'Imperfect Storm' For Bush?

Many observers in Washington say indictments of administration officials in the leak of the name of a former CIA operative would be the final component of an "imperfect storm" for President Bush, according to former presidential adviser David Gergen.

Gergen, who advised four presidents and is now editor-at-large of U.S. News and World Report,

"We've got this confluence now, people are calling it 'the imperfect storm.'

"You've got potential indictments this week. You've got pressure building up among conservatives for Harriet Miers to withdraw (as a nominee for the Supreme Court), and you've got the death toll in Iraq, sadly, ready to go over the 2,000 mark.

"Those coming together, I think, put the White House in the darkest place it's been since this president took office and to me, it's going to be a long climb out of the hole. If he were to lose (top political strategist) Karl Rove, he'll lose his right arm, and it's really hard to climb out of a hole without your right arm."

Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, have been mentioned as possible targets of the investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

Gergen says a report Tuesday in The New York Times that Libby first heard the name of Valerie Plame, the former CIA operative, from Cheney himself, rather than from journalists, could mean more trouble for Libby than Cheney.Libby apparently testified to the grand jury that he got Plame's name from reporters.

The Times report, if true, "has more political ramifications than legal ramifications, so far as we know, with regard to Mr. Cheney," Gergen told Smith. "(Cheney)'s now, for the first time, been brought directly into this case. Heretofore he had not been. There'd been a lot of speculation.

"But he appears to be in no legal jeopardy himself, the vice president doesn't because, whatever he told Mr. Libby, both were entitled to know, about (Iraq war justification critic) Joe Wilson's wife at the CIA. Both had security clearances. So there was nothing illegal about what he did.

"But it doesn't have political ramifications.

"And of course, for Mr. Libby, there are potential legal ramifications … because, as far as we know, Mr. Libby has told the grand jury he first learned about this from reporters, not from Mr. Cheney. So the question is, is he possibly going to be indicted for steering the grand jury away from his boss, trying to protect his boss, and is that an obstruction of justice?"

Asked by Smith about rumblings already starting to emerge from some quarters that indictments for any crime short of the leaking itself wouldn't mean much, Gergen was quick to disagree.

"Well, you know, the country went through a large conversation about that just a few years ago, about Bill Clinton, because the underlying events there with Monica Lewinsky were not illegal. But what he got charged with and what he was impeached (over) in the House was whether he had lied about it after the fact. And we know, going way back to Watergate, that the … standard rule in Washington is that the cover-up is always worse than the crime.

So, I would be cautious in dismissing the idea that, if there's no underlying crime, there's nothing serious about this. Perjury and obstruction of justice have long been regarded as serious crimes. You're expected, under the majesty of the law, to tell the truth to investigators. … But let's wait and see. We don't know whether the prosecutor will decide to prosecute based on what we've heard so far."