WASHINGTON, 25 October 2005 — US President George W. Bush yesterday crafted an illusion of normality in the eye of the CIA-leak storm battering the White House which threatens this week to bring down several of his administration’s most trusted power brokers.
Bush faced the cameras after a meeting of his Cabinet, as anxiety coursed through his administration, with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald expected to decide within days whether to indict top officials over the exposure of an under-cover CIA spy.
It was business as usual, as the president detailed the federal government’s response to Hurricane Wilma, which slammed into Florida earlier yesterday, and good humoredly parried questions about Fitzgerald’s intentions.
“I am not going to comment about it. This is a very serious investigation and I haven’t changed my mind on whether I am going to comment on it publicly,” Bush told reporters.
The two men thought to be most at risk from the probe were in the White House Cabinet room as Bush spoke.
Karl Rove, the electoral wizard and White House fixer dubbed “Bush’s brain” and Vice President Dick Cheney’s discrete chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, betrayed no emotion as reporters put Bush on the spot.
No one knows how deep the alleged wrongdoing runs in the White House, and court documents listed on Fitzgerald’s website unveiled last week suggest he may be pursuing a wider probe than first thought.
He is probing allegations that senior Bush administration officials blew the cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame, ostensibly to avenge claims by her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, that Bush aides “twisted” intelligence to justify war in Iraq.
The affair, brewing for more than two years, cuts to the heart of the dubious intelligence used to drive the United States to war in Iraq, a conflict which has now cost nearly 2,000 US lives.
However, Fitzgerald, a hard charging prosecutor who once indicted Osama Bin Laden over the 1993 World Trade Center blast in New York, also could conclude no charges are merited.
A year ago, Bush claimed a mandate for sweeping change by winning a second White House term.
But the latest drama, topping a pile of woes including a stubborn insurgency in Iraq, the Hurricane Katrina debacle and a chaotic nomination campaign for Supreme Court pick Harriet Miers, has left some Bush supporters fearing his presidency is falling apart.
Anyone indicted at the White House would face fierce pressure to resign immediately or at least to take unpaid leave in a bid to limit the damage to Bush’s second term, already beset by plummetting opinion polls.
Rove, who shepherded Bush through Texas politics, his White House campaign in 2000, the fallout from the Sept. 11 strikes in 2001 and a triumphant re-election drive, is viewed as all but indispensible.
“His departure, if compelled by an indictment in the Valerie Plame investigation would be a demoralizing blow to Bush’s prospects for a second term,” wrote commentator Fred Barnes for the latest edition of the influential conservative magazine “The Weekly Standard.”
Bush is already fending off the dreaded “lame duck” label which eventually dogs all second term US presidents, and some analysts believe the CIA-leak affair could be as debilitating to his prospects as the Iran-Contra scandal was to then President Reagan. Others however, insist that even the departure of Rove and Libby would not cripple Bush.
“No White House aide is indispensable,” said Stephen Hess, presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, arguing that while the CIA leak affair is convulsing Washington, it may pass much of the rest of the country by.
Wilson, a former US ambassador to Gabon, was sent to Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims Saddam tried to buy uranium for nuclear bombs but concluded it was doubtful such transfers took place.
The claim still found its way into Bush’s annual State of the Union address a year later, prompting Wilson to unleash a New York Times article in which he warned top US officials may have ignored data which contradicted the case for war.
On July 7, 2003, the White House admitted the Niger claim rested on flawed intelligence, and should never have made it into the speech.
Conservative columnist Robert Novak then reported that “two senior administration officials” told him that Plame, Wilson’s wife, was a CIA operative working on weapons of mass destruction.
