Fitzgerald The Fisherman

It looks as though special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has the instincts of a fisherman. According to the Washington Post, there are more fish being snagged from the WH than previously thought. The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case. In addition to the people we know about already, prosecutors have also questioned: former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street. In doing so, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked not only about how CIA operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked but also how the administration went about shifting responsibility from the White House to the CIA for having included 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Africa, an assertion that was later disputed. Not only should this article from The Post worry King George and the rest of his crime family, but they will also have to take notice that one of the largest newspapers in the nation, The LA Times in an editorial, came right out and accused them of being involved in a coverup. What starts out looking like a small, isolated incident gradually reveals itself to be part of a larger abuse of power. Meanwhile, an unraveling coverup adds new elements. Is that happening now with the scandal over White House leaks of the identity of a CIA agent? There are those who are claiming the scandal is decreasing more and more each day as we learn more about it. But as the LAT goes on to say: We don't buy it. However they came to learn about this juicy factoid, people in the Bush administration misused an intelligence secret to discredit a critic of its Iraq policy. And outing Plame, whether illegal or not, did harm to our national security. Plame may work in Langley, Va., but she worked with others who work in more dangerous locales. You only need to imagine how Republicans would have treated such a leak in the Clinton administration to dismiss their protestations that it's all no big deal. It's a good bet that there has already been some lying under oath. One theory about the puzzling tenacity and ferocity of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald — why he is sending journalists to jail for refusing to provide information he already has about an activity that probably wasn't even a crime by people other than the ones he is persecuting — is that he's switched his attention from the leak itself to perjury by White House officials who were asked about it earlier in the investigation. [SNIP] Why didn't Bush two years ago just ask Karl Rove and a few others in the administration whether they had leaked Plame's identity to Bob Novak and the others? Why doesn't he ask Rove now? Is it because he knows the answer? Or because he doesn't want to have to fire Rove? For a man who is a self-described man of God and claims that God speaks directly to him, he obviously hasn't spoken with Him in a long while. Either that or he just doesn't like the words he is hearing either Devine or from the people. As the LAT ends its' editorial The coverup, in short, is going well.