GOP Continues To Fine Tune
Prosecution As Political Weapon

By William Finucane

And the new government billboard says: Journalists beware! The smaller print tells newspeople that if they are developing stories for the public that involves the use of any information that has anything to do with a secret source, expect prosecution.

That is the word from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

It is a frontal attack on one of the last places where Americans can get the real truth, especially in this current ideological fiefdom of George W. Bush.

A free press is a horrible handicap for a fascist state. It makes everything that those in power do so complicated. That is because if the president or his minions start out with a lie, they must continue it. Often it becomes difficult to keep all the untruths in any sort of order. So therefore it is far easier to start with the premise that everything is secret from the outset, and anyone who seeks to verify facts or determine the actual truth of a statement or a government position is actually breaking the law, if not committing treason by the very act of questioning the government’s stated word.

Once such a premise is established, one can deliver policy after policy, plan after plan, speech after speech without fear of tripping all over one’s own toes. Goodness knows that with the world as it is now, one cannot be hampered by holding to truth. That would be truly crippling. It’s so much better to reinvent truth by the day or by the week as necessity dictates. Truth does, after all, change constantly, power brokers and bureaucrats would have everyone believe.

Those journalists are therefore a serious menace, always muttering about sticking to the truth. Well, this new dictum ought to help put that to rest.

Oh, Gonzales says the Justice Department will not press charges in all cases. How very reassuring. So, journalists trying to get a look at a so-called secret document or government plan or whatnot needn’t worry at all. Go right ahead, keep looking and when the journalist finds something that should be conveyed to the public, the citizenry, he or she may then risk publishing a story and hope that Mr. Gonzales’ red flag won’t go up.

If the given news story reveals serious contradictions between what the government has told the public and what it is actually doing, or if it reveals direct malfeasance in office, it’s pretty obvious that Gonzales’ "justice department" would prosecute, and given the current right-wing posture of the federal judiciary, it is reasonable to expect that any journalist found guilty at trial can expect little relief upon appeal.

So the miscreant journalist may well get prosecuted and sent to jail, and those Americans who are so anxious to find cradle to grave security with a veneer of polite, political correctness will undoubtedly feel oh so much safer.

It will be easy for such citizens to rationalize that the journalist is a low and despicable individual seeking to smear the exalted leaders of the republic, but it won’t be as easy for those Americans who aren’t afraid of learning why their country is embarking on one course or another, and who aren’t satisfied with hearing only one point of view.

Mr. Gonzales doesn’t seem to have more pressing matters, as odd as that might be, and seems ready to devote his energy to crushing the foot soldiers of the press; that is, the working reporters.

Now he is deciding if he should prosecute the journalist and newspapers involved in the disclosure of a Central Intelligence Agency operative’s name and her marriage to an ambassador, the very same former ambassador who found no truth in the story of Iraq trying to get hold of dangerous fissionable materials to build bombs. The ambassador went from an administration ploy to an administration critic.

Oh, this is important. Journalists who broke this story may have compromised many agents through the entire world. Except the information – the official leaks – emanated from members of the White House crowd it self.

George W. Bush, as president, can – by law – leak information to the press. He

can – by law – commission Vice President Dick Cheney to leak secret documents and the like to one or more journalists under the rationale that such information may be vital to the awareness of the American public, and of course secondarily if such information will help the president’s position.

Bush apparently told the vice president to pass along certain things about the CIA through his right-hand man, I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, who is now standing trial for revealing secret information. He may of course be able to defend himself by showing that his superiors were directly involved in a Machiavellian plot to discredit former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Wilson, who had been sent to Niger to determine if Saddam Hussein’s regime was purchasing ‘yellow cake’ uranium as part of a nuclear weapons program, disappointed the Bush Administration by declaring he saw no evidence of such Iraqi involvement.

The level of disappointment can perhaps be better appreciated by understanding Wilson’s background. In his memoir, ‘The Politics of Truth,’ Wilson himself explains his background in this manner: "For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council…"

Clearly the George W. Bush Administration felt they had a credible envoy, and one with direct links to George Bush, Sr., who might well feel some allegiance to the Bush family. But it turned out that Wilson’s allegiance was to the facts at hand, and his report to the administration and subsequently the American people essentially deflated a key argument for invading Iraq.

Shortly thereafter ‘Scooter’ Libby revealed that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA agent, implying that somehow Wilson might have been following an agenda created by the intelligence agency and thereby discrediting his report. But Valerie Plame wasn’t just a CIA operative, she was what was called a NOC agent; that is, as former CIA official Larry C. Johnson, who left the agency in 1989, explained publicly, a NOC agent works as a "non-official cover operative"

This means, Johnson explained: "...that (Plame) agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she would have been executed…she met with folks who worked in the nuclear industry (in Europe and elsewhere), cultivated sources, and managed spies. She was a national security asset until exposed by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby."

It is presumed that Mr. Gonzales’ investigation of this CIA case will not press Mr. Bush, since he can fall back on the president’s ability to decide what information should be passed to the public despite confidentiality concerns. But ‘Scoother’ remains on the hot seat. Nonetheless, one would think that common sense indicates that any high government official who purposefully, and for political gain, reveals the identify of a NOC agent has crossed the line from politics to treason by undercutting the agent and putting the agent’s life in danger.

But while it’s unlikely Mr. Bush will ever be called to account, either for his own actions, whatever they might have been, or for those of his vice president and other administration officials, there are plenty of other cases where AG Gonzales’ itchy prosecutorial finger can be directed. The possibilities are varied. How about prosecuting US News for breaking information that some large phone companies had given their customer information regarding personal phone calls between Americans to the NSA?

According to many people, that is patently unconstitutional.

First the administration’s backers simply "explain" that it did not listen in on any domestic calls. It just noted the times and duration of calls. Well now, that takes all the sting out of it, doesn’t it? Why it’s just tracing down everybody’s calls until one is found suspicious and only then would the government seek a warrant on the caller or the recipient of the call. This is a Bush Constitutional interpretation. It says a president in the midst in a never-ending war against unknowns has all the Constitutional power to himself and is free to make such determinations.

Not everyone agrees. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., asked for an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission, headed by Kevin Martin. But, no, it was said, it would be impossible to trace what the government’s spy agents are doing because their actions are secret. So in the view of the Bush Administration, no one can check what the National Security Agency did with records from AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth. And Bush is saying nothing at all.

Gonzales might talk – with a lawsuit.

After holding the information for almost a year, the New York Times revealed that the government was tapping domestic calls to any suspicious recipient without getting the prerequisite warrant from the secret court specifically created to turn such warrants. Finally, the newspaper published its piece, having accommodated the Bush Administration for 12 months. Now the administration plans to look into this, possibly charging the Times with publicizing classified material.

This is very rich – it is truly savory – this thought that the attorney general figures he is doing the government’s duty by bringing a world-class newspaper to court and seeking to punish it for finding out and publishing material that many Americans find most disturbing and virtually all agree they needed to know. Here again, a lawsuit from Gozales could be in the offing.

But that could be a wonderful bonanza if it meant that all this material will finally be exposed. That is one reason the government has hesitated with court actions involving situations like this; bringing the issue to court can reveal more than what was known in the first place.

So Gonzales might have to seek some special, secret court in which nothing is relayed to the public. That will, of course, shield the activity from public scrutiny, and conform nicely with the way Mr. Bush prefers to do the nation’s business. If that occurs, it will mean the issue will be prosecuted, but it would not be at all in a real court, but rather the Star Chamber proceedings that George W. Bush seems so fond of resurrecting from history’s dustbin of discredited governmental processes.

Remember, it wouldn’t be a great leap for Gonzales, who has written legal papers forgiving torture and has upheld Bush’s attempt to be above the law through the use of "signing statements" that interpret the Constitution as best suits Bush.

Congress and the Supreme Court are now out of the loop in terms of writing laws and determining their Constitutionality.

Now there is just one there is just one left unbowed of the famous divisions – Estates – that historically provided the checks and balances needed for a democracy; that is, the three Constitutional Estates, Executive, Legislative and Judicial, and the acknowledged Fourth Estate, the press. It is of course the battered and bent but as yet not completed controlled Fourth Estate that is now fighting to wrench the others free from subservience to Bush.

So it isn’t at all surprising that Alberto Gonzales wants dearly to muzzle mass communication. But all is not quite yet quiet.