Assassination By Leak

by digby

There is a lot of chatter about what exactly happened with the apparent ouster of White House counsel Greg Craig. Steve Clemons worries about the fact that it seems to be a sign that the factionalism that happens in most administrations is reasserting itself in the “No Drama Obama” White House:

In fact, leaks are becoming standard fare by key players in the Obama administration. Someone, most likely on the military/intel side of the president’s national security bureaucracy, leaked Afghanistan Commanding General Stanley McChrystal’s report to Bob Woodward. Recently, other political players infuriated U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry by leaking his eleventh-hour contrarian view on a U.S. force surge to the press. But it’s quite hard to maintain the kind of Obama-esque upbeat tone of transparency and forthrightness and punish staff for leaking when the president himself is standing by and doing nothing as his closest advisors undermine one of their own. NPR’s Nina Totenberg puts the finger on White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. “There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that these leaks came at least indirectly from Rahm Emanuel,” she reported. “What is the cause of the friction? It’s very hard to say. Was it Rahm not wanting to have another power center? Was it their personalities? Was it Rahm seeing the GITMO stuff as a distraction from the president’s agenda?” If the leaks were, in fact, made with President Obama’s encouragement, they could have come from any number of others deep inside the team – including David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, or Denis McDonough. It almost doesn’t matter who among these insiders might have done the leaking. None of them would have engaged in such an effort to dislodge Greg Craig unless the president had lost faith in his counsel. But that begs the question: Why didn’t the president himself have a direct discussion with his counsel? Why didn’t Rahm Emanuel, as the president’s Cromwell, put it straight to the GITMO-burdened White House lawyer? Obama might have been uncomfortable with dislodging a friend and someone who had been so valuable and close during the campaign. As for Emanuel, it may be that he excels in and enjoys political intrigue more than being up front….what we just saw in Greg Craig’s firing was not “change we can believe in.” It was a sign that the dark side has taken hold at the White House.

I honestly can’t get worked up about that. It’s the way the court always works, I’m afraid, and I have never thought that Obama’s team would be above such things. Certainly it doesn’t seem beyond the pale in the case of Greg Craig who made his bones in the campaign by using his credibility as a former Clinton insider and good friend to ruthlessly criticize her claims to expertise. He did nothing wrong, of course, it’s a rough game, but if he’s now been maneuvered out by rivals it’s hard to feel too sorry for him. Indeed, I would guess that his willingness to savage his former friend might possibly be something that made Obama mistrust him a little bit. (That’s always the danger of doing such things isn’t it?)

What is much more intriguing about Craig’s leaving is the reason why, not the method used. His forthright insistence on closing Guantanamo and his positions on torture and all the rest have been very much in keeping with the civil libertarian principles on which Obama ran. And most people seem to think that is the problem. In fact, his replacement Bob Bauer, as Greenwald notes, is renowned for his reluctance to pursue these matters, or indeed any kind of accountability for political players who run afoul of the law.

I assume that we’ll know at some point why Craig was “assassinated by leak” as Clemons puts it. But considering his profile and portfolio it’s entirely possible that we’re going to find out for sure that it was because they didn’t like his point of view on civil liberties and the rule of law. And that, to me, will be a far more ominous sign of the administration going to the “dark side” than the methods the administration power brokers used to oust him.

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