WSJ Extends GOP "Criminalizing Politics" Defense to CIA Tapes
It was only a matter of time before the conservative chattering classes extended the Republicans' perpetual "criminalization of politics" defense to the exploding CIA tapes scandal. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal obliged, claiming the Justice Department's probe into the spy agency's destruction of detainee interrogation videos was the equivalent of "criminalizing the CIA." Following the script from the Tom Delay, Valerie Plame outing, U.S. attorneys purge and other Republicans scandals, the Journal's contortion is just the latest right-wing effort to recast potential conservative criminality as mere political disagreement.
In a nutshell, the mushrooming CIA tapes imbroglio focuses on at least two potential crimes. The first, simply put, is a matter of torture. That is, did CIA interrogators operating in so-called black sites violate American law and international agreements by torturing Al Qaeda detainees through the use of waterboarding and other supposed "enhanced interrogation techniques?" The second, of course, involves the cover-up. Did personnel within the CIA and the Bush administration commit obstruction of justice or other crimes by destroying the video recordings of the interrogations?
But in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the true scandal is portrayed as a liberal jihad against CIA agents themselves. Despite past warnings to the agency from Congressional leaders such as Jane Harman and White House legal advisors (including of all people, Alberto Gonzales) not to destroy the tapes, the CIA in 2005 did just that. For the WSJ, the resulting outcry over the prospect that torture was used in the name of the American people - and then allegedly concealed - is just another witchhunt:
"So here we go again, ringing up CIA agents who thought they were acting in good faith to keep the country safe."
With no sense of irony, the Journal proclaimed the CIA tapes investigation belonged in Congress and not in the hands of the Justice Department, despite Attorney General Michael Mukasey's initial refusal to provide essential documents from Capitol Hill. More comic still, the editorial saw "a saving grace" that "Mr. Durham will at least have some political supervision," unlike PlameGate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who, it claimed, "took sides in what was essentially a political fight over the Iraq war."
Then, almost on cue, the Wall Street Journal took up the GOP "criminalization of politics" talking point, adapting it from the wrong-doing of the Republican Party's leading lights to the CIA:
But now, between the interrogations dustup and the manufactured outrage over wiretapping, our political class is again moving back toward vilification of the spooks who might actually do us some good in the war on terror.
These columns have often criticized the CIA for its politicization, especially during the Bush years. But the main offenders on that score have been the agency's analytic divisions -- the men and women who interpret intelligence, not the agents who gather it. For evidence, look no further than the likes of former official Paul Pillar, the handling of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, and the parade of damaging leaks about "top secret" government programs to track and monitor terrorists and their finances. These are the rogues who need more supervision by elected leaders or their appointees.
Yet instead, we are now unleashing prosecutors against agents who on the evidence so far were acting not to pursue some political agenda but to defend the nation against its most ruthless enemies. We hope Mr. Durham understands the difference, and that we don't cripple the very spooks we need to fight the war on terror.
(Thus, the Wall Street Journal joined the ranks of failed Bush labor nominee Linda Chavez and Fox News' John Gibson in wanting to give medals for those helping thwart the supposed "anti-Bush cabal" at the CIA.)
The U.S. Attorneys Purge
We have, of course, been here before. Just this past summer, the comical conservative cry of "criminalizing politics" was on display during the scandal over the Bush administration's unprecedented purge of U.S. attorneys. The hypocrisy reached its pinnacle with the Congressional testimony of Gonzales aide Monica Goodling in May.
Appearing on PBS New Hour, Republican California Congressman Dan Lundgren was only too happy to offer the criminalization of politics ruse for Monica Goodling and Alberto Gonzales alike. Just moments after acknowledging Goodling's admission of violating civil rules and Hatch Act prohibitions ("she did admit that she made mistakes in that regard"), Lundgren returned the script:
"Let me just say this -- and I think it's an important point -- there is too much of a tendency in this environment to try and criminalize political disputes. That's been the effort here. They have found no basis for criminality, so the suggestion is now a vote of no confidence. Who knows what is next?"
But it was Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) who beat Lundgren to the punch, defending Goodling in the opening moments of her testimony. Pence, who famously compared his March visit to a Baghdad market to shopping in his home state of Indiana, trotted out the tired GOP talking point for her:
"I'm listening very intently. I'm studying this case. And I want to explore this issue of illegal behavior with you. Because it seems to me so much of this -- and even something of what we've heard today in this otherwise cordial hearing -- is about the criminalization of politics. In a very real sense, it seems to be about the attempted criminalization of things that are vital to our constitutional system of government, namely the taking into consideration of politics in the appointment of political officials within the government."
Later that morning, of course, Monica Goodling admitted her own lawbreaking and suggested that Attorney General Gonzales may have obstructed justice in trying to coach her. Acknowledging that "I believe I crossed the line, but I didn't mean to", Goodling clarified for all why she sought immunity in the first place:
"I do acknowledge that I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions, and I regret those mistakes."
So much for the claim of Jim Sensenbrenner that "There ain't no fish in this water."
Tom Delay
GonzoGate, however, is far from the first use of the "criminalizing politics" defense by Republicans and their conservative amen corner. Consider the case of Tom Delay. As early as April 2005, a furious Delay declared of the ethic charges swirling around him, "Democrats have made clear that their only agenda is the politics of personal destruction and the criminalization of politics." Amazingly, that comment came before Delay's own October 2005 indictment in Texas for money laundering in association with his Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC).
Unsurprisingly, the conservative echo chamber rushed to Delay's defense and magnified his talking point. Days after Delay's indictment by District Attorney Ronnie Earle, Robert Novak penned a column titled "Criminalizing Politics", concluding:
"Democrats are ecstatic. The criminalization of politics may work, even if the case against DeLay is as threadbare as it looks."
Plamegate and Scooter Libby
No discussion of Robert Novak and the Republican redefinition of GOP crime as everyday political disagreements could be complete without a look the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. While neither Karl Rove nor others were ever charged with the technical and narrowly defined offense of revealing the identity of Valerie Plame to Robert Novak and others, Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby was convicted by jury on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice. But for the familiar goose-steppers of the conservative ascendancy, Libby the felon too was a victim of the criminalization of politics.
The usual cavalcade of apologists for Republican law-breaking swarmed to Libby's defense. With his looming indictment in the fall of 2005, Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison compared Libby to Martha Stewart, and offered a new variant of the Delay sound bite, the "perjury technicality." Hutchison said she hoped that:
"That if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."
Hutchison, of course, had plenty of company in offering the criminalization of politics canard in the CIA leak case. On October 14, 2005, Bill Kristol complained, "I am worried about what happens to the administration if Rove is indicted," adding, "I think it's the criminalization of politics that's really gotten totally out of hand." In succeeding days, Kristol's Fox News colleagues Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Stuart Varney and Chris Wallace joined the chorus singing from the RNC's criminalization of politics hymnal. On October 24th, Kristol took to the pages of the Weekly Standard to denounce a supposed Democratic strategy of "criminalizing conservatives." When Libby was later convicted, the Wall Street Journal editorial page called for a pardon. The WSJ cited grave dangers if the Libby verdict were to stand: "perhaps the worst precedent would be normalizing the criminalization of policy differences."
Things used to be different. There was a time when Republicans were able to place the national interest above partisan advantage. During Watergate, after all, it was Tennessee Republican Senator and later Reagan chief-of-staff Howard Baker who asked the defining question of all presidential scandals, "what did the president know and when did he know it." And it was Fred Thompson, then a Republican attorney for the Senate Watergate committee, who asked Nixon aide Alexander Butterield the question that unraveled the entire cover-up:
"Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?"
Fast forward 30 years. The "criminalization of politics" defense has been an arrow in the Republican quiver since the mid-1980's. And Fred Thompson? The future Tennessee Senator turned actor is running for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. And, oh yeah, Fred Thompson was on the advisory committee for the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust.
Thanks for the great analysis. I had heard that "criminalizing politics" crap before, but didn't realize the GOP used to explain away virtually every crime they commit.