It’s The Cover-Up

There is a reason why the saying “it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up” has become a truism in these high profile political scandals. In the first place, no matter who does it, when someone covers up a crime they tend to make it more difficult to prosecute it, obviously. For instance, suppose that Novak and Rove conspired to get their stories straight. You can’t prove what was originally said because they’ve decided to lie about it. But if you can prove that they lied to the authorities or took affirmative measures to obstruct an investigation in which it could have been found that they committed a crime, you prosecute. Committing a crime to cover up something that may or may not be a crime is still a crime.

In the political world, it happens all the time because people are as concerned about appearances as they are about legalities — maybe more. They will cover-up actions that might not be technically illegal, but will make them look bad because they are unethical or just plain slimy. But covering up slimy political activity by lying to the authorities is illegal and you aren’t allowed to do it. This is particularly true when the underlying slime would have been prosecutable if you hadn’t successfully covered it up.

The Republicans abused the legal system shamelessly during the Clinton administration by financing the Paula Jones lawsuit and holding endless phony congressional investigations into arcane, trivial and lurid tabloid matters that had nothing to do with the administration’s behavior in office. They forced the appointments of an endless string of independent prosecutors and actively “criminalized” politics for partisan gain. The alleged crime and sleazy behavior in the Lewinsky case involved the prosaic and ordinary act of a middle aged man having an affair with a younger woman and lying about it. The American people understood it for what it was and rejected the notion that it was criminal. It is typical of the Modern Republican Party to now accuse the special prosecutor of doing what they themselves did. The GOP truly is Projection R Us.

However, the Fitzgerald investigation is not a partisan witchhunt and the underlying crime may have been awful — David Ensor on CNN says that his sources in the CIA report that there was real damage in Plame’s outing. This is meaningful. If the crime was covering up the purposeful or accidental revelation of a CIA operative for purely political purposes, it deserves to be prosecuted.

These are people with tremendous power to shape events. They are answerable only to the public in a relativist world in which media manipulation and marketing have made it very difficult to persuade people that there is any sort of objective truth. The legal system is the only forum left in which people are held liable for lying and in which there are rules and procedures for hearing all sides of the story in a coherent fashion. Sadly, epistemic relativist Republicans and their media helpmates have managed to pretty much eliminate all other avenues for finding out the truth.

And may I second Tristero’s post below:

Traitors simply cannot be permitted to continue to serve at the highest levels of goverment. And that is a principle worth defending, no matter what it takes.

When playing with national security for mere political purposes and personal grudges becomes politics as usual, this country is in serious danger. These people must be stopped. Even Nixon didn’t stoop this low.

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