64 Million Dollar Questions

Over the weekend I was talking to a friend; actually it was Saturday evening at dinner with my friend who is a business owner. During our dinner I mentioned how all this talk of Karl Rove, President Bush, reporter Novak, and CIA operative Valerie Plame leads me to ask the following questions about this affair:

What does W know? When did he know it?

I told my friend the questions remind me of the same questions asked of another president some thirty or so years ago. Richard Millhouse Nixon. In 1973 Americans wanted to know “What did Nixon know?” and “When did he know it?” regarding the Watergate scandal.

I ask because it’s not about how or why the despicable Rove disclosed the identity of a CIA operative overseas and put her life and the security of the nation in jeopardy. It’s not even about Novak’s sleazy role in this intrigue. It isn’t even about how the administration is trying to minimize this terrible incident, which is a part of the big lie told to get our country into an unnecessary war in Iraq.

It’s about accountability by the President of the United States. It’s about integrity. The president said if he found out someone in the White House was involved in leaking Plame’s name to the press that person would be dismissed. Now he and his people are backing away from that statement by saying the person will be terminated if the act is found to be illegal. There’s even some expert claiming to know just what the president’s meaning was when he made that initial statement. Criminality should not be the standard for dismissal. If you can’t trust the word of the president, whom can you trust?

I told my friend during our dinner discussion I doubt anyone else is asking the same questions or if anyone who is will ask our president just what he knew and when he knew it. As far as being able to escape close scrutiny and being the “Teflon” president George W. makes Ronald Reagan look like a piker in this regard. This situation is more insidious than the Watergate scandal or the Clinton /Lewinski debacle because no lives were lost or at stake as in those matters.

In this case more than 2, 000 lives have been lost in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hundreds more of our troops have been wounded. The story of the "yellow cake" uranium has put the whole world in harm’s way. Those nefarious terrorists who did not before know they could get the essential material to make nuclear bombs from Nigeria, a nation led by one of the most corruption governments on earth, surely know it now.

Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who said he was a registered Republican, spoke harshly of the criticisms of JosephWilson, a career foreign service officer who served in the Clinton administration, (Plame’s husband) and efforts to minimize his wife's job at the CIA.

"This is wrong. This should stop. And it could stop in a heartbeat if the president would simply put a stop to it - he hasn't," Johnson said. "That speaks volumes."

White House officials have sought to put the controversy behind them pending the outcome of a federal investigation.

We shall see. Only time will tell if any representatives of the fourth estate have the courage to ask the really hard questions of our leader. So far they’ve proven they do not.

What does the president know? When did he know it?

The following morning on a broadcast of the Sunday news program ABC's This Week a political expert, David Gergen asked the same questions as I had posed the night before at dinner with my friend. Gergen asked, "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"

Gergen served as director of communications for President Reagan and held positions in the administrations of Presidents Nixon and Ford. In 1993, he put his country before politics when he agreed to first serve as counselor to President Clinton on both foreign policy and domestic affairs, then as special international adviser to the president and to Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

Gergen says now that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is said to have expanded his investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity to encompass a possible White House cover-up, what the president and the vice president knew would appear to be much more relevant.

I am pleased to know my thought processes are in line with the political experts. The questions I wanted asked have been posed. Now Mr. President what is your answer? Please, tell us:

What did you know? When did you know it?

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