Rogue Congress

If the Senate and House judiciary committees issue
subpoenas for Karl Rove and other White House aides to
testify to their roles in the firing of the eight U.S.
attorneys, President Bush should defy the subpoenas. He
should accept the contempt citations and fight it all
the way to the Supreme Court.

Indeed, he has a duty to do so. For Bush is today the
custodian of an office that is the subject of assault by
a partisan and hostile Congress.

This is not about the incompetence of the Justice
Department of

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or about any White
House role in

the firing of the eight—whom President Bush had

every right to fire.

This is about preserving and protecting the integrity
of the institution of the presidency. It is about the
right of America`s head of state and head of government
to receive the candid counsel of his most trusted
advisers.

If White House assistants as close to a president as

Karl Rove is to George W. Bush can be ordered before
congressional partisans, to be interrogated by
congressional committees on what he may have told the
president on controversial matters, the presidency
itself will be damaged and weakened.

What is the matter with so many journalists that they
cannot see or understand the principle at stake? Is
their contempt for Bush so great they cannot see the
need for

executive privilege? Indeed, the hypocrisy on the
part of some in the press is so manifest as to make them
look absurdly partisan.

We just passed through a criminal investigation by
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of the

alleged outing of a CIA agent, an investigation

the press demanded. Yet journalists were outraged
that

Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matt
Cooper of Time were subpoenaed and forced to
testify to a U.S. grand jury in that criminal
investigation. To defend reporter`s privilege, Miller
spent

months in jail, rather than testify to what a single
White House aide told her.

Can journalists credibly argue for an absolute shield
law that protects their right never to have to
reveal—even before a federal grand jury that is
investigating potential crimes against national
security—what Karl Rove told them, but President Bush
has no right at all to protect what Rove told him from a
partisan congressional committee?

Congress, too, is being manifestly hypocritical.

When $90,000 was discovered in the freezer of

Rep. William Jefferson, the Justice Department went
to a federal judge for a subpoena, so the FBI could
enter Jefferson`s office, where agents removed files
related to a corruption investigation. Yet members of
Congress were

outraged at this executive intrusion in their
sacrosanct domain.

No matter that Jefferson was under criminal
investigation, no matter that the subpoena was validly
issued by a U.S. judge, Capitol Hill was said to be a
sanctuary into which no law enforcement agent of the
executive branch had a right to intrude.

Journalists make the point that Nixon aides,

among them this writer, testified under oath in
televised hearings before the Watergate Committee, that
President Nixon was ordered by the Supreme Court to turn
over tapes of his most confidential Oval Office
conversations.

But those tapes were ordered turned over to an

independent special prosecutor, whose office had
been set up to investigate the White House and prosecute
former White House aides. The executive branch was
investigating the executive branch.

As for the Senate Watergate Committee, it was a
special committee with which President Nixon, after the
White House aides involved in the scandal had been
removed, had agreed to cooperate. The same was true of
President Reagan in

the Iran-Contra affair.

In this matter of the eight U.S. attorneys, what do
we know? That they were fired by the president at whose
pleasure they served. That there is no hard evidence any
was fired to abort a criminal investigation. That some
were incompetent. That others, like Carol Lam of San
Diego, had their own agenda and were not dealing
resolutely, as Justice was demanding, with

the illegal immigration scandal.

Congress has many powers, among them the right to
command the presence and public testimony of every
executive branch officer in the Cabinet departments. But
Congress has no right, in its oversight function, to
command the testimony of a president`s closest aides as
to what they told the president in confidence, any more
than it has a right to the testimony of Supreme Court
clerks as to what they told the Chief Justice.

If Congress presses ahead with these subpoenas, the
president should use every weapon in his arsenal to
repel this act of aggression by a rogue Congress against
the Office of the President of the United States.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan needs


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