One of the things that’s been bothering me about the Plame Game scandal since the beginning is the White House’s passive disinterest in determining which two senior administration officials were responsible for the leak.
Despite the occasional rhetoric about leaks being “bad things,” and Bush’s alleged interest in “wanting to know” who’s responsible, the White House hasn’t done much of anything to get to the bottom of this. It’s disconcerting, to say the least, because two members of the president’s staff are responsible for illegally leaking classified information. I’d like to think the president would be bothered by that sort of thing.
Since the controversy first unfolded, White House officials, most notably press secretary Scott McClellan, have said the president would not proactively investigate to determine if any of the senior staff participated in the leaking of the Plame story.
Since then, the White House has, slowly but surely, started eliminating potential “suspects.”
First, McClellan insisted that Karl Rove wasn’t one of the leakers. “He wasn’t involved,” McClellan said.
Over the weekend, the Bush White House extended the list of non-participants. Administration spokespersons told the New York Times that Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, and Elliot Abrams, the director of Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, were not part of the Novak Two.
McClellan said that Libby “neither leaked the classified information, nor would he condone it.” On Saturday, the White House also issued a statement saying Abrams had denied being the source.
Two quick thoughts. First, the White House could be lying. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but just because Scott McClellan said Rove, Libby, and Abrams weren’t involved doesn’t mean they should be ruled out. In light of all the deceptions we’ve seen over the last three years, the administration’s credibility has reached rock bottom and, frankly, they don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Second, and far more important, the White House is unknowingly proving their critics’ point about an internal investigation. Over the last seven days, officials have bothered to determine (or at least, claim) that Rove, Libby, and Abrams — three important, high-ranking White House officials — weren’t responsible.
The point is, if they’ve ruled out these three, why can’t the White House simply go ahead and ask the other 10 or so senior staffers about what they know?