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October 09, 2003

One way the President could "get to the bottom of it"

Mark Kleiman offers a great idea one of his readers, Michael Ham, submitted for President Bush to get at the truth of who outed Valarie Plame

The President should require every official in his administration at Executive Level II or higher (that's cabinet secretaries and their immediate deputies, plus others of equivalent rank) to submit, within 48 hours, either a sworn statement that he or she had no discussion mentioning Joseph Wilson's wife with any reporter in the period before July 14, 2003 (the date of the first Novak column) and has no knowledge of anyone who did have such discussions, or a sworn statement listing any such discussions as that person did have or any knowledge that person has regarding such discussions by other persons.

The President has, of course, no power to compel compliance with that order. He does, however, since all of the officials involved except the Director of the FBI and the Director of Central Intelligence serve at his pleasure, have the power to dismiss anyone who refuses to submit such a statement, or who submits a statement claiming the privilege against self-incrimination.

It would take intrepidity amounting to temerity for anyone to falsely certify innocence under oath, given the high probability that the truth will come out. There might be legal defenses for the original act, but not for a false statement.

I like this idea - it would show that Bush actually has some integrity and that he actually meant it when he said he wants to know the truth. His continuing refusal to even simply ask the people in the White House who could be described as "senior administration officials" speaks volumes to how little he truly cares about the situation, and its a message that won't be lost on everyone.

UPDATE: Kleiman also has a discussion of some of the possible objections to this idea and his answers to those objections. I personally think this is a great idea and would love to see it get picked up by a group like, say, MoveOn or something of that nature, calling for Bush to make this kind of request and give members and other interested individuals the opportunity to sign on to a letter or ad promoting it, so that it can start getting out of the web-consciousness and into the general public's mind as well.

Posted by thorswitch at October 9, 2003 12:58 AM

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Posted by: organize at October 9, 2003 10:47 AM