'Plamegate' Strikes Again; Bush Abuses Privilege

What did Dick Cheney know about Plamegate and when did he know it?

That's what a congressional committee is trying to get to the bottom of, if President Bush would stop exerting that pesky executive privilege.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said today that Bush is misusing his executive privilege in more ways than one.

The president made a "legally unprecedented and an inappropriate use of executive privilege" when he told Attorney General Michael Mukasey to withhold Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's interview with Vice President Cheney over who leaked Valerie Plame's name to the press, the committee said.

In a draft bipartisan report circulated by committee leaders today, the panel accuses Bush of going outside the legal limits to keep Cheney's testimony from the panel earlier this year. Congress wants to know exactly what Cheney's role in the leak was.

The committee, headed up by Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Ranking Republican Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, previously subpoenaed documents in relation to the leak of the identity of the former CIA agent. It launched its investigation into the leak in March 2007.

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PD toolbar!Waxman and his committee undoubtedly have about had it with Bush not letting members of his administration testify before Congress. In July, Waxman said on the Plame affair: "If the vice president did nothing wrong, what is there to hide?"

"At its core, the doctrine of executive privilege is intended to preserve the ability of the President to receive confidential advice from the President's closest advisors," the report says. "In the case of the FBI interview with the Vice President, there is no legal basis - or precedent - for asserting executive privilege in a situation like this. The Vice President had no reasonable expectation of confidentiality regarding the statements he made to Mr. Fitzgerald and the FBI agents."

The report also notes that Fitzgerald himself even said "there were no agreements, conditions, and understandings between the Office of Special Counsel or the Federal Bureau of Investigation and either the President or Vice President regarding the conduct and use of the interview or interviews."

It also says there is absolutely no precedent for holding recaps of presidential conversations given to third parties are covered by executive privilege, nor are communications between vice presidents and their staff about vice presidential decision-making.

There are a lot of other arguments Mukasey and the administration made as to why they couldn't turn over Cheney's interview and other documents - none of them hold water, according to the committee.

The purpose of the committee's probe of Plamegate is focusing on three questions: 1) How did such a "serious violation of our national security" occur, and did someone knowingly leak the information?; 2) Did the White House take the appropriate investigative and disciplinary steps after the breach occurred, to punish "the leakers?"; 3) What changes in White House procedures are necessary to prevent future leaks and/or violations of our national security from occurring?; and 4) whether White House officials complied with requirements governing the handling of classified information.

Waxman also released a separate report Tuesday, saying the president's assertion of executive privilege in the committee's investigation into recent climate change and Clean Air Act decisions is "wrong and an abuse of the privilege." The panel wants access to the more than 2,000 pages of documents being denied to them by Environmental and Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson, and Susan Dudley, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the White House Office of Management and Budget.

The panel is probing whether Bush and his staff complied with The Clean Air Act in overruling Johnson on two decisions: 1) preventing California and other states from reducing greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles and 2) adopting new ozone air quality standards inconsistent with those recommended by EPA scientific experts.

Both reports will be considered by the full committee next week.


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