[Mb-civic] Open Up, Mr. President - Jim Hoagland - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Open Up, Mr. President

By Jim Hoagland
Thursday, November 3, 2005; Page A21

Dear Mr. President,

Wouldn't a letter to the editor have sufficed?

Seriously. Wouldn't it have been better if you or Karl Rove or Scooter 
Libby had just written a letter to the newspapers that got so deep under 
the official skin by publishing the leaks and articles provided by 
former ambassador Joe Wilson?

"He's full of it" would have been one time-honored approach, followed by 
convincing supporting detail, of which you had some. Why not spring for 
a stamp and argue your case in public, rather than let Official A (aka 
Rove) and Libby overreact with anonymous counter-leaks about Wilson's 
wife, the CIA officer and Vanity Fair babe?

Yes, I presume a great deal in making this modest proposal, which would 
also have enabled you to uphold the principles of freedom of information 
that make this country proud and unique. There is no suggestion in the 
perjury, etc., etc. indictment sluiced down on Libby by the deftly 
disingenuous Patrick Fitzgerald that you participated in these events or 
even knew about them. That, sir, is part of the problem.

Your self-advertised disdain for the media and for the confusing, often 
contradictory flood of information that washes over a distracted public 
helped create a White House in which stealth tactics ran rampant and 
open debate was suppressed. This goes for official deliberations as well 
as for the uneven attempts at news management. Your aides learned 
quickly that you did not like to see them arguing in front of you. So 
they argued elsewhere.

That is the larger point about your responsibility for letting the 
Wilson molehill become a mountain. You set the tone. To figure out what 
they should do, your subordinates study the statements and decisions you 
make -- and the bureaucratic conflicts you leave open and simmering and 
unresolved to leach away the presidential authority you so covet. You 
have let official secrecy become an end in itself, a positive value 
rather than a necessary evil to be used sparingly in an open society.

It is not surprising that your White House distrusts and/or despises the 
media, the CIA, the State Department's career officers, the United 
Nations and a host of other institutions that you could not control, but 
that you could not accept that you could not control. Like most 
paranoia, yours is not totally unfounded: People in those institutions 
were out to defy and/or get you.

But you and yours helped them accomplish the mission. One lesson 
available in this story is that amateurs are no match for the CIA in 
disinformation campaigns. The spies are far better at operating in the 
shadows than you politicians will ever be. They have a license to dissemble.

The hidden management of the criminal justice process and the news media 
practiced by spooks in Wilson-Rove-Libbygate is nothing short of 
brilliant. So you were right to fear the agency. Where else do you think 
the one-page crime report that triggered the investigation and then the 
pressure-building leaks disclosing its existence came from?

Fear probably caused you to keep the Clinton-appointed leadership in 
place at the CIA long after some of its top operatives mounted a 
rebellion against the White House, in part to shift attention from their 
failures to yours. I know that George Tenet charmed you, and the rest of 
us. That's what spies and spymasters do, sir. You should have been 
taking that into account.

But you feared something else more. You feared openness. You feared 
laying out your fallibilities along with your strengths for others to 
judge. You feared laying out facts -- good, bad and indifferent -- for 
others to judge. You were unable even to acknowledge that the fiefdoms 
within your administration were at war. So all attacks had to be 
subterranean.

(continued)...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/02/AR2005110202277.html
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