Inquiry of Conflicting Interests

The charge that the Bush Administration leaked the identity of one of its intelligence operatives has such grave implications that it is impossible to pinpoint the single most disturbing. Is it that the White House may have intimidated a critic by endangering the life of a member of his family? Is it that, if the allegations are true, the administration jeopardized our national security by exposing a network of agents responsible for disrupting the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)? Or is that the White House is now trying to prevent a full and credible effort to get to the bottom of this matter?

This summer, Robert Novak published the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative. Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, is a former U.S. envoy to Iraq who had publicly criticized the President for falsely claiming that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger.

Novak’s July 14 column about Wilson states that Plame was “an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction,” and that he had learned this information from two “senior White House officials.” A White House official told the Washington Post last Sunday that the pair had tried to leak the information to several journalists. “Clearly,” the official told the Post, “it was meant purely and simply for revenge.”

Novak did not share the integrity of his peers, who declined to use the leaked information, and his decision to blow Plame’s cover is reprehensible. But if the charges are true, the administration officials who knowingly exposed a CIA operative, and any others in the White House that were complicit in the leak, deserve the heaviest opprobrium. Identifying Plame would not only be a federal crime: under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act it would be treason. As Wilson himself has said, “Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career.” In other words, the White House would be guilty not only of intimidating its critics, but also of jeopardizing the United States’ efforts to gather vital intelligence on WMD proliferation.

The possibility that high officials broke federal law and endangered America’s national security demands that an independent counsel seek out the full truth. The counsel must be permitted to complete a full investigation, but should be nonpartisan, with stringent controls placed on the cost and duration of the inquiry to prevent it from devolving into a witch-hunt like the one perpetrated by former independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

The importance of the separation of powers highlights the need for an independent counsel. The current investigation, overseen by Attorney General John Ashcroft, is rife with conflicts of interest. Not only does Ashcroft owe his job to the administration he is investigating; he is also indebted to Karl Rove, whom he hired for three of his campaigns in Missouri. Moreover, Ashcroft has proven his willingness to politicize the office of Attorney General by interfering in local courts in order to curb plea bargaining and encourage the use of the death penalty, as well as by personally campaigning for the USA Patriot Act.

The White House has not only opposed hiring an independent counsel to head this inquiry, it has already begun pressuring Congressional Republicans not to call for an independent inquiry. That the White House has sought political cover while blocking an impartial inquiry into these deeply unsettling questions is nothing short of appalling. If the administration has nothing to hide, let it reassure the American people by allowing a fully transparent and independent investigation to determine the truth. If, on the other hand, the administration continues to drag its feet, the public can only suspect the worst.