By: Mary Lyon

This is getting to look more and more like Watergate EVERY DAY. We even have a gap – besides the overriding credibility gap from which this White House now suffers. Back in the days when the sharks detected Nixon’s blood in the water, it was the infamous “18-minute gap” in the White House tapes. Now, it’s a 12-HOUR gap from the time Alberto “Torture’s Okay” Gonzales got word from the Justice Department that a formal investigation into the Plame Affair was ready to roll, and the time he finally got around to advising White House staffers not to “lose” any evidence. Twelve HOURS. It turns out that Gonzales did thoughtfully tip off one individual (at least as far as he’s willing to admit) right away – White House chief of staff Andrew Card. Twelve HOURS. Um… somebody make a…mistake? One blunder too many, perhaps?

Okay, so let me put the question to you. What would YOU do, if you were already of sneaky ilk, already used to getting away with a lot of nasty stuff, if you’d pulled a lot of malicious pranks and dirty tricks and never had to pay for them, if you then heard - ahead of time - that the law was going to be knocking at your door? Would you own up to the long-overdue fact that it was time to face the music? Maybe pray, and draft a statement of contrition, and talk to your family about what possible consequences and serious legal problems might lie ahead? Would you actually resolve to BE one of those adults who this cabal loudly boasted when they took over were “back in charge” – or would you immediately call your most trusted inner-circle and get cracking on covering your tracks, and destroying the evidence? With the way shredders and other such “problem-solving” machinery have evolved since the Watergate and Iran/Contra days, imagine how many reams of problem paper could be made to vanish into the night? Oops! Down the rabbit hole they go. I’d place my bet on the second option, considering that these folks are literally spoiled rotten by now – over the countless ways that they’ve beaten the rap so far. I think they got sloppy.

I strongly suspect that we have much more interesting things to learn from the ever-dutiful Andy. After all, he is used to whispering significantly but discreetly into important people’s ears. We first witnessed that during another infamous gap, on September 11th, 2001, when he leaned over to murmur to George W. Bush that the World Trade Center was under attack but young George was too busy listening to that nice little kiddie story about the pet goat to get up and go do something about it. Andy Card bent over then, and it smells to me as though he bent over again this time. Perhaps he realizes by now that he’s a “marked” Card. It’s hard to believe that he’d just sit on this heads-up and not contact somebody else in the White House who’s well-practiced and very successful at “taking care of things.” He wouldn’t call a lawyer, since he’d already been called BY one (Gonzales), and perhaps since he figured he wouldn’t need one anyway.

While it’s probably impossible to prove, the word “malice” is the key word here. This whole mess was malicious. Going back to ruining a guy’s wife to get back at the guy for blowing the whistle on you. Going back even farther to the reason why you wouldn’t like the whistle-blowing to begin with. This White House had been weaving tall tales so outrageous they seemed to come straight from the other side of the looking glass. They’d built a humdinger of a scenario of imminent doom by an evil strongman lurking behind the 9/11 tragedy, ready to cause more horror. The only way to “git ‘em” was to rush off to war. If you’re stitching up a tapestry filled with scary boogeymen with big black moustaches and ominous-looking mushroom clouds, you don’t want some cat, Cheshire or otherwise, to start clawing at the threads and destroying all your hard work. And keep in mind, too, that it’s not as though Card’s colleague and Bush soul-brother, Karl Rove, is a rookie at dirty politics.

Rove, of course, has a track record of scams, deceit, character assassination, and ill-gotten gains even longer than Valerie Plame’s now-defunct WMD tracking career. He, and his lord and master, young George, learned their weasely ways from the Grand High Weasel, himself, the late GOP chief Lee Atwater. From trashing Michael Dukakis in the ‘80’s to spreading nasty rumors (that got him fired) during George Senior’s campaign, to whispering about the non-existent lesbianism of soon-to-be-defeated-by-Junior Texas governor Ann Richards, to spreading lies about John McCain to stop him in the primaries in 2000, to bugging his own Texas office so he could accuse the local Democrats of it, Rove has quite a resume of rottenness. Many’s the pundit who’s written about the conquests of the man nicknamed “Turdblossom” – how he manipulates, how he goes on relentless round-the-clock attack against any opponent, how he ruthlessly aims directly for the jugular sans passing GO and collecting a lot more than 200 dollars, AND how, despite suspicions galore, he never somehow leaves any fingerprints. Macchiavellian malice incarnate.

I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: I think Rove and his friends are so drunk with their own success, the way they’ve intimidated and bullied the press, and the near-total dominance of Washington D.C. – that they just started getting sloppy. Why shouldn’t this Plame-Wilson business be just another scalp on their belts? Karl never fails. He is spoken about in hushed tones. People watch and try to second-guess him more than they do even with his boss. Barbara Walters even dubbed him the most fascinating and influential person of 2004 – over his boss. Karl has worked hard through the years to make sure he never got caught, and certainly never held accountable for what he’s done to other targets – and their family members. Why should this time be any different?

This time, though, he’s blundered, big-time. The reason this time is NOT any different than all the others is that there’s a wild card in play, here, that Karl can’t control. It’s prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who unlike Rove and “Scooter” Libby, doesn’t leak much. Karl isn’t in the driver’s seat this time. Fitzgerald is. Fitzgerald – not Rove – is the one working in the dark, behind the scenes, where no one can see, and no one knows what he’ll do next. And poor Karl, for the first time in a long time, is forced to wait and watch and wonder with all the rest of us.

What I find so deliciously unfortunate for Karl and Kompany is that, the Plamegate scandal, referred to by some as “Treasongate,” is growing. It seems to have taken advantage of those little Alice-in-Wonderland noshes that make you bigger rather than smaller. This White House has tried many of its usual tricks, up to and including dangling a Supreme Court nominee before the sharks, but that’s not what they’re biting at most ferociously. There have even been the tried-and-true harpings on the magic immunity that September 11th supposedly gave Dubya, and repeated reminders that we’re safer for what George has done, because – look! The terrorists struck London and NOT us. The White House Steno Pool has certainly nibbled on those other items, but somehow, they just keep coming back to “Treasongate.”

Actually, Karl built this one, too. His success has earned him a loyal following in this administration, which is already packed with Rovian gnomes, soldiers of the card deck, Mad Hatters and other sympathizers. They’ve seen what he’s accomplished and they’ve been most eager to learn – and then apply his lessons. Which means we will be finding more and more of them stuck in this mess with him. Already, the Plame Affair has spread from Rove and Libby to include Card and Gonzales, and former press secretary Ari Fleischer. Scott McClellan is no longer smelling like a rose after having his on-the-record vehement denials force-fed back to him by newly aggressive reporters. In fact, the Washington Post confirms that Fitzgerald’s investigation has “cast a wider net” than previously believed (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article) – evoking such provocative possibilities as multiple indictments for perjury, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. And let’s not forget that, in the true spirit of “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” if you have the two closest and most trusted advisors to Bush and Cheney up to their hairlines in this, how could Bush and Cheney be far from the loop?

Rove and friends inside and outside this White House have spread every lie in talking points throughout their Wonderland to discredit Plame and her husband, former ambassador/whistle blower Joseph Wilson, but not everybody’s buying. Fitzgerald certainly doesn’t appear to have done so, either, or he wouldn’t still be at it. And neither has Media Matters for America (http://mediamatters.org/), whose chief, David Brock, redeemed from the Dark Side, is now debunking the libel and slander being spewed against both Wilsons.

Karl Rove’s malicious mischief, and his arrogant presumptions of continuous operations safely under the radar have led him into perhaps the biggest blunder of his career, as this scandal careens farther and more widely out of his control. To paraphrase one from Alice in Wonderland herself, this is getting interestinger and interestinger. You got too cocky, Karl, and it made you blow it. Welcome to Malice in Blunderland. You designed and constructed it, so enjoy the ride. We certainly will.

Visualize IMPEACHMENT.
Pass it on…

Mary Lyon spent the first 25 years of her adult life as a broadcast journalist, at Los Angeles radio stations KRTH-FM, KFWB-AM, KHJ-AM and KLOS-FM, the NBC, ABC, and RKO Radio Networks, plus KTLA-TV. She retired from day-to-day broadcasting in 1996, after covering Hollywood for nine years in radio, TV, and print, for the Associated Press. She wrote and illustrated "The Frazzled Working Woman's Practical Guide to Motherhood," and is presently at work on a new craft book for kids and friends. A lifelong Democrat who began her political involvement in the Student Coalition for Humphrey-Muskie, and Tom Bradley's first L.A. Mayoral campaign, Mary currently is a weekly columnist for www.democrats.us - from the Left.