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Time of troubles for Bush administration

A grand jury indictment of I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to the United States Vice-President Dick Cheney, has dealt a serious blow to the Bush administration. Although Mr. Libby resigned on being indicted for the offences of obstructing justice, making false statements, and committing perjury, this response hardly counts as an exercise in damage control. The Special Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, intends to continue investigations to determine whether President George Bush's chief political advisor, Karl Rove, should be charged for the same offences. The case pertains to the disclosure by White House officials of the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, an undercover operative for the Central Intelligence Agency. It is an offence under U.S. law to reveal the identity of a secret agent to those not cleared for receiving such classified information. Mr. Fitzgerald has not been able to pinpoint whether it was Mr. Libby, Mr. Rove, or someone else who first informed the press that Ms. Wilson worked for the C.I.A. However, Mr. Libby was alleged to have transgressed the law when he attempted to derail the enquiry and lied to the investigators and the grand jury. Supporters of the administration might argue that the prosecutor should not have pressed for an indictment on these `peripheral' charges when the investigation into the main issue remained inconclusive. They do not have a leg to stand on. After all, many of them approved when President Bill Clinton was impeached for committing perjury even though his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky was not a crime.

The political implications of `Plamegate' are far more significant than the legal. Ms. Wilson's identity was disclosed at a time when the Bush administration was building its case for the invasion of Iraq. Her husband and former diplomat, Joseph Wilson, had been sent to Niger by the C.I.A to enquire into allegations that the regime of Saddam Hussein had obtained uranium from the African country. Mr. Wilson, who concluded that the allegation was untrue, was appalled when the administration persisted in talking of a Niger-Iraq uranium connection. Ms. Wilson's identity was revealed to the press a few days after her husband set the record straight in an article in The New York Times. While no one has been able to confirm a causal connection between the two events, many observers are not prepared to rule out vindictiveness as a possible motive. It is not just a question of whether the administration resorted to underhand political methods. The more significant point is that such methods were used to undermine a well-grounded critique of the administration's arguments for the war against Iraq. Plamegate was an episode in a campaign of deceit to help sell the war to the American people. The Libby indictment might lead to a closer scrutiny of the record. With opinion polls showing that a majority of U.S. citizens no longer trust his administration, President Bush appears to be in quite a bit of trouble.

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