When the story of the leak broke in September (Novak's story ran in July), Bush feigned cooperation with a Department of Justice probe. Bush did what he does best: lied with a straight smirk. That is, he actually told a roomful of reporters, "I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administrative official. This is a large administration and there's a lot of senior officials." ...Now, months later, Attorney General John Ashcroft has recused himself from the probe and turned it over to a Chicago-based investigator.
And yet, for the three months that Ashcroft sat on the case, things had been allowed to go on as they always had with this administration. A castrated press dutifully files press releases as news stories, accepting denials of criminality by the White House staff. Clearly, something is rotten in Denmark, and no doubt Rove and Cheney are slithering around the back cubicles of the Executive Office Building like Shakespearean villains looking for fall guys.
It is time for Bush's own John Dean to level with him, to tell him in no uncertain terms that there's a cancer on his presidency and it is growing. More to the point, there's a criminal loose in the White House, a person (or persons) so dangerous that they would gladly jeopardize national security for short-term political gain.
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