My
local newspaper recently picked up an editorial from the Washington Post written by Bruce W. Sanford and Bruce D. Brown. They happen to be partners at
Baker Hostetler, practicing media law. Titled
The Futility of Chasing Leaks, they present their analysis of what Patrick Fitzgerald's Plamegate investigation amounts to:
By supplying corroboration of what has long been suspected -- that Fitzgerald knew almost immediately and on his own who Novak's three sources were -- Novak has further confirmed another truth about leak investigations: They are a huge, dangerous waste of time.
As if that weren't enough,
But there's more futility -- and fatigue -- to come. The futility will be evident in the acquittal next year of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. The acquittal will be yet another symbol of the misuse of prosecutorial time that is the big problem with leak investigations.
(more)
The whole Sanford & Brown piece is like that - you can practically hear them saying "Move along here, nothing to see." It's worth reading if only as a foretaste of what the attempted GOP spin is going to be when Scooter Libby goes to trial. They're launching a pre-emptive strike here to shape the media 'story' on the whole affair.
Alas, guidelines do not permit me to post
the entire thing here, but I've written an LTE analysis on it. As it's probably far too long for my local paper to run, I'll put it up here. Feel free to rip it apart, or (I hope) find useful talking points to raise when the GOP spin starts to appear, as it will.
This is the kind of thing Firedoglake and Glenn Greenwald should have some interesting insights on - let me know if it's been raised there or elsewhere.
Without more ado, here's my take on Sanford & Brown: Trojan Horses and Smokescreens
Dear Times Union:
The Sanford & Brown piece "Investigating Leaks is a Waste of Time" from the July 24, 2006 Times Union is both a Trojan Horse and a smokescreen.
It's a Trojan Horse because, while posing as a defense of freedom of the press, it is actually an attempt to get the press and public to believe the unfolding Plamegate scandal is a trivial non-story. Brown and Sanford use phrases like "huge, dangerous waste of time", "numbing legal process", "misuse of prosecutorial time", and "so called leaks". They confidently predict Libby will be acquitted before the trial has even started - what do they know, and how do they know it?
The whole intent of the piece is to preemptively declare the entire enterprise null and void. They deliberately misstate the issue at stake: it's not just a freedom of the press issue - it's also serious governmental misconduct. Instead they'd rather pretend "Nothing to look at here folks, just some partisan political infighting and an out of control prosecutor harassing some poor reporters trying to do their job. Change the channel to something else."
It's a smokescreen because Sanford & Brown carefully omit any of the things Fitzgerald's investigation has already accomplished. To list a few: 1) We now know that the leak originated from the highest levels of the President's and Vice President's staffs. 2) We now know that Novak was not the only reporter in on the leak - just the only one who acted on it. 3) We now know President Bush's promise to fire anyone involved in the leak was meaningless. (Aside from Libby, no one has been fired, demoted, or even disciplined. No one has lost a security clearance.) 4) We now know there are members of the press so personally invested in the current administration that they will willingly stooge for them. 5) We now know there are members of the press who can no longer tell the difference between a leak by the government to commit a wrong, and a leak from within the government to reveal or prevent a wrong. There's more to come.
By calling the Plame-Wilson lawsuit nothing more than "mostly a political polemic", Sanford & Brown ignore the serious consequences that followed from the Novak story. Not only was the career of a valuable CIA agent ended, she was put at risk, everyone who has ever been associated with her for any reason has been put at risk, a long running CIA operation has been fatally compromised, and every other clandestine CIA agent now has to worry how safe they are. It doesn't matter if anyone believes the leak was a deliberate act of political revenge and intimidation or merely ineptitude; the consequences were real and serious.
When Sanford & Brown suggest what is needed is "some real prosecutorial soul-searching, and tough mindedness about the need to investigate", it shows they have no idea what those things are. By all accounts Fitzgerald's operation has been tightly focused, disciplined, and eminently fair in its conduct. One need only contrast it with the legal circus of Independent Counsel Ken Starr's investigation of President Clinton, marked as it was by constant leaks, innuendoes, wild charges, and ultimately millions of taxpayer dollars spent to no effect.
Perhaps the most shameless element of Sanford & Brown's exercise in doublethink is their deliberate citing of Kafka and Orwell, implying that the Fitzgerald investigation will lead to reporters looking over their shoulders "as if they worked in the capital not of a great democracy but of Franz Kafka's or George Orwell's worst nightmare of a police state." Really?
At last report, under the authority claimed by President Bush, American citizens can now be: imprisoned without recourse to an attorney or the knowing the charges against them, held indefinitely, and tried in `special' tribunals without being allowed to see the evidence against them. They can be wiretapped anywhere, anytime with no judicial review of the process.
The Bush administation has been caught repeatedly abusing freedom of the press. They have planted fake reporters in the White House press pool. They've inserted pro-administrattion fake news stories into the press. They've paid columnists to write favorable editorials.
Bush claims the power to rewrite laws with signing statements, and denies jurisdiction of any court to review his actions as Commander in Chief. American citizens who attempt to exercise freedom of speech anywhere in the vicinity of the President or his administration find themselves subject to arrest.
The Geneva Conventions have been abandoned. American military personal and government agents now carry out kidnappings, torture, and extraordinary rendition.
While Sanford & Brown worry about Fitzgerald's investigation infringing on the press, they ignore from where the real threats to press freedom are coming. President Bush is aggressively pursuing those who revealed to the NY Times that he has repeatedly broken the law with illegal wiretaps. Right-wing darling Ann Coulter has made repeated threats of violence against the Times. The right-wing media is overwhelmingly critical of the press, equating it with Al Qaida and worse. When the NY Times ran a travel story that happened to mention the vice president and the secretary of defense both had homes in a vacation community, the right wing blogosphere called it an attempt to give terrorists an assasination road map. They retaliated by posting names, adresses, and house photos of reporters and editors on the Internet, along with much eliminationist rhetoric.
If we're not quite all the way to an Orwellian nightmare, it is precisely because of the efforts of people like Fitzgerald. There are too few them - and too many like Sanford & Brown.
Sincerely,
etc. etc.