Another Subpoena Defied

Tsk, tsk, President Bush, for grounding another one of your administration officials from testifying about Plamegate.

Bush has once again asserted executive privilege to prevent Attorney General Michael Mukasey from having to comply with a House Government Oversight Committee subpoena for material on the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. Panel Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., held off a contempt vote for Mukasey, but not for too long. He last week told Karl Rove he couldn't testify, either.

Waxman's committee wants documents of FBI interviews of Vice President Dick Cheney over the Plame affair. It also would like to see documents involving conversations between special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and Cheney, and notes from the 2003 State of the Union address, during which Bush uttered those "16 words" about Saddam Hussein allegedly trying to obtain yellowcake from Niger. Waxman asked for the documents over a year ago, then subpoenaed them when the White House ignored the request.

Waxman rejected Mukasey's suggestion that Cheney's FBI interview on the CIA leak should be protected by the privilege claim - and therefore not turned over to the panel.

"We'll act in the reasonable and appropriate period of time," Waxman, D-Calif., said. This unfounded assertion of executive privilege does not protect a principle; it protects a person ... If the vice president did nothing wrong, what is there to hide?"

(As a side note, I'm in the middle of former White House spokesman' Scott McClellan's book, "What Happened," now, and it's just getting to the juicy parts of exactly what role Cheney may have had in the leak.)

Waxman wrote to Mukasey last week, warning him that if he didn't comply with the subpoena, he would be held in contempt. Saying the committee won't ask for the transcripts of the FBI's interviews with Bush himself over the matter "at this time," "the report of the FBI interview with Vice President Cheney needs to be produced," especially after Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, acknowledged that it's "possible" Cheney told him to disseminate Plame's name to certain members of the press.

"The arguments you have raised for withholding the interview report are not tenable," the letter reads, especially if, at the time of the interview, Cheney knew the conversation could be brought up in a criminal trial. Fitzgerald's letter can be found here.

AP says Mukasey wrote to Bush in a letter dated Tuesday, saying several of the subpoenaed reports summarize conversations between Bush and advisers - direct presidential communications protected by the privilege.

"I am greatly concerned about the chilling effect that compliance with the committee's subpoena would have on future White House deliberations and White House cooperation with future Justice Department investigations," Mukasey wrote. "I believe it is legally permissible for you to assert executive privilege with respect to the subpoenaed documents, and I respectfully request that you do so."