By Jason Leopold and Matt Renner, t r u t h o u t

A federal judge has dismissed the civil lawsuit filed against top Bush administration officials by former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. The judge, John Bates of the US District Court in Washington, DC is a Bush appointee who previously dismissed a lawsuit filed by the federal government against Vice President Dick Cheney. That suit sought access to Cheney’s energy task force documents.

Since his tenure on the federal bench began six years ago, Bates’s legal opinions and rulings supporting the administration’s executive powers stand in stark contrast to his legal work as an assistant US attorney. He worked for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr prosecuting President Clinton’s Whitewater investment deals.

In 1997, Bates successfully argued for the release of thousands of pages of White House documents related to Hillary Clinton’s conversations about Whitewater.

In January 2003, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested that the judge was a hypocrite by pursuing access to White House documents when Clinton was in office while supporting Cheney’s claims of executive privilege in refusing to turn over his energy task force documents to Congress.

“When that guy was working for Ken Starr, he wanted to go open the dresser drawers of the White House,” Leahy said. “I guess it’s a lot different when it’s a Republican vice president.”

(Original Article)