The flaw in Bush’s Plame Game answers

October 5, 2005

For the first time in months, Bush was asked directly yesterday to respond to developments in the ongoing Plame Game criminal investigation. It didn’t go well.

One reporter asked if Bush would remove a member of his staff if they were indicted in this scandal (as he had promised earlier). Bush said he wouldn’t “talk about it until the investigation is complete.” Bloomberg’s Dick Kyle followed up with an even more pointed question shortly thereafter.

Q: Getting back to the leak investigation just for a moment, I’m curious, sir, whether you’ve had any conversations with any of your aides, particularly Karl Rove or Scooter Libby, about any of their dealings with reporters poking around on that issue, and any strategy that they may have come up with to deal with that issue.

Bush: The special prosecutor made it very clear early in the process that those of us in the White House need not — need — should not discuss the case, publicly or privately.

As a factual matter, Bush is either confused or he’s intentionally misstating the facts. It’s hard to say which is the case here.

The president essentially claimed that Patrick Fitzgerald told the White House staff, including the president, not to talk about the investigation, even with each other. Bush couldn’t talk to Rove and/or Libby, under this argument, and ask about their role in leaking Plame’s identity, without going against the demands of the special prosecutor. This has been the White House line for the past couple of months, used to explain why the president has been so passive about leakers in his midst — as the Washington Times put it in August, Fitzgerald’s “gag order has hampered internal White House fact-finding.”

This is utter nonsense. Bush can try to blame the special prosecutor for his disinterest in White House criminal behavior, but that doesn’t make it true.

The president’s claims notwithstanding, there is no “gag order” and Fitzgerald never prohibited Bush from discussing the case “privately” with his staff. If Bush called Rove and/or Libby into the Oval Office this morning and demanded answers, there’s nothing to stop them from having the conversation.

At a very basic level, the president is chief law enforcement officer of the United States government. Even if Fitzgerald, for some inexplicable reason, asked the president not to talk to Rove or Libby about this controversy, Bush could still ask anyone anything he wanted. Instead, he’s chosen not to.

It’s almost funny, in a sardonic kind of way. The only person in Washington who’s expressed no interest in who leaked classified information to cover up Iraq-related lies is the leakers’ boss, the president of the United States. If Bush doesn’t care, he should figure out a way to say so without making up ridiculous claims about the special prosecutor.

Bush is such lieing bastard. He doesn’t give a shit about the United States. He cares about the rich staying rich.
He is the WORST president we have ever had. That’s his legacy.

  • President Bush, as crazy and it sounds, seemingly is trying to destroy this country.. He seemingly cannot exercise reasonable clear judgment. Or and this is worse,, he is incapable of exercising reasonable judgment or he is intentionally thumbing his nose at the American people and our constitutional government. The main problem here is the fact that his party has both houses of Congress thereby making him a dictator . because the” Blind loyalty vote ” All men are incapable of judging themselves, consequently if there is no outside judgment brought to bear on them they go awry.

  • No one wants to get to the bottom of this more than the president!

    He has provided unprecedented cooperation!

  • I was impressed with the press corps on this session. I thought they asked some good questions and got him on the record on some things.

    Bush’s performance was embarassing, but that’s nothing new.

  • Poor guy. Here he is, a failure at everything he’s tried. Black sheep of the Bush Crime Family. An embarassment to his mother and father and wife and daughters. Unable to escape his failures through booze and drugs anymore, relentlessly exercising his body and re-birthing his soul just to keep from wobbling off the track, dependent on doting mother-substitutes and daddy’s underling/pals to make it through the day without public exposure.

    Maybe simply doing nothing is the best we can hope for from Dumbya, as those around him already seem to know.

  • Perhaps Bush is telling the truth. Perhaps this isn’t a “gag order” at all, but more along the lines of Bush not wanting to further their illegal conspiring. Not that such an order would come directly from Fitzgerald, but more from the Prez’s lawyers as a warning of what Fitzy might go after if they do discuss things. Especially as if Rove, Libby, etc, really are guilty, they’d have to lie to Bush or risk him being called to testify against them. And then he’d have to perjure himself or rat them out. So it’d be best for Bush if he didn’t know anything, even if he wasn’t involved in the initial conspiracy.

    Not that I know that it works like that at all. I just like the idea that there might be this other element of them not discussing this amongst themselves. Though I suspect that it’s fairly unlikely that Bush doesn’t already know as much as he wants to know; because that’s all he ever knows.

  • While we’re on the subject of Fitzgerald does anyone know the exact date of when he will be finished up.

  • After Shrub appeals his impeachment to the Supreme Court and is acquitted by his buddies Roberts and Miers, he will set off on a search for “the real leakers”.

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