What Is Bush Hiding?
If you think Bush’s prosecutor purge is a minor imbroglio compared with presidential scandals like Watergate and Iran-Contra, consider the fact that in both those scandals the presidents who were under fire waived executive privilege and allowed their top aides to testify before Congress.
Ronald Reagan waived all executive privilege at the start of the Iran-contra investigation, which arguably dealt with the very matters of national security and diplomacy in which executive privilege is most legitimate.
President Bush dismissed his predecessors’ waiving of privilege during his news conference yesterday (“some have, some haven’t”). The spin from White House spokesman Tony Snow was this nugget of truthiness:
[It] has been traditional in all White Houses not to have staffers testify on Capitol Hill.
Not lately, Tony. Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Clinton all waived the privilege:
At the height of the Watergate scandal, in 1973, Richard M. Nixon allowed his closest advisers H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman and their aides to testify. President Gerald Ford testified before Congress to explain his pardon of Nixon. And President Bill Clinton’s National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger testified in 1997 before a House investigation of Clinton’s 1996 campaign fund-raising.
[In fact, 31 of Clinton’s top aides testified before Congress on 47 occasions.]
“The most dramatic was Ronald Reagan, who waived executive privilege for his entire staff during Iran-Contra,” said Louis Fisher, senior specialist in the separation of powers at the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Congress had created a special committee to investigate allegations that Reagan had authorized the sale of weapons to Iran in return for cash for the Contra guerrilla war effort in Nicaragua.
Reagan’s waiver was sweeping:
Ronald Reagan waived all executive privilege at the start of the Iran-contra investigation, which arguably dealt with the very matters of national security and diplomacy in which executive privilege is most legitimate. He turned over his documents and diaries; he told everyone, including White House lawyers, to do likewise, because he said he wanted the facts to come out.
Pres. Bush does not want the facts to come out, from which we can infer he has something to hide. It must be something serious — perhaps a conspiracy in the White House to shut down corruption investigations by fired U.S. Attorney Carol Lam into powerful California Republicans, particularly Rep. Jerry Lewis, the former chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
