The chief of staff for Vice President of the US, Dick Cheney, was indicted on five counts last Friday, 28 October 2005.  The indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby was handed down by Patrick Fitzgerald, a federal prosecutor appointed by President Bush two years ago.  During this entire investigatory process, President Bush and his administration cooperated fully with Fitzgerald.  In addition, once the indictment was handed down, there was no attack on Fitzgerald by the President or by his staff.  Even those who are very critical of Bush affirm that the President and his administration were exemplary in their cooperation with Fitzgerald’s investigation.  Because this is so significant, I am devoting much of this week’s edition of Issues in Perspective to an analysis of this indictment.

• First, some background and specifics about the indictment.  In December 2003 President Bush appointed Fitzgerald as a special prosecutor to investigate whether Bush administration officials had violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 by leaking the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame.  The Plame affair began with the implication by Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, that Vice President Cheney had sent him on a mission to Niger in 2002 to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy nuclear weapons material.  Saddam’s attempt to purchase this yellow cake ore was one of the justifications for war with Iraq.  British intelligence also believed that this attempt had been made and the CIA’s review of the matter—including Wilson’s trip—emphatically did not suggest otherwise.  In a July 2003 New York Times op-ed piece, Wilson attempted to undercut the administration’s claims about Iraq and Niger, noting that Cheney’s office has “asked a serious question.  I was asked to help formulate the answer.”  Joseph Wilson lied to the press about the nature of his involvement in the Niger mission and about the intelligence that it produced.  The truth is that Wilson was not chosen by Cheney’s office.  His wife, a CIA analyst working at the agency’s Northern Virginia headquarters, was involved in getting him the assignment.  It was at that point that someone in the administration told columnist Bob Novak about Plame’s role in selecting her husband for the Niger mission.  The Justice Department then tapped Fitzgerald to serve as a “special counsel” to investigate administration officials who might have been involved in leaking this information about Plame to Novak.  The charge was whether someone had “outed” a “covert” CIA agent, which would be a federal crime.  Fitzgerald discovered at least as early as January 2004 that a federal law—the Intelligence Identities Protection Act—had not been violated.  We still do not know who told Bob Novak about Valerie Plame.  Instead of closing shop, Fitzgerald sought an expansion of his mandate and has now charged “Scooter” Libby with one count of obstruction of justice, two of making false statements and two of perjury.  They carry a combined possible sentence of 30 years in jail.  The indictment itself claims that Libby learned about Valerie Plame first from a senior State Department official, then from a CIA officer, and then from Cheney himself, who learned it from George Tenet.  Libby had argued that he had talked with reporters about Plame, which included Tim Russert of NBS, Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time.  Hence, Fitzgerald subpoenaed these journalists and there ensued a yearlong fight over the protection of confidential sources.  That is the summary of the salient facts of this indictment.

• Second, how serious is this indictment?  Before the indictment was handed down, many in the media and members of the Democratic Party were hurling charges of conspiracy and cover-up.  Senator Frank Lautenberg asserted that Karl Rove was guilty of treason.  Howard Dean talked of a “huge cover-up.”  Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York said:  “The CIA leak issue is only the tip of the iceberg.  This is looking increasingly like a White House conspiracy aimed at misleading our country into war.”  Nadler continued, “There is mounting evidence that there may have been a well-orchestrated effort by the president, the vice president and other top White House officials to lie to Congress in order to get this support for the Iraq war.”  As David Brooks has so clearly stated, “One may wish it, but that doesn’t make it so.  We do know that the White House lied about who was involved in calling reporters.  But as for traitorous behavior, huge cover-ups and well-orchestrated conspiracies—that’s swamp gas.”  Fitzgerald made a forceful and careful presentation of one individual who allegedly committed a crime.  There is no “cancer on the presidency,” to use John Dean’s characterization of the Nixon White House in 1973.  Tragically, what the opposition and some in the media have done is to stretch, distort and exaggerate.  Fitzgerald did not find evidence to “prove a broad conspiracy to out a covert agent for political gain.  He did not find evidence of wide-ranging criminal behavior.  He did not even indict the media’s ordained villain, Karl Rove.”  The Bush administration cooperated thoroughly and completely with Fitzgerald.  The President has publicly praised him for his thoroughness.  There is no cover-up.  Patrick Fitzgerald is a decent and well-respected lawyer, who did his job admirably and commendably.  There was no violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.  There was no conspiracy deeply ingrained in the Bush administration.  One man was indicted for lying and obstruction of justice as he sought to defend the administration against the political attack of Joseph Wilson.  One does not have to agree with Libby’s actions, but one can at least understand why he was seeking the information about Wilson, his wife and his role in the Niger affair.  The media frenzy is over, but the political hay is still being cut.

• Third, the Fitzgerald investigation left unanswered the two most basic questions of the entire affair:  (1) who told the columnist Robert Novak that the wife of Joseph Wilson was a CIA operative and (2) was her exposure a crime?  Fitzgerald apparently knows but will not reveal Novak’s source.  Fitzgerald has charged Libby with lying to FBI agents and the grand jury about his actions.  No charge was brought about whether he had broken the law by discussing Mrs. Wilson’s identity with three reporters.  Fitzgerald said that he simply could not determine whether Libby had violated federal law, namely the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or, more broadly, the simple disclosure of classified information.  So, what we have is another example of a special counsel going beyond his original charge and indicting someone—in this case Scooter Libby—with a technical violation of something.  Justice Robert Jackson once wrote:  “Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.  With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone.”  Fitzgerald, an honest and sterling federal prosecutor, got an indictment, but never answered the critical questions for which he was appointed special counsel.  There seems to be something wrong with that.

See David B. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey, “No More Special Counsels,” Washington Post (30 October 2005), Douglas Jehl, New York Times (29 October 2005), Wall Street Journal editorial (29 October 2005), New York Times editorial (29 October 2005) and David Brooks editorial, New York Times (30 October 2005).

The nation of Iran is a genuine threat to any semblance of peace in the Middle East.  Most recently, the new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad publicly stated that “As the imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map.”  The imam he was quoting was Ayatollah Khomeini.  He spoke these incendiary words to 4,000 students gathered for a conference on “The World Without Zionism.”  He then added his own words, “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury.” 

Why did Ahmadinejad make such vitriolic statements?  He was, first of all, the hand-picked leader of Iran by the ruling clerics of that troubled nation.  But there are other certain disturbing facts that add to his clout in the world of Islam.  Iran has nuclear weapons and all the efforts of the US, Britain, France, Germany and the International Atomic Energy Agency have failed to halt the development of these weapons.  Further, Iran is now wealthy again due to the soaring oil prices.  The US has neutralized Iran’s historic enemy Iraq, and China and Russia have made it very clear that they will block any attempt to level UN sanctions against Iran.  It would seem that Ahmadinejad is immune from any accountability. 

Ahmadinejad’s comments about Israel are reprehensible, dangerous and moronic.  He represents an established government in the Middle East.  Israel is not going to go away.  He represents the failed polices of several generations since Israel was created in 1948.   What Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and other Muslim nations have done is accept the fact of Israel’s existence.  Further, Iran represents the most radical of all Middle Eastern nations.  But those nations forget one arguable and incontrovertible fact:  Almighty God has a covenant with Israel and if you bless them He will bless you; if you curse them, He will curse you.  Iran’s Ahmadinejad has just crossed that line.  He is calling for the extermination of an established nation state—Israel—but also a nation inhabited by people that are the “apple of God’s eyes.”  He will not turn a deaf ear to Ahmadinejad’s vitriol.

See New York Times editorial (29 October 2005) and news article by Steven Weisman, same newspaper (28 October 2005).

One of the more difficult issues colleges and universities often face is how to evaluate high school courses and their legitimacy for college preparation.  Most students have no difficulty, especially if there are no accreditation problems with the high school.  However, there is a growing problem with courses taught from a Christian perspective.  Allow me to explain:

• In the state of California, the University of California (UC) has been especially critical of accepting certain courses taught from a Christian perspective.  For example, at the Calvary Christian School in Murietta, California, school leaders are seeking a positive review from UC for several of its new classes.  Sue Wilbur, the university’s director of undergraduate admissions, rejected three of them as insufficiently rigorous.  Calvary officials contested the decision but UC has not budged.  So, Calvary has filed a discrimination suit in district court.  One proposed class, “Christian Morality in American Literature,” included readings from Mark Twain, Stephen Crane and Nathaniel Hawthorne.  UC judged it unworthy because it "does not offer a non-biased approach to the subject matter.”  This is rather strange because previously UC had deemed public school courses, “Feminine Perspectives in Literature” ands “Ethnic Experiences in Literature,” as acceptable.  Further, a history class from Calvary, “Christianity’s Influence in America,” was rejected as “too narrow” and “not consistent with the empirical historical knowledge generally accepted in the collegiate community.”  It covers the founding of the nation, abolition, the civil rights movement and the fall of communism, and the role that Christianity played in each.  Again, it seems bizarre to reject this course when it has already accepted the rather narrowly focused public school classes, “Modern Irish History” or “Armenian History.”  

• Science classes offer another example of this incredible double standard.  Any school in California that seeks to teach biology and physics using one of the two biggest Christian textbooks now in circulation will be rejected.  Use of these texts is not “consistent with the viewpoints and knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community.”  The physics textbook is rejected, not because it does not cover all the standard physics material admirably and capably.  Rather, it is rejected because each chapter begins with a Bible verse. 

• Finally, in the “helpful hints” provided by UC system to high school students, the guide reads, “Religion and ethnic courses are acceptable . . . as long as they . . . do not include among its (sic) primary goals the personal religious growth of the student.”  What exactly does that mean?  No one seems to know, but UC seems to, and they will not accept courses that include “personal growth.”

This incredible state of affairs in California points clearly to a double standard in the state university system.  UC declares that we flatly rule on all courses acceptable for admission in the UC system.  Meet the standard or you will risk never being admitted to the UC system.  The above examples point to how absurd this system really is.  It is a double standard that defies logic, while it manifests a clear double standard.

See Naomi Schaefer Riley in the Wall Street Journal (28 October 2005).