California Conservative

In yet another attempt to damage their chances of taking back the House or Senate, 18 House Democrats told President Bush that Alberto Gonzales should appoint a special counsel to investigate the legality of the Bush administration’s eavesdropping program.

“If the effort to prevent vigorous and appropriate investigation succeeds, we fear the inexorable conclusion will be that these executive branch agencies hold themselves above the law and accountable to no one,” wrote the lawmakers, led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, (D-CA), a member of the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees.
———-
The Democrats see “ample precedent” for a special counsel, citing the Justice Department’s appointment of U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. After 22 months of investigation, Fitzgerald indicted the vice president’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for allegedly lying about his role in the disclosure. “Indeed, the allegation of a secret NSA spying program conducting warrantless domestic surveillance of U.S. persons is at least as serious” as the matter Fitzgerald investigated, the Democrats wrote.

A special investigation to determine the legality of the NSA intercept is a facade. The only way to make a final determination is by getting the Supreme Court to rule on the issue. All the ‘investigations’ in the world won’t resolve the issue.

Democrats have shown their hand by holding up Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation as what they prefer. Let’s remember that Fitzgerald didn’t find wrongdoing on the initial concern of his investigation. That should’ve stopped the investigation dead in its tracks. Instead, Fitzgerald didn’t follow the mandate given him by the Justice Department.

If Fitzgerald had wanted to investigate the White House on whether they violated the IIPA or the Espionage Act, he would’ve started by asking all of the reporters that said that Plame’s identity was common knowledge to national security writers.

Similarly, all that this ‘investigation’ is intended to do is to criminalize policy differences. Democrats don’t have to say anything when the word investigation is used, and rumors swirl about possible charges. All they have to do is sit back and talk about how worried they are at ‘possible improprieties’ that the current Administration might be involved in.

The truth is that the NSA intercept program is keeping us safer because we’re intercepting AQ’s international communications. That’s the dirty little secret that Democrats don’t want highlighted.

Cross-post at LetFreedomRing

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 10:37 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Liberals, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.