"What kinds of conversations does executive privilege protect?…What are the limits on privilege?'' a newspaper columnist wrote in the spring of 1998 on a subject strangely familiar today.
"Evidently, Mr. Clinton wants to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House compound on the theory that all such talk contributes in some way, shape or form to the continuing success and harmony of an administration,'' the columnist wrote. "Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything.''
"Sounds like you're reading an old column of mine,'' Tony Snow, the Bush administration's press secretary, said today, readily recognizing his nine-year-old words read back to him at a morning press gaggle in which Snow was arguing for Bush's right to protect the internal deliberations of his White House staff.
In March 1998, Snow wrote for the Detroit News, in which this column about a president's over-reaching assertions of executive privilege appeared. Today, he is press secretary for another president confronting an aggressive Congress. It's a different situation, Snow insisted today.
With credit to Olivier Knox of Agence France-Presse for a deft piece of document research, here is a copy of the column that Snow published in the Detroit News on March 29, 1998:
"From Day One, the chief challenge facing this White House has been to place maximum distance between Bill Clinton and his behavior. That strategy has succeeded, but only with the help of mighty assaults on our common sense.
"In order to exonerate the chief, aides have made fantastic claims: that they lied to their personal diaries, that Velcro-brained lawyers couldn't recall crucial incidents, that files vanished or moved from one place to another as if by magic, that scores of people with nothing to gain from lying nevertheless perjured themselves, and that this contagion of amnesia, sloppiness and venality was just the gosh darnedest series of coincidences ever witnessed by man or beast.
"The wall of separation between Mr. Clinton and his deeds remains strong because minions have stuck to their alibis. But now comes an episode in which the Man from Hope stands alone. It is his recent attempt to claim executive privilege for counselors Bruce Lindsey and Sidney Blumenthal and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"Mr. Clinton can't blame his lawyers for this latest feint. He alone can assert the privilege. The maneuver places him at the heart of his administration's ongoing effort to use executive privilege as a way of concealing the truth about whether the president exposed himself. It is almost impossible to think of this as anything but a tactic to delay independent counsel Kenneth Starr long enough for James Carville and other red-ant assailants to nibble at Mr. Starr and pump as much venom as possible into the political system.
[....]
"Evidently, Mr. Clinton wants to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House compound on the theory that all such talk contributes in some way, shape or form to the continuing success and harmony of an administration. Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up.
"Chances are that the courts will hurl such a claim out, but it will take time.
"One gets the impression that Team Clinton values its survival more than most people want justice and thus will delay without qualm. But as the clock ticks, the public's faith in Mr. Clinton will ebb away for a simple reason: Most of us want no part of a president who is cynical enough to use the majesty of his office to evade the one thing he is sworn to uphold the rule of law.''
It is amazing how Tony Snow wrote this column, practically demanding that just about every Clinton aid involved in the endless witch hunts and scandals, be hauled before Congress to testify. And yet, with President Bush in the White House, the president should be allowed to invoke executive privilege to protect Rove and Miers' involvement in the attorney purge. The hypocrisy is just amazing here.
You can read Tony Snow's entireoriginal column at the Chicago Tribune.
No comments:
Post a Comment