Officials should testify under oath

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved subpoenas yesterday that would call for President… The Senate Judiciary Committee approved subpoenas yesterday that would call for President Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove, as well as several other Bush administration aides to testify under oath about the firings of eight federal prosecutors. The decision came just a day after the House Judiciary Committee approved a similar measure.

The committees’ decisions have come against the wishes of the White House, which has proposed that Rove and the other administration officials talk about their roles in the firings in private, off the record and not under oath.

The subpoenas are the most recent development in the investigation of the Justice Department’s dismissal of eight well-regarded federal prosecutors earlier this year. It has been alleged that the firings were politically motivated.

Earlier this month, under criticism from lawmakers, the White House released several documents and e-mail correspondences between former White House counsel Harriet M. Miers and D. Kyle Sampson, the top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, that suggested the attorneys were fired for not being loyal enough to the Bush administration and pursued corruption cases that went against White House interests. Both Miers and Sampson resigned shortly after the accusations came to light.

In one document, Sampson suggests a rating system for the nation’s federal prosecutors with “bold” – the highest rating on the scale – indicating “strong U.S. Attorneys who have produced, managed well and exhibited loyalty to the president and attorney general.” The criterion for the label “strikeout,” which indicated a recommendation for dismissal, was described by Sampson as attorneys who had been “ineffectual managers and prosecutors [and had] chaffed against the administration,” according to a New York Times report.

The dismissals and e-mail correspondences have left Congress searching for answers, chief among those being what prior knowledge or involvement Rove may have had in the firings.

Both Congress and the White House agree that Rove, Miers, Sampson and several other administration officials should be questioned. The debate is now where and under what context that questioning will take place.

Bush’s office insists that calling on the officials to testify publicly and under oath would create a media spectacle. “There’s always going to be an attempt to turn it into ‘Perry Mason’ or ‘Law and Order,'” White House spokesperson Tony Snow told NBC’s “Today.”

Democrats, however, have rejected the offer, presumably because it would withhold some information from the American public.

By insisting that the interviews be held in private, the White House is creating the image that there is something going on that it wants to withhold from the American public. If it had nothing to hide, there shouldn’t be a problem with officials testifying under oath.

The American public has a right to know the details of administrators in our government, especially when there is foul play. It is a little hypocritical that the same party that subpoenaed President Clinton to testify under oath about his “personal activities” now claims that calling government officials to testify about the potentially politically motivated firings would create a media spectacle. And even if it does create a media spectacle, isn’t it the responsibility of the media to serve as political watchdogs?

Congress and the American public should also hold Gonzales, who has refused to resign, accountable for the dismissals. The mishandlings of the Justice Department are an immediate reflection of Gonzales. As a nation, we should call on him to resign before the Bush administration loses any more credibility.