http://www.alternet.org/stories/48615/How to Make the White House Come Clean About Plame ConspiracyBy Elizabeth de la Vega, Tomdispatch.com. Posted March 1, 2007.
Libby's trial has raised more questions than it has answered. It's time for a full-scale congressional hearing to hold the Bush administration accountable.- snip -
No criminal investigation, and certainly no criminal trial, is ever going to illuminate these White House machinations. In addition, as significant as the criminal issues that arise from the circumstances of the CIA leak may be -- and they are significant -- whether any members of the administration violated any federal statutes in conducting their attack on Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame has never been the most important issue raised by this whole tawdry affair.
The paramount issue is one of abuse of power by our highest executive branch officials and their stable of White House staffers, lobbyists, Republican operatives and other surrogates. The criminal justice system was never intended by the framers of the Constitution to be the sole, or even primary, means of investigating and redressing what the late Congresswoman from Texas Barbara Jordan described during the Watergate investigations as "the misconduct of public men." On the contrary, it is Congress that is both entitled and obligated to oversee the conduct of the Executive Branch.
So yes, the trial of Scooter Libby has raised as many questions as it has answered, but we need not wait for the President and Vice President to answer them; nor should we wait for the outcome of any further criminal investigation. What is needed is a full-scale congressional hearing by the House Oversight Committee on Government Reform.
Representative Henry Waxman (D. Ca.), the chair of the committee, has subpoena power and can subpoena telephone records, meeting notes, daily calendars, memos, and a host of key players whose testimony was not legally relevant in the Libby trial, but who obviously have intimate knowledge of the entire CIA leak case and cover-up. These figures would include Karl Rove, Richard Armitage, lobbyist Ken Duberstein, Colin Powell and Stephen Hadley among others.
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Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience. During her tenure, she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Chief of the San Jose Branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. Her pieces have appeared in the Nation Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and Salon. She writes regularly for Tomdispatch.com. She is the author of United States v. George W. Bush et al. She may be contacted at ElizabethdelaVega@Verizon.net.
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