Above the law, in all but name
IN COMMUTING the 30-month jail sentence of convicted perjurer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, President Bush did not technically place himself above the law, since presidential commutations are clearly legal. What he did was to place his administration above accountability, and not for the first time. From the hundreds of signing statements on new laws to his refusal to comply with congressional investigations of the US attorneys' purge and the warrantless wiretapping of US citizens, Bush has acted as though the nation had its chance to hold him accountable, in the 2004 election -- and chose not to.
As long as Congress remained in Republican hands, there were few means by which the public could challenge administration decisions in leading the nation to war in Iraq or in taking extreme measures in confronting terrorism. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson's name, which led to the perjury charges against Libby, was one of those opportunities for holding the administration to account.
The public disclosure of Plame Wilson's identity turned out to have been incidental to the attempt to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former US diplomat. In a now-famous
The 2006 election put Democrats in charge in Congress, but that hasn't stopped the administration from brushing off congressional efforts to make it justify its actions. Two committees have issued subpoenas for testimony and documents in the US attorney firings and wiretapping investigations.
The sacking of nine attorneys last year, all Bush appointees, has the earmarks of a White House-engineered move to punish prosecutors who either brought charges against Republican officeholders or failed to find criminal wrongdoing in allegations of voting fraud by Democrats. Congress deserves to have access to the officials and documents that would indicate whether laws were broken in an effort to politicize the Justice Department. Congress also has a right to more information about the wiretapping program, which, in an earlier form, even John Ashcroft, then attorney general, found to violate citizens' rights.
The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said of the Libby commutation: "Accountability has been in short supply in the Bush administration, and this commutation fits that pattern." Libby's reprieve is the president's prerogative. But an action can be legal and still leave citizens wondering if they truly live in a nation of laws. 