Since congressional Republicans seem intent on ignoring the White House’s Plame Game scandal, Dems on Capitol Hill have decided to go around the GOP majority and ask the non-partisan General Accounting Office to launch an investigation.
By all accounts, the purpose of the proposed GAO inquiry would be different from the ongoing Justice Department investigation. While Justice is (presumably) working to uncover the original source(s) of the Plame leak, congressional Dems want the GAO to determine how the White House dealt with the leak, how the leakers came to obtain the classified information in the first place, and whether national security was breached in the process.
The Dems who asked for the GAO investigation were House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), and Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.).
It’s actually a pretty clever move and would expand the scope of the investigation considerably. We still want to know, of course, who was responsible for leaking the classified information in the first place. But the congressional Dems are proposing that we also find out, among other things, if the White House followed mandatory steps to deal with the leak.
As the Dems noted, the White House was required under Executive Order 12958, signed by Clinton in 1995, to “take appropriate and prompt corrective action.” If Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Company took such steps, they did so very quietly.
In fact, the Dems’ letter argues that there’s no evidence that the White House took any of the required steps, choosing instead to dismiss the seriousness of the controversy altogether.
Because the GAO is independent, congressional Republicans will have less of an opportunity to squelch an agency investigation, should the GAO decide one is warranted.
Perhaps best of all, the Dems’ request, coupled by news of a grand jury and the demands of angry former CIA officials, helps keeps this story alive.