public office…

Posted on Saturday 4 July 2009

I’m not done with the decision to not release Vice President Dick Cheney’s F.B.I. Interview from the C.I.A. Leak case involving Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. It’s a 50 page document that reads like one of John Yoo’s Memos [the kind that start with some foregone conclusion and paste the reasons around that conclusion]. I expect C.R.E.W. and/or the A.C.L.U. will keep pressing. The only part I want to mention is the notion that if this interview is released, future high officials won’t cooperate with future investigations.

That’s not a legal argument. It’s more like a behavioral plan written by a first year grad student in a  second rate psychology department. In the first place, what are we doing electing high officials that won’t cooperate with investigations? It’s a plan contingent on future high officials being "Cheney-esque.  – as in uncooperative. Who ever said Cheney was cooperating in the first place? A person cooperating with that investigation would’ve gone out of their way to see that the White House leak was fully investigated. And worse, if this future high official were actually like Cheney, he/she would be just as hard to pin down no matter what had happened in the past.

But mostly, the decision is itself Cheney-esque. High Officials are outside the law, special people. Their participation in oversight is optional. They are not "public" officials, they are an elite class – "private" officials.

Secrecy is for genuine National Security only. If you don’t want to be public, don’t run for public office…

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.