Bush's days of secrecy are over

Posted Saturday, March 24, 2007 1:15 am

Saturday, March 24

The Bush administration has been the most secretive in history.

Even Richard Nixon pales before George W. Bush when it comes to clamping down on public disclosure. The White House has been able to get away with it for six years thanks to a compliant, rubber stamp Republican Congress.

But now the Democrats are in control of the House and Senate and they aren't afraid to start demanding administration accountability. The White House can invoke the right of executive privilege all it wants, but none of its claims can pass legal muster.

White House spokesman Tony Snow can claim that it's "unprecedented" and "highly unusual in any White House" for presidential advisors to be called by subpoena by Congress to testify.

But Snow is wrong.

Article Continues After Advertisement

According to the Congressional Research Service, 31 of President Clinton's top aides testified under oath to Congress on 47 different occasions, including his closest advisors -- George Stephanopoulos, Harold Ickes and John Podesta, legal counsels Bruce Lindsey and Beth Nolan and national security advisor Sandy Berger.

By contrast, the only Bush advisor to testify before Congress during his first term was homeland security chief Tom Ridge. While Clinton did not refuse any invitations for his aides to testify, Bush has refused three times -- making him the first president since Nixon to do so.

Article Continues After These Ads

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, also pointed out that when his committee was run by Indiana Republican Dan Burton, it issued 1,052 subpoenas between 1997 and 2002, demanding testimony from Democratic Party or Clinton administration officials.

Snow might think people have forgotten the blizzard of subpoenas and the myriad of investigations launched by Republicans against the Clinton administration in the 1990s. He might try to make it seem that what Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is asking for is unreasonable. But the game is over for the Bush White House. The days of being able to dictate the terms on when, where and how it will deliver information to Congress are over.

Leahy wants senior political advisor Karl Rove and other top Bush aides to testify under oath before his committee about what may have been the politically motivated firings of eight federal prosecutors by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Article Continues After Advertisement

As a former state's attorney, Leahy is smart enough to know that the only testimony that means anything in a court of law is testimony made on the record under oath. What the White House wants -- a closed-door chat with no transcripts, no oaths and no accountability -- is as Leahy rightly called it, "nothing, nothing, nothing."

The White House knows this. They can, and do, lie with impunity on just about every subject. But there is a big difference between lying to a reporter and lying to a congressional committee under oath. The former is just lying, while the latter is perjury.

We hope the Judiciary Committee resists compromise with the administration. Congress has a duty to perform oversight on the executive branch, a duty that was neglected until the Democrats won back control. The only way that the wall of secrecy that has surrounded every act of the Bush White House can be breached is through the power of subpoena.

If President Bush wants to challenge this principle in court, he is welcome to. If legal precedent is a guide, he is not likely to prevail.