Special Counsel Needed for Plame Case
The FBI will investigate the outing of Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife as a CIA operative by high White House officials. This criminal act came as an attempt to punish him for making public his findings that Iraq was not buying Niger uranium. John Ashcroft said Tuesday that the investigators are career FBI agents. I am sure that they are, and that they are upright men. However, their careers do depend heavily on what John Ashcroft thinks of them. At this point all we know is that the criminals are high White House officials. They could be dear friends of John Ashcroft. The opportunity here for undue pressure to thwart the investigation is far too serious to pursue this course. Congress needs to appoint a special counsel. As I suggested yesterday, moreover, Bush political adviser Karl Rove should be the first one investigated. A lot of us think his phone logs would be revealing.