RNC e-mail affair betrays a White House enthusiasm for lawlessness and secret government

Mail Trail
The RNC e-mails represent one more White House demerit.
By Bruce Fein
Posted Thursday, June 21, 2007, at 12:00 PM ET
http://www.slate.com/id/2168757/pagenum/all/#page_start

The Bush administration's signature triptych celebrates lawlessness, secrecy, and scorn for public accountability. The latest confirmation of this fact comes from the June 2007 interim staff report of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. It revealed chronic and flagrant White House violations of the Presidential Records Act of 1978 by employing Republican National Committee e-mail accounts for official business. Then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales stood idly by in a characteristic cerebral stupor.

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At present, the magnitude of the act's violations is unknown. But the motivation of the Bush White House in using these accounts seems clear: to conceal embarrassing communications or evidence of lawlessness. The oversight committee's investigation into convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff's contacts with the White House unearthed the following e-mail exchange between Rove's then-executive assistant Susan Ralston and Abramoff's associate Todd Boulanger: "I now have an RNC BlackBerry, which you can use to e-mail me at any time. No security issues like my WH e-mail." A sister e-mail indicated that Mr. Abramoff had been advised by a White House staff member to avoid sending communications through the official White House e-mail system because "to put this stuff in writing in their e-mail system … might actually limit what they can do to help us." Evidence has also emerged that these RNC e-mail accounts were used by the White House in communicating over the firings of U.S. attorneys and evading Hatch Act limitations on diverting government resources for partisan political activities.

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The RNC e-mail affair, standing alone, would not justify alarm. Most presidential records were maintained. Abramoff and Scooter Libby were held accountable to the criminal law. Violations of the Hatch Act were identified. But the affair betrays a White House enthusiasm for lawlessness and secret government irreconcilable with bedrock democratic values. And it is this pattern of secrecy for its own sake that is most chilling.

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In December 2005, the New York Times first revealed the fact of the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance program that violated FISA. If President Bush had had his way, the secret spying would have remained secret forever. It would never have been subject to congressional or judicial checks. Congressional hearings to learn the spying details (sans sources and methods) have been repeatedly frustrated by claims of executive privilege. Indeed, the Department of Justice has even repeatedly refused to disclose or to discuss advice addressing the legality of the NSA's spying based on the absurd assertion that operational details would be exposed to the enemy by amplifying Supreme Court precedents. During Gen. Michael Hayden's confirmation hearing as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he refused to answer an inquiry from Sen. Dianne Feinstein as to whether a FISA warrant had ever been sought for a pen register on the theory that an answer would reveal otherwise secret intelligence sources or methods.

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Vice President Dick Cheney concealed the identities of private business advisers to his Energy Task Force. Visitors for official business are kept secret. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered the closure of removal proceedings for alleged terrorists. The Central Intelligence Agency sought to reclassify declassified information that Chinese intervention in the Korean War had been miscalculated and that the intelligence services of the United States and Great Britain had collaborated during World War II. President Bush has complicated and delayed public access to the papers of former presidents.