How to Make the White House Come Clean About Plame Conspiracy

Last week, apparently belatedly realizing the obvious -- that the attack on former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame was a White House family affair -- New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof called for the administration to come clean. Bush and Cheney owe "the American people a candid explanation" of their conduct with regard to the leaking of Plame's identity as a CIA agent, Kristof insisted.

If, after observing this administration for over six years, Nicholas Kristof thinks that the president and vice president are going to suddenly be overcome by conscience and tell all because he has put his foot down, then Nicholas Kristof is downright adorable.

The trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was merely a snapshot view of this administration in daily action; but incomplete as it was, it nevertheless starkly revealed what many had known all along: that the most powerful officials in the United States government -- including, but not limited to, the vice president, the vice president's chief of staff, the deputy secretary of state, the president's press secretary, the president's chief of staff, and, yes, the president himself -- had responded to the barrage of criticism being aimed at their fictitious case for war in the spring and summer of 2003 by focusing their sights on a man and woman who had devoted their lives to public service.

Such people -- those who will use the highest offices of the United States government to protect themselves and their prospects for reelection by whatever means they deem necessary, regardless of the damage they leave in their wake -- are not going to confess to anything ... ever.

Indeed, in answer to questions from a reporter about this very issue on Feb. 14, President Bush explained helpfully, "I'm not going to talk about any of it." We will surely all expire if we hold our collective breath waiting for the president to change his mind about this (or anything else, for that matter). Fortunately, we do not need to hear what Bush and Cheney have to say about "it" right now.

Nor do we have to wait for the outcome of any further investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, even though it is entirely possible he and his eminently capable prosecutors Peter Zeidenberg, Debra Bonamici and the rest of their team will continue to explore possible criminal activity on the part of Vice President Cheney and others. A continued investigation would, in fact, be both appropriate and warranted, given the abundant evidence of Cheney's wrongdoing.

As Fitzgerald implied on the day he announced the charges against Scooter Libby, however, the criminal justice system is not designed to address all the issues raised by the CIA leak affair, perhaps not even the major ones.

The Libby case was not, Fitzgerald said, as he announced the indictment, about the validity or honesty of the president's arguments for an invasion of Iraq. In fact, the Libby case was not even about the conduct of other members of the administration; it was solely about I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and whether he obstructed a grand jury investigation, lied to federal agents, and then lied to a grand jury.

Despite the spin immediately set in motion by Libby's cadre of supporters, Fitzgerald was not suggesting that the charges he was leveling were trivial, nor was he presuming to sanction the conduct of the Bush administration in the runup to the war. As a seasoned prosecutor, he was merely making a simple, but necessary, point about the nature of criminal charges and the laws that govern them.

The laws of perjury and obstruction of justice exist to vindicate an important government interest in the integrity of grand-jury proceedings. Once such charges are brought, however, they raise but a single issue: Is there proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the individual or individuals charged committed the conduct specified in the indictment?