It seems to me that the axiom that one person CAN make a difference now holds true of Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's name.
I believe that the Valerie Plame affair, with all its convolutions and cover-ups, is the key to a Pandora's Box of the dirty tricks, secrets, and lies that the Bush Administration uses to gain and hold power.
If this box is opened and the issues aired, then this affair will be the undoing of the Bush Administration.
If Patrick Fitzgerald is incorruptible, we may well discover who was willing to sacrifice not one, but two career public servants in Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame, ruining their careers and violating federal law in the act of exposing Valerie Plame's identity.
If Patrick Fitzgerald is corruptible, his investigation will be a whitewash and we will know the truth about the affair only if some other enterprising reporters or journalists do their jobs.
What indicators do we have that Mr. Fitzgerald is honest, then?
- He is Irish American and comes from a working class family. He went to a Jesuit high school and worked summers to afford college. Here's hoping his parents and the priests imbued him with a strong conscience and a good sense of right and wrong.
- He has a strong track record as a U.S. Attorney in Chicago, going after the likes of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and all four defendants in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzaniain, which killed 224 people, as well as prosecuting former Illinois governor George Ryan and loyal associates of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley on influence-peddling and corruption charges. This portfolio bodes well for the possibility that he has the fortitude and honesty to uncover the weapons of political destruction unleashed by the high level official in the Bush White House who destroyed Plame's career and sought to discredit Joseph Wilson.
- We have several recent examples of career public servants who have spoken up and told the truth regarding what is going on in Washington D.C. these days. The fact that people like Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (USAF, Ret.), Scott Ritter, and Al Gore are all speaking up about what they know is an optimistic sign that the good people who are in government are not going to allow America to be hijacked by cynical opportunists and scofflaws without a fight.
I'm hopeful that Mr. Fitzgerald is one of the good guys and that he has the integrity, the spine, and the intelligence to understand that it really is up to him to do the right thing.
Whatever he risks by doing this, I'm sure the people will reward his honesty, as they've rewarded and acknowledged those others who have spoken in honesty to America and the world.