald to leave now. Do not bring trivial
charges -- nothing about conspiracies, please -- and nothing
about official secrets, most of which are known to
hairdressers, mistresses and dog walkers all over town.
Interesting: most official secrets are known to all, and
causing death by ricochet isn't a crime. I guess we're
supposed to buy this stuff because it is presented in the
tones of a 'Washington insider'.
I found this statement interesting because, ironically, it
gets to the heart of the Fitzgerald proceedings:
The best thing Patrick Fitzgerald could do for his country is
get out of Washington, return to Chicago and prosecute some
real criminals.
The elephant in the kitchen, as regards Fitzgerald's grand
jury proceedings, is the fact that Bush and the neocons are
very much real criminals, a fact that a growing number of
Americans, and even more non-Americans, are becoming aware of
and getting fed up with.
I'm talking about Big Crimes: illegal wars, blatant war
profiteering, destruction of the Constitution, rigging
elections, war crimes in Iraq, and many others. I don't know
who decided to set up this grand jury investigation into the
Pflame affair, or who decided to appoint a hard-hitting,
investigative judge to head it (Fitzgerald), but I imagine
they were motivated more by the wide tableau of White House
crime, than by the relatively minor outing of one agent.
There are many parallels here with Watergate I and Nixon, as
I've mentioned in previous postings on this thread. Nixon,
like Bush, was widely considered to have gone beyond the
rightful limits of his powers, as for example in bombing
Cambodia. The Watergate affair itself was trivial in
comparison to his bigger crimes. Yet that's what brought him
down. We had the same scenario with Al Capone, who went down
for tax evasion, when it was really all his other crimes that
motivated that indictment.
rkm
--------------------------------------------------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/12/AR2005101202002.html
washingtonpost.com > Columns
Let This Leak Go
By Richard Cohen
Thursday, October 13, 2005; Page A23
The best thing Patrick Fitzgerald could do for his country is
get out of Washington, return to Chicago and prosecute some
real criminals. As it is, all he has done so far is send
Judith Miller of the New York Times to jail and repeatedly
haul this or that administration high official before a grand
jury, investigating a crime that probably wasn't one in the
first place but that now, as is often the case, might have
metastasized into some sort of coverup -- but, again, of
nothing much. Go home, Pat.
The alleged crime involves the outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA
operative whose husband, Joseph Wilson IV, had gone to Africa
at the behest of the agency and therefore said he knew that
the Bush administration -- no, actually, the president himself
-- had later misstated (in the State of the Union address,
yet) the case that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger.
Wilson made his case in a New York Times op-ed piece. This
rocked the administration, which was already fighting to
retain its credibility in the face of mounting and irrefutable
evidence that the case it had made for war in Iraq -- weapons
of mass destruction, above all -- was a fiction. So it set out
to impeach Wilson's credibility, purportedly answering the
important question of who had sent him to Africa in the first
place: his wife. This was a clear case of nepotism, the
leakers just as clearly implied.
Not nice, but it was what Washington does day in and day out.
(For some historical perspective see George Clooney's "Good
Night, and Good Luck'' about Edward R. Murrow and that most
odious of leakers-cum-character assassins, Joseph McCarthy.)
This is rarely considered a crime. In the Plame case, it might
technically be one, but it was not the intent of anyone to out
a CIA agent and have her assassinated (which happened once)
but to assassinate the character of her husband. This is an
entirely different thing. She got hit by a ricochet.
Now we are told by various journalistic sources that
Fitzgerald might not indict anyone for the illegal act he was
authorized to investigate, but some other one -- maybe one
concerning the disclosure of secret material. Here again,
though, this is a daily occurrence in Washington, where most
secrets have the shelf life of sashimi. Then, too, other
journalists say that Fitzgerald might bring conspiracy
charges, an attempt (or so it seems) to bring charges of some
sort. This is what special prosecutors do and why they should
always be avoided. (The one impaneled in 1995 to investigate
then-HUD Secretary Henry G. Cisneros for lying about how much
he was paying his mistress is still in operation, although the
mistress most certainly is not.)
I have no idea what Fitzgerald will do. My own diligent
efforts to find out anything have come to naught. Fitzgerald's
non-speaking spokesman would not even tell me if his boss is
authorized to issue a report, as several members of Congress
are now demanding -- although Joseph E. diGenova, a former
U.S. attorney in Washington, tells me that only a possibly
unprecedented court order would permit it. Whatever the case,
I pray Fitzgerald is not going to reach for an indictment or,
after so much tumult, merely fold his tent, not telling us,
among other things, whether Miller is the martyr to a free
press that I and others believe she is or whether, as some
lefty critics hiss, she's a double-dealing grandstander, in
the manner of some of her accusers.
More is at stake here than bringing down Karl Rove or some
other White House apparatchik, or even settling some score
with Miller, who is sometimes accused of taking this nation to
war in Iraq all by herself. The greater issue is control of
information. If anything good comes out of the Iraq war, it
has to be a realization that bad things can happen to good
people when the administration -- any administration -- is in
sole control of knowledge and those who know the truth are
afraid to speak up. This -- this creepy silence -- will be the
consequence of dusting off rarely used statutes to still the
tongues of leakers and intimidate the press in its pursuit of
truth, fame and choice restaurant tables. Apres Miller comes
moi .
This is why I want Fitzgerald to leave now. Do not bring
trivial charges -- nothing about conspiracies, please -- and
nothing about official secrets, most of which are known to
hairdressers, mistresses and dog walkers all over town.
Please, Mr. Fitzgerald, there's so much crime in Washington
already. Don't commit another.
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