Hypocrite in Chief and Chairman Hypocrite. Slate's John Dickerson: "We've found the leaker in the White House! It's the president." Hypocrite in chief, indeed. Most of the papers offer analysis this morning suggesting the president probably has the authority to declassify whatever he wants, but that these latest revelations do considerable damage to his already sagging credibility. The White House just looks awful. And they erode the credibility of the president's supporters in Congress, particularly Pat Roberts, whose Intel committee non investigation of the White House's blatantly political use and abuse of pre-war intelligence -- as uncovered and documented as a side effect of the Fitzgerald probe -- has been exposed as motivated by nothing more than purely partisan concerns. Next time Roberts goes on TV to say anything about leaks or national security or the Democrats supposedly "politicizing" the Iraq intelligence issue, he should be laughed off the air.

The New York Times captures Roberts' particular hypocrisy on its editorial page today. "For more than two years, Senate Republicans have dragged out an investigation into how the Bush administration came to use bogus intelligence on Iraq to justify a war. A year ago, Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called it 'a monumental waste of time' to consider whether the White House manipulated intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, the evidence has steadily mounted that President Bush and his team not only did that before the war, but kept right on doing it after the invasion. The most recent additions to this pile came yesterday..."

As the administration is exposed as having orchestrated a leaking conspiracy and then a cover up surrounding just the pre-war intel manipulations Roberts has not only so far failed to investigate but repeatedly denied existed, Roberts is left holding the cover up bag and looking increasingly ridiculous, and worse. His foresaken duty is to provide comprehensive intelligence oversight for the people, not to conspire in a cover up to protect the executive and, as we have learned the White House directed, blame all the Iraq war mistakes on the intelligence community, in order to "insulate" the president. Roberts has truly failed his nation. Roberts for some reason is sensitive to press criticism -- perhaps as has been suggested to me, he is being misled by his staff and is insulated to some degree from some of these realities himself -- and his response to the editorials that will bash him is likely to be to "rush" out the completed parts of his Phase II report (if you can call more than three years after the invasion a rush). You can bet that, when they finally do appear, none of them will, by careful design, get to the heart of the matter that the Fitzgerald investigation has exposed.

Posted by Laura at April 7, 2006 07:00 AM