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July 18, 2005
Schadenfreude, Inc.
The hits just keep on coming for the Bush administration with Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, now being implicated in the leak scandal.
As much as I'd like to kick up my heels in celebration over this, there's reason to be a little more guarded. Now that someone lower on the administration's totem pole has been thrown into the mix, it's possible that he'll be served up to prosecutors as a scapegoat in an attempt to take the heat off of Karl Rove.
On the one hand, I'd be happy to see Libby go, since he's one of the only actual avowed neoconservatives in the White House (contrary to popular belief, most of Bush's staff are more foreign policy realist than neocon--although Charles Krauthammer says they're a little of both).
On the other hand, sacrificing him to save Rove would be a cheap way out of this for the administration, since despite the mealy-mouthed defense that Ken Mehlman (the RNC chair) and other Republicans are offering, Rove's actions seem now to have violated the conditions for his security clearance. On Meet the Press yesterday, Mehlman maintained that the fact that Rove allegedly learned of Valerie Wilson's identity from a reporter is sufficient to exhonorate him. Unfortunately for the administration, it doesn't matter how Rove got the information. If he subsequently gave that information to another reporter without its having been declassifed, then it was illegal. He could've read it in his tea leaves, but it still would've been illegal to tell Matt Cooper about it.
Independently of whether or not anybody broke the law, the fact that Rove might not have been the only source could lend support to the theory that the leak was designed by the White House to discredit Joseph Wilson. So while we're a long way from closure in the investigation, the view from here doesn't look great for the Bush administration. I guess I don't care that much whether the fallout is legal or political, as long as Rove, Libby, and everyone else involved is held accountable.
Posted by matt at July 18, 2005 11:13 AM
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