CIA Leak:
A feeding frenzy over the leak of a CIA employee's name has been kept alive for two weeks by Democratic activists and by the news media. Like many "scandals" that have been initially referred to a "tempest in a teapot," it has taken on new life with possibly severe political consequences for President George W. Bush and his administration.
1) There is no sign that Democrats carefully planned this as an "October surprise" one year in advance of the presidential election. Only Sen. Charles Schumer (D.-N.Y.) was raising the leak as a major issue at the beginning in July, and even he had grown silent in recent weeks. The CIA general counsel's office had routinely submitted the leak to the Justice Department for investigation after it occurred in July without anybody's noticing it until NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported it.
2) Nevertheless, the Bush White House was remiss in not anticipating the storm and taking corrective action. That is regarded in Republican ranks as a symptom of a core arrogance that is the greatest political liability of this administration. Even after the storm broke, the White House seemed slow to react. Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan is getting a going-over in private from Republican politicians, but the fault is the lack of any awareness of the danger involved in this story.
3) The Justice Department is now operating at high speeds in its investigation, but that has not deterred Democratic demands for a "special counsel" to take over the inquiry. Democrats claim that is not nearly the burden that statutory "independent counsels" were for both the first Bush and the Clinton Administrations. However, the truth is that Richard Nixon lost control of Watergate when he agreed to Archibald Cox as "special prosecutor."
4) Even if Bush can avoid a special counsel, this is big trouble as long as the issue persists. It is very much in the President's interest to get rid of this issue by making clear that the leak was not calculated and not part of concerted plot to punish retired diplomat Joseph Wilson by exposing his wife as a CIA employee. It will be very hard to do that unless and until the leaker is identified.
5) This is clearly no Watergate, but Democrats want it to appear so-and the call for a special counsel is part of the Democratic effort to make it seem that way. Liberal firebrand Sen. Tom Harkin (D.-Iowa), not known for subtlety, used the exact words of Nixon White House informer John Dean when he declared on the Senate floor that "there is a cancer on the presidency." The Democrats are not interested in hanging some Administration official. They are after George W. Bush.
6) The early response by both the White House and Congressional Republicans-minimizing the whole affair-clearly was unsatisfactory, with the news media in full cry. Efforts by Sen. Pat Roberts (R.-Kan.), Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, to show that the Wilson mission to Niger was a mistake looks like a loser. It is also difficult to get rid of this scandal by alleging that no lives were lost or even endangered.
7) A political side issue for Republicans is the Washington Post story the weekend this story broke in which "a senior administration official" savaged the White House for the CIA leak. There is sound reason to believe this anonymous source was not in the CIA, but no more is known. There are people in the White House who are no less interested in learning the identity of this person than the CIA leaker.
WMD:
An interim report from the team searching Iraq for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) has given more ammunition to Bush's Democratic rivals, while Republicans try to see-and point out-a silver lining.
1) The report states that more time will be needed to conduct a thorough search for WMD in Iraq, but to date, no weapons have been found. Democratic presidential candidates, war opponents, and Democratic congressional leaders have seized on the report as an opportunity to attack President Bush as incompetent or dishonest, and try to wear away public support for the Iraq invasion.
2) Republicans, meanwhile, defend Bush and say that the report tells of signs that Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein was working towards development of WMD, even if no actual weapons have been unearthed.
3) Specifically, Secretary of State Colin Powell points out that the report shows that Hussein was in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 from last November. Politically, though, that does little to mitigate potential harm of this finding-Americans care about actual threats to the U.S. more than enforcing UN edicts.
