Recall that in September, someone in the Bush White House seems to have outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative because her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV didn't cow-tow to the party line that Saddam had been in the market for uranium in Africa.

The White House charged the Justice Department with getting to the bottom of things (wink, wink) and as yet, nothing has been done. As I have noted here and in WSpeak, this adminstration cares little for the laws it is supposed to uphold, even to the point of defying Congress. Below, I have reprinted a letter from Tom Daschle and Carl Levin complaining about the fact that not only has the White House not cooperated, but is regularly leaking classified information to subvert the investigation. That's amazing!

The Daschle/Levin letter is an interesting read. Here it is:

Monday 22 December 2003

The Honorable John Ashcroft
Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20530

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

On September 29, 2003, we wrote to you and to the President requesting the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the unauthorized disclosure of the identity of an undercover CIA officer. You rejected this request, stating that the Department of Justice would initiate a criminal investigation of this matter instead. However, based on what we have seen to date, it is far from clear that the Administration and your department are truly committed to taking the steps necessary to apprehend the person or persons responsible for this grave national security breach.

More than five months have passed since the first press report disclosed the name of the CIA officer and more than two months since your investigation was initiated. The press reports that you are receiving detailed briefings on the status of this case from the Justice Department employees conducting the investigation. Given your refusal to name a special prosecutor and the fact that you are a political appointee of the President, receiving briefings on an investigation of officials of this Administration creates, at a minimum, the appearance of a conflict of interest.

We believe it is essential that you give our intelligence community personnel, the Congress, and the American people confidence that the Justice Department is thoroughly and aggressively pursuing all leads in this case without concern for its political ramifications. Recognizing that this is an ongoing criminal investigation, we request that you provide us with an overall status of the investigation, including the number of people the Justice Department has interviewed, the number of briefings you have received, the general types of information you are briefed on, what conditions you have placed on the scope of these briefings to ensure the independence of this investigation, and whether you have discussed this case with senior Administration officials outside the Justice Department.

As we wrote in September, we believe it is critical that this matter be investigated as quickly, thoroughly, and as impartially as possible. If, as has been reported, senior Administration officials disclosed this confidential information, they should be prosecuted and, if found guilty, dismissed from their positions of public trust.

An aggressive response in this case is also important in order to deter those who may be tempted in the future to use classified information for their own partisan purposes. Unfortunately, since our September letter, we have seen a continuing pattern of leaks of classified information from the Executive branch. These disclosures include information related to sensitive counter-terrorism intelligence sources and activities related to the war in Iraq. There have been reports that these leaks also have been referred to the Department of Justice for a possible criminal investigation. The continuing unauthorized leaking of classified information to support particular policies is inexcusable. It is endangering the lives of the men and women serving our country and jeopardizing our national security.

Your continuing refusal to name a special counsel, despite the possible involvement of senior Administration officials, and the appearance of a conflict of interest, make it even more imperative that the Congress and the American people be assured that this case is being thoroughly pursued free of partisan influence and you are personally committed to achieving a prompt, successful conclusion. Therefore, we request that you provide us an update on your Department=s efforts in this investigation, the steps you have taken to ensure its independence, and any measures you have implemented to stem the tide of leaks of classified information. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Tom Daschle
U.S. Senate

Carl Levin
U.S. Senate

In true statesmanlike manner, last week, President Bush announced that Germany, France and Russia would be blocked from bidding on rebuilding contracts in Iraq. When a reporter suggested that such a declaration may be against international law, our President responded, "International law? I'd better call my lawyer!" That's amazing!

It is frightening to learn how lawless this administration really is. It scoffs at the law both nationally and internationally. For example, VP Dick Cheney has not produced the documents for which the GAO sued. (Eventually, the GAO gave up and withdrew the suit.) He paid no consequence for his absolute non-cooperation with an arm of the government charged with oversight. Beyond that, Cheney has maintained economic ties to Haliburton for which he has paid no penalty.

Now, flying directly in the face of the will of Congress, the Bush administration is pursuing assination and torture (by following the most tortured interpretations of the letter of the law by "outsourcing" those tasks to other countries or mercenaries) to accomplish its ends in Iraq--an illegal war in itself.

The first amendment was conceived to preserve a healthy, vibrant, diverse political dialogue. It is amazing that an organization such as ABC News, while certainly not censoring speech, blatantly limits access and attention to those IT does not want to hear from.

Dennis Kucinich was absolutely right on Tuesday when he complained to Ted Koppel that the reason he was dismissed by Koppel and the rest of the major media was that he was "inconvenient." He's one more candidate to cover and he presents a whole bunch of nuanced positions that require explanation. That's too much to ask of Koppel and company. They want a dog fight about simple issues--a national, political WWE Smackdown. That's easy to cover--just stick a microphone in the face of the contestants and let the magic happen.

It was interesting to watch the Democratic debate on Tuesday as Koppel wound it down. Kucinich did get to make a final statement, Mosely-Braun was directed to keep it short and save time for Koppel to wrap up, and Sharpton never got to speak! These folks have paid a price for being "inconvenient" but the public has paid a bigger price in the diminution of ideas about how to deal with Iraq, health care, the economy, weapons proliferation and trade. ABC let it be known that you play nice with Koppel or you get your ass kicked. Here's some evidence:


ABC News Pulls Reporter off Kucinich Campaign

For Immediate Release: December 10, 2003
David Swanson, Kucinich for President

The day after Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich took ABC debate moderator Ted Koppel to task for avoiding questions that would be useful to voters in favor of questions about endorsements, money, and polls, ABC pulled its fulltime "embedded" reporter from the Kucinich campaign, a reporter who had been given no warning that such a move was coming and who had discussed at length yesterday with the Kucinich campaign staff her plans and her needs for the coming months.

ABC has reportedly also pulled its reporters from covering the presidential campaigns of Rev. Al Sharpton and Ambassador Carol Mosley-Braun.

This appears to be another instance of what Kucinich criticized at the debate, namely the media trying to pick candidates, rather than letting the voters do so. In a democracy, it should be voters and not pundits or TV networks who narrow the field of candidates.

This move, before any state's caucus or primary, appears based on a belief that viable candidates can be predicted 11 months prior to an election, a belief that flies in the face of the historical record. Time and again candidates dismissed as "fringe" have wound up either with the nomination or with a significant impact on the convention and in the primaries.

This action by ABC, as well as Koppel's comments during the debate, can only serve to disempower Americans, communicating to them that someone other than they is deciding elections and that their votes don't mean much.

This action also seems to conflict with the network's interest in boosting ratings and Koppel's expressed interest in making the debate exciting, given that Kucinich received the loudest applause of the evening.

ABC presumably has no vested interest in discouraging voting or in lowering its ratings. It may, however, have an interest in whether Koppel's prediction of the viability of various candidacies proves true.