Thursday, October 02, 2003
Some differences between The Plame Affair and Whitewater
1. With the Plame Affair, there's a prima facie case that a crime had been committed. Revealing the identity of an intelligence operative is a felony. Not so with Whitewater. There, investigation was needed to determine whether a crime had been committed.
2. With the Plame Affiar, the national security is involved. Plame worked as an operative, and worked in the WMD field. Not so with Whitewater, a decade-old failed real estate speculation.
3. With Whitewater, there was never any sense to it. That's why the story kept changing. Everyone knew that whatever Bill Clinton cared about, it wasn't making money in real estate. (When we got to Monica, there was a story that made sense at last, but that was several years down the line, and had nothing to do with the real estate deal that sparked the initial investigation.)
In The Plame Affair, by contrast, the motivation of the Bush administration is quite straightforward: to intimidate whistleblowers by ruining their careers. Anne Gerhart of WaPo has a real thumbsucker trying to "puzzle out" the logic of the crime (not "leak," crime).
Could it just possibly be intimidation—not just of whistleblowers in the intelligence community, but whistle blowers in Plame's field, the WMD community? After all, with North Korea and Iran posing proliferation issues—and most of our strength tied down in Iraq—the administration has every incentive to keep very tight control of WMD intelligence. (They may have concluded that the lesson of Iraq was not that the intelligence was bad, but that the story broke.)
4. With Whitewater, there was an entire quasi-journalistic cottage industry and meme tranmission apparatus funded—note that word—by the right-wing (Scaife, et al.) dedicated to keeping the story before the public by constantly generating scandal. There is no VWRC in The Plame Affair.
5. With Whitewater, the regular press (especially the Times) brought the memes transmitted by the into the mainstream. There is no equivalent to the VWLC in The Plame Affair.
6. In Whitewater, the "independent" counsel statute was in force. Not so with The Plame Affair. For the crime to be investigated properly, and for justice to be done, professionals in both the criminal justice system (John Dion, a 30-year career prosecutor at DOJ) and the press will have to be allowed to do their jobs, will have to do them, and will have to be seen to do them.
7. Whitewater was never genuine grounds for impeachment; it was not a "high crime." The Plame Affair, since it involves both the national security and the commission of a felony, is.
8. In Whitewater, the elected President was a Democrat, and the government was divided. In The Plame Affair, the President is a Republican, and all three branches of government are in Republican hands.
2. With the Plame Affiar, the national security is involved. Plame worked as an operative, and worked in the WMD field. Not so with Whitewater, a decade-old failed real estate speculation.
3. With Whitewater, there was never any sense to it. That's why the story kept changing. Everyone knew that whatever Bill Clinton cared about, it wasn't making money in real estate. (When we got to Monica, there was a story that made sense at last, but that was several years down the line, and had nothing to do with the real estate deal that sparked the initial investigation.)
In The Plame Affair, by contrast, the motivation of the Bush administration is quite straightforward: to intimidate whistleblowers by ruining their careers. Anne Gerhart of WaPo has a real thumbsucker trying to "puzzle out" the logic of the crime (not "leak," crime).
Could it just possibly be intimidation—not just of whistleblowers in the intelligence community, but whistle blowers in Plame's field, the WMD community? After all, with North Korea and Iran posing proliferation issues—and most of our strength tied down in Iraq—the administration has every incentive to keep very tight control of WMD intelligence. (They may have concluded that the lesson of Iraq was not that the intelligence was bad, but that the story broke.)
4. With Whitewater, there was an entire quasi-journalistic cottage industry and meme tranmission apparatus funded—note that word—by the right-wing (Scaife, et al.) dedicated to keeping the story before the public by constantly generating scandal. There is no VWRC in The Plame Affair.
5. With Whitewater, the regular press (especially the Times) brought the memes transmitted by the into the mainstream. There is no equivalent to the VWLC in The Plame Affair.
6. In Whitewater, the "independent" counsel statute was in force. Not so with The Plame Affair. For the crime to be investigated properly, and for justice to be done, professionals in both the criminal justice system (John Dion, a 30-year career prosecutor at DOJ) and the press will have to be allowed to do their jobs, will have to do them, and will have to be seen to do them.
7. Whitewater was never genuine grounds for impeachment; it was not a "high crime." The Plame Affair, since it involves both the national security and the commission of a felony, is.
8. In Whitewater, the elected President was a Democrat, and the government was divided. In The Plame Affair, the President is a Republican, and all three branches of government are in Republican hands.
