EEUU

La tormenta secreta de Bush

Autor: E.J. Dionne Jr.

Fecha: 30/3/2004

Traductor: Celeste Murillo, especial para P.I.

Fuente: Washington Post

Bush's Secret Storm

President Bush had two big things going for him in this year's election. He was seen by a majority of Americans as a straight shooter. And he was viewed as the natural leader in the war on terrorism. Now both perceptions are in jeopardy. That explains the ferocity of the White House attack on Richard Clarke.

But the attack on Clarke, the White House's former anti-terrorism expert, could prove to be the fatal mistake of the Bush campaign. Instead of undermining Clarke's credibility, the White House has called its own into question.

It is also calling new attention to the administration's standard operating procedure since Sept. 11, 2001: Do whatever is necessary to intimidate and undercut all who raise questions about the president's handling of terrorism, answer as few of those questions as possible and keep as many secrets as you can.

That is why the Clarke story just keeps getting bigger.

There has been much hand-wringing about how partisan the discussions of Sept. 11 have become over the past week. But Clarke did not create the partisanship, and it was not born last week. An administration that had a united country behind it after Sept. 11 spent two years playing politics very hard to push back all challenges. If the administration had been less defensive earlier about what went wrong, it would not be facing such a serious and awkwardly timed mess now.

Recall that in May 2002, word leaked that Bush had received an intelligence briefing on Aug. 6, 2001, suggesting that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network was plotting to hijack U.S. airliners.

Democrats jumped on the news. Why, asked Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader, did it take so long "for us to receive this information? And what specific actions were taken by the White House in response?" Dick Gephardt, the House Democratic leader, spoke in a similar vein: "What the American people want to know is, exactly what did the White House know, and, more importantly, what was done about it?"

Daschle and Gephardt were trashed. Vice President Cheney denounced "incendiary" commentary by opposition politicians and declared that such politically incorrect thoughts were "thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war."

And the questions abated.

This time, the Bush administration pulled the same levers to silence Clarke -- and the questions didn't stop. On the contrary, inconsistencies in the administration's pre-Sept. 11 story were, finally, big news.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice's furious attacks on Clarke got her trapped in a series of statements that contradicted other administration officials and sometimes herself. And Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will surely come to regret his vicious speech on Friday accusing Clarke of, among other things, "profiteering." Frist all but accused Clarke of perjury. He alleged that classified testimony Clarke gave to Congress in July 2002 contradicted what Clarke is saying now. "It is one thing for Mr. Clarke to dissemble in front of the media," Frist said. "But if he lied under oath to the United States Congress, it is a far more serious matter." Frist called for declassifying Clarke's congressional testimony.

How weak were the underpinnings of Frist's form of McCarthyism Lite? So weak that Clarke easily one-upped Frist and the administration in his appearance Sunday on "Meet the Press." Clarke endorsed declassifying his testimony in full, and any other relevant documents. Rice, in the meantime, defended the administration's refusal to let her testify before the commission in public and under oath.

All of which raises the question: Who appears more interested in having the whole truth come out, Clarke or the administration? That's why many Republicans think Rice has to testify.

Last week certainly hurt Bush politically by halting the momentum of his attacks on Sen. John Kerry -- and by putting attack politics under unusually harsh scrutiny. But the larger lesson is that delaying accountability and keeping secret what should be public almost always backfires.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who died a year ago this week, made the war on secrecy one of the last great causes of his public life. In 1997, he noted -- presciently, in light of the problems leading to Sept. 11 -- that when government agencies keep secrets from each other, top officials are denied the information they need when they need it. "Secrecy," Moynihan declared, "can confer a form of power without responsibility about which democratic societies must be vigilant." The bitterness of last week is explained by the mischiefs of partisanship, but even more by the costs of secrecy.