EDITORIAL – White House pleads the Fifth in Plame affair

Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper agreed to testify that it was presidential adviser Karl… Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper agreed to testify that it was presidential adviser Karl Rove who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, but mum is still the word for the White House.

Since the beginning of the Plame affair two years ago, the Bush administration has promised the American people that anyone involved with threatening national security would be fired from office and that Karl Rove has had nothing to do with the case.

Now the White House is determined to plead the Fifth. White House media spokesman Scott McClellan constantly replies that the silence is because of a “pending investigation.” Interestingly enough, McClellan already spoke on this very issue in spite of the investigation. In fact, a member of the press pointed out this inconsistency, but McClellan’s response was, “I’ve really said all I’m going to say on it.”

Furthermore, investigation into Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was pending and that didn’t stop Bush from taking action or speaking in great length about his “war on terror,” or waging war against Iraq.

This past Monday, Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove spoke to Cooper in the presence of McClellan, who previously said, “the president knows that Karl Rove wasn’t involved.”

A week ago today — the same day that Rove signed papers allowing Cooper to testify — New York Times reporter Judith Miller was put in jail for refusing to identify her source in the Plame leak. While the Supreme Court has ruled that journalists do not have the right to protect confidential sources, this restriction makes it difficult for the media to function as an objective watchdog.

Now as Luskin handles the press and neither confirms or denies anything else, it seems that Rove — presidential adviser, deputy White House chief of staff, architect for Bush’s reelection and the brain behind Bush’s war on terror — is the only one who is above the law, as he continues to remain in office and still has his security clearance.

It’s no surprise that the conversation between Cooper and Rove took place shortly after The New York Times published an editorial where former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson, Plame’s husband, proposed that Bush made attempts to alter information on weapons of mass destruction to justify the war on terror and specifically the invasion of Iraq.

If not for the fact that this is an embarrassment for an administration that is infamous about keeping its own confidences, the White House should at least justify why they are not explaining because they owe it to the public. While one can speculate myriad reasons why they are stalling, it seems that one thing is true: Once again, the government messed up.

More evidence compiles in each day of silence, and while the Democrats are demanding that Rove be removed, they’ve still drawn no response from McClellan. The White House should at least express some accountability for misleading the American public for so long. We must wonder: Whom do we trust in a democratic country when our government is speechless, and the media can no longer be an objective watchdog?