Blog For Arizona

(The Other) Dean on the Plame Affair

It is looking increasingly like the Plame Affair may finally be the miscalulation which shakes America out of its complacent acceptance of the criminals residing in our White House. Unlike when the story first broke more than 3 months ago and received scant notice, somehow, this time, the story has rocketed into the public mind. 87% of people think that this is serious matter and 70% think a special prosecutor shold be appointed. The comparisons to Watergate and the paranoia and dirty tricks of Tricky Dick abound in the media. It's just so unjustifiable. Many of Bush's horrible policies won't become disasters for years, so the idiots who believe even the merest utterance from this White House can tell themselves that their "ideology" is right and the horrible results forseen are just liberal media spin.

In this case, being stubbornly resistant to reality is not so easy. Blowing a CIA operative's cover, endangering the lives of many, and compromising American intellegence efforts to work out a political grudge, cannot be judged dispassionately; it crosses too many lines and the damage is too immediate, too potentially grotesque, and far too personal and mean-sprited to pass it off as a policy aimed at the greater good. No matter how you twist it, and no matter who sees it, it is only ugly and hateful and harmful.

John Dean, of Watergate fame, suggests that Ambassador Wilson and Mrs. Plame file a civil suit to help pull down the walls of secrecy the President's men will try to hide behind. Civil discovery can get into some places that even the FBI cannot, or will not, go. Dean suggests intentional infliction of emotional distress as a possible basis. I'm sure there are many others. The question is, whom do you sue when you haven't any idea who leaked, who ordered it, or who tolerated it, or who concealed it? Karl Rove would be an obvious place to start given his rumoured statements that Wilson's wife was 'fair game'. Why not the President, he surely know what was going on in his own Administration? Jones v. Clinton unwisely stripped the President of his immunity to civil suit while in office. Perhaps the Supremes need a chance to reverse their shortsighted decision.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 10/03/2003 11:10:00 AM