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Friday, October 28, 2005The Politics of TruthIs it time for a more expansive view of the Fifth Amendment? When the Amendment was written, there was a need to prevent forced confessions or, presumably, other situations in which you could be forced, coerced or directed into making statements that would unjustly incriminate you. Where in a new era where the people running the process and the people endangered are different, but the problem remains the same: you can be required to sell yourself down the river in order to cooperate with the authorities, with limited means for defending legitimate behavior. In the case of the Plame leak, a man claimed to have gotten information for the Vice-President of the United States that the Vice-President callowly ignored. Cheney was in no position, realistically, to sue for libel. But what Joe Wilson did was libel in the strictest sense of the word: he made untrue statements that damaged another person's reputation, causing harm to that person's interests. Joe Wilson needed to be countered. In this whole mess, there is one person, above all others, however, who should be behind bars. As far as I know, we don't know his name. But he is guilty of treason, even in a way that Joe Wilson is not. That is the CIA official who authorized Joe Wilson to go on a clandestine mission without signing any non-disclosure documents. The CIA official who sent Joe Wilson created a situation in which a single person with strong opinions could discuss classified information with impunity. Information designed to undermine the policies of the elected officials of the United States government and their Senate confirmed assistants. One single person at the CIA created a situation in which the President and Vice-President could be challenged but were not allowed to reply. It sounds like Scooter Libby made a real ass of himself, and for that he will perhaps get an appropriate shellacking. But who is talking about the CIA official who gave a private individual access to and the right to disclose classified information without the slightest obligation to national security - or, therefore, to the truth revealed by that information within a larger context. The TurkeyBlog's accounting: VP Cheney should sue Joe Wilson for libel. And most any tracking poll of Cheney's credibility and belief in the war should sustain Cheney's case that there was damage done. Scooter Libby should pay a large fine for not taking the Fifth on the grounds that talking in the charged atmosphere of the time would surely lead to him incriminating himself in one way or another. And the person who authorized Joe Wilson's trip should be shot for treason for his efforts to replace the elected government of the United States with an inner circle of like-minded bureaucrats. 
posted by gbarto at 1:32 PM |
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