BobHarris.com - How far is Bush thinking ahead?

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How far is Bush thinking ahead?

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Monday, 18 July 2005

Just wondering out loud, nothing more. Take the following with a medium-sized salt mine.

Bush today (White House transcript, emphasis added):

We have a serious ongoing investigation here. (Laughter.) And it's being played out in the press. And I think it's best that people wait until the investigation is complete before you jump to conclusions. And I will do so, as well. I don't know all the facts. I want to know all the facts. The best place for the facts to be done is by somebody who's spending time investigating it. I would like this to end as quickly as possible so we know the facts, and if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.

Taking each highlighted piece, one at a time:

• The laughter has been noted as a sign that the press is starting to pull itself together. Maybe, although it didn't sound so raucous on the video. (More like humoring a drunk. Which is exactly what it was.)

Either way, the media growing a spine at this point is about as impressive as John Wayne Gacy taking up juggling in jail: nice, but a little late.

• "If someone committed a crime" has been widely parsed as moving the goalposts. Rightly so.

Bush needs Rove the way shit needs fiber. Today's new stance, which already has clear political costs, allows him to retain Rove even through any pending indictment.

Logically, then, if Bush is willing to pay that cost -- that is, if he doesn't pointedly revise the language, and soon -- then indictments shouldn't be a surprise.

Still, something doesn't seem quite right here. Wouldn't you expect the White House to be setting up Rove to be cut loose, not kept around? Near-pathological loyalty issues aside, what Bush tried to set up today could obviously damage the administration for a very long time. Does Bush really need Rove that badly?

Maybe.

• What I find intriguing is Bush's insistence that "I don't know all the facts. I want to know all the facts." Maybe I'm making too much of this, but this is way more than the "no comment" position feigning respect for the investigation. This is a positive statement of ignorance. And this also has an immediate political cost: he looks like he's a) covering up, b) spectacularly careless and incompetent, or c) all of the above.

The only other times I've seen presidents personally assert their own ignorance this way: Nixon during Watergate and Reagan during Iran-Contra. Probably why my spidey sense went all tingly.

If Bush drops this line in the next few days, then it was probably just something he blurted clumsily to try to make himself sound better. D'oh. Never mind.

But if he doesn't drop it -- if Bush keeps hyping his own ignorance, and he's willing to pay the high price of wearing a dunce hat in public -- then let's step back and look at the big picture.

Patrick Fitzgerald is a former mob prosecutor, one of the guys who took on the Gambino family. He's no stranger to conspiracy investigations.

Which leads me to wonder: why assume he's only after the specific leaker? The bigger question has always been: who knew that the leak was being made? Whose idea was it?

If what we're hearing about a memo getting handed around Air Force One and a subpoena for the plane's phone records is correct, that's the open question, one Fitzgerald is keenly pursuing.

Given how inseparable Rove and Bush have always been... you can see how this whole thing could evolve into "what did the president know and when did he know it," and quick. In which case, the Sergeant Shultz card is the only one Bush has: I know nothing.

It worked for Reagan. It worked for Bush's dad as vice-president. Maybe it's Junior's turn.

Is that what we saw today? I have no idea. We'll all find out together.

But if history is any guide, perhaps the more Bush publicly proclaims his ignorance, the more he's telling us where Fitzgerald's inquiry has started to probe.

One more thought before bed...

Fitzgerald is certainly an interesting investigator for this case. A little background:

The full damage caused by the leak isn't yet knowable (at least without the clearance). But Valerie Wilson's CIA front, Brewster-Jennings, was reportedly tasked with tracking the smuggling of explosive materials in the Middle East, so that crap like the 1993 WTC attack, the embassy bombings in Africa, and 9-11 wouldn't be even worse next time.

(That's the operation apparently shit-canned by this White House for their own political gain. So you can see why the CIA lifers pushed the case for criminal investigation, and why people are throwing the word "treason" around so much.)

The 1993 WTC attack was prosecuted by... Patrick Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald was then assigned to prosecute, yes, the Al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.

Fitzgerald was building a case against Osama Bin Laden five years before 9-11.

This job, one concludes, involved a certain appreciation for intelligence people studying the illicit movement of explosives by terrorists.

If there's a single prosecutor in America who fully understands what the Plame case is about -- a reckless compromise of national security for political interest -- it's this guy. If there's a prosecutor in this country who groks the background and context of the specific operations destroyed by this crime, it's this guy. And if there's a single prosecutor capable of pursuing a conspiracy case no matter where it reaches, it sure seems like it's this guy.

Given a choice between being chased by Patrick Fitzgerald and a pack of hungry zombies... I'm guessing the zombies would look pretty good right about now.