The Sandspur

Issue date: 11/4/05 Section: Opinions

Media Credit: Brian Hernandez

It's lonely at the top. Since I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby (what a fantastic name) was indicted for leaking the name of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame after a two-year investigation, the focus has only been placed on the supposed perpetrator as a byproduct. The real focus is on President Bush. I have been reading the news. I have been following the story. I have read the stories about the charges and the indictment. However, in all of those stories, not once did I see anything about George Bush revealing Plame's identity, and not once did I see anything about George Bush trying to cover it up. In fact, not once did I see proof that George Bush knew anything about the situation until it was too late.

Why, then, is it that almost every story I read eventually turns to how it will affect George Bush's presidency? Editorials are flying about the connection between Libby's actions and the war in Iraq. Polls are circulating about whether or not Bush should resign.

Let's be reasonable for just a minute. Logic suggests that the person convicted of a crime should be the person who is punished for the crime. That is always how I understood the legal system. How, then, does that relate to George Bush?

Bush has not shown any signs that he knew about or was involved in the issue of covering up the leak. And why should he be? Why would he even need to know about it? It is likely, given the circumstances and given political strategy that anyone who was involved in this scandal would not even want to tell the president.

Plausible deniability goes a long way. The more people that know a secret, the higher the risk that that secret will get out eventually-especially if one of those people is a figure as public as the president of the United States.

This is not a situation like Nixon's. First of all, President Bush is not being accused of aiding and abetting the cover-up. As I said, there is really no clear evidence that the president was involved at all. There is a fair chance that he did not even know about it. Also, this is a completely different kind of crime. Nixon's misdeeds involved trespassing and invasion of privacy in order to unethically gain information about his opponent to give him the upper hand in the election.

That is quite different than the vice president's chief of staff leaking the name of a CIA agent and then later denying it. The main difference between Nixon's situation and Libby's situation is just that: Nixon's situation was about Nixon, and Libby's situation is about Libby.

Continued...

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