The attorney general, several members of his staff and a senior White House aide face threats of subpoenas to testify before a congressional committee unless they volunteer to cooperate with a congressional investigation.
Once-private e-mails between the White House and Justice Department, revealing presidential adviser Karl Rove’s interest in talk of dismissing all or some of the nation’s 93 federal prosecutors, appear on television screens nationwide.
Valerie Plame, the formerly covert CIA operative whose identity was leaked by members of the Bush administration, testifies openly on Capitol Hill about being “carelessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department.”
All of these scenes, which unfolded in rapid succession this week, never would have played out just two years ago when President Bush began his second term with his party in full control of Congress and professing an electoral mandate.
These tableaux dramatically demonstrate the impact of a midterm “thumpin'”–as Bush described the November elections that gave the Democrats control of Congress–on the balance of power in Washington. It is likely to shape the next two years as well, as the Democrats try to set the stage for the 2008 presidential election.
“What a difference an election makes,” said Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “It’s especially true, having both houses of Congress, where you get the double-barreled subpoena power. It’s also reflecting a reality that this kind of oversight was virtually non-existent over the last six years.
“You can be sure that if you had a Republican Congress in place and the U.S. attorney scandal emerged, the Congress would be saying, `Prosecutors get fired all the time, what’s the big deal?'”
`Big element of politics’
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican who ran the House Judiciary Committee for six years, maintained that “we were effective in doing oversight,” but that now there is “a big element of politics involved.”
Sensenbrenner cited committee action this week limiting the president’s powers to appoint U.S. attorneys, and noted that one Democrat suggested the committee had to act “because of this administration” but could reconsider with “another administration.”
This, he said, was “a shocking admission . . . that this is being driven by politics.”
With the Democrats’ newfound power comes potential trouble. Ornstein said that “if Democrats overreach and focus so much of their resources and energy on these hearings . . . it makes it difficult to do anything on the policy front. Part of the reason they were elected was to provide a check and balance, but it was also to replace the do-nothing Congress with the do-something Congress, and doing something is not just investigating perfidy and wrongdoing.”
The majority party, especially in the House, controls virtually all the levers of power. After 12 years in the minority, the Democrats decide what bills will be sent to the floor and whether amendments are allowed. Only they can convene hearings and subpoena documents.
An onslaught of oversight
Suddenly, a White House that for six years tightly controlled its own agenda, often had its way with Congress and strictly controlled the flow of information faces an onslaught of congressional oversight over controversies reaching back into the early years of the administration. Documents that never would have seen the light of day, and discussions that had been closely held within the administration, are spilling forth under the subpoena power of the Democratic-run Congress.
Everything from the leaks in the summer of 2003 that exposed a CIA operative’s identity to the more recent revelations of the deterioration at Walter Reed Army Medical Center are becoming fodder for congressional investigations by Democratic committee heads eager to wield new investigative powers.
“The fact that there are discussions about [Plame and Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales] isn’t just due to the change in the House–it’s the fact that we even know about these things now,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). “They wouldn’t have come to light otherwise, because Republicans protected this administration on the whole.
“We’re now in the majority, so we can set the agenda,” Frank added. “The norm is for Congress to do what it’s doing now. What we had before was abnormal, to have Republicans working with [and] covering up for the administration.”
The administration is fighting back with a public relations campaign.
The Justice Department produced a statement Friday from Chuck Canterbury, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, dismissing the controversy surrounding the prosecutor firings as “politics as usual. . . . There are those who are trying to make this handful of firings into a scandal.”
White House states its case
As demands mounted for Gonzales’ resignation, Art Gordon, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, urged Bush in a letter to keep the attorney general, saying, “Our nation and the men and women who carry the badge and the gun need his leadership.”
The White House, insisting that it wants to provide senators with all the information possible about the firing of eight federal prosecutors last year, has been forced to negotiate with the Senate Judiciary Committee over how Rove and others might testify without sacrificing the presidential “prerogative” of executive privilege.
The House Judiciary Committee had sought an answer on Rove’s willingness to testify by Friday, with the Senate committee holding off talk of a subpoena until next week. White House counsel Fred Fielding met with House staffers Friday and won a delay until Tuesday to decide the issue.
Atty. Gen. Gonzales apologized to the 93 U.S. attorneys in a conference call Friday, McClatchy Newspapers reported–not for the eight firings but for the way they were handled. He also named a U.S. attorney from Virginia, Chuck Rosenberg, as his interim chief of staff to replace Kyle Sampson, who stepped down because of his involvement in the controversy.
The White House had maintained that former counsel Harriet Miers proposed firing all of the U.S. attorneys and that Rove dismissed the idea. But now, with e-mails and memoranda spilling out, White House spokesman Tony Snow suggested the origin of the proposal could be in question.
“At this juncture, people have hazy memories,” he said Friday. “To the extent that [the proposal] was raised, it was knocked down. This is not something that ever rose to the idea of being seriously considered.”
Even as the White House is stressing the president’s right to dismiss U.S. attorneys, who serve at his pleasure, Snow is being careful to say this idea of the firings did not originate with Bush.
“The president certainly has no recollection of any such thing,” Snow said. “Don’t be dropping it at the president’s doorstep.”
Yet, for the next two years, Democrats flexing newfound muscle are likely to drop at the president’s doorstep controversies large and small, confronting a White House that never had to answer so many questions.
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mdsilva@tribune.com
kdemirjian@tribune.com
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What lawmakers are looking at
Controversies subjected to scrutiny by the Democratic Congress:
– Valerie Plame, the formerly covert CIA agent whose identity was leaked, testified publicly Friday for the first time.
– Congress held hearings recently on the poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, during which senior military officers apologized to returning veterans and their families.
– Senate and House Judiciary Committees planning hearings on the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys are negotiating with the White House about the appearance of Karl Rove and other White House aides.
– Democrats have vowed hearings on the FBI’s misuse of national security letters to obtain information on U.S. citizens.
– A House committee held a hearing on the 2004 killing of four private guards in Iraq whose bodies were dragged through the streets and burned.
