Blogging for Commentary, Jonathan S. Tobin wonders whether the investigation of alleged national security leaks from the Obama administration to the New York Times will lead to the same prosecutorial zealotry that ended Scooter Libby’s public career.
It should be recalled that a few years ago Democrats and liberals were crying bloody murder about the leak of Valerie Plame’s status as a CIA operative by those in the Bush administration who were angry about the lies told by her husband, a former ambassador. The appearance of Plame’s name in a column written by the late Robert Novak set off a federal investigation led by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who was given the full powers of the attorney general, allowing him not only to subpoena and then jail reporters who refused to divulge their sources but to ultimately decide to charge someone who actually did not commit the crime that launched the probe. Richard Armitage of the State Department was the one who dropped Plame’s name to Novak. But rather than fight an uphill battle to jail Armitage, Fitzgerald chose to crucify I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, because his account of a conversation with Tim Russert differed from the recollection of the then host of “Meet the Press.”
The Libby prosecution was a political witch-hunt that did nothing to enhance security or prevent leaks, but it did provide liberals with a great deal of schadenfreude while allowing left-wing Bush administration critics to pose as defenders of national security.
That’s why the possibility that the Libby rules will be applied to some current denizens of the White House may well have some on the right salivating at the prospect of revenge. But conservatives who were rightly opposed to what happened to Scooter Libby should not be hoping for a repeat of the same unfair treatment he suffered.
Instead, what is needed now is what did not happen with the Plame investigation: a probe that will quickly ferret out the truth about the leaks and expose it to the light of day. It should be pointed out that while the motive for both the Plame story and the Obama defense leaks was politics, the two are really not comparable in terms of seriousness.
It was illegal to name a CIA officer in the manner that Plame’s identity was outed. but she was working at a desk in Langley, Virginia, not working undercover in enemy territory. By contrast, the leaks about drone attacks and especially cyber warfare research and decision-making go to the heart of America’s national security.
