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The Augean White House

Compared to Patrick Fitzgerald, Hercules had it easy. The Greek hero had only to dismantle one enormous stone wall and redirect two rivers through the stables where 3,000 of Augeus's cattle were penned. True, the stables hadn't been cleaned out for 30 years, and there was a significant amount of bovine detritus. But Hercules was Mr Clean, and when he was through those stables sparkled.

Fitzgerald is faced with the far more formidable pile of detritus deposited by Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby, and friends during their five years in the White House. Lacking the heroic powers of Hercules, Fitzgerald was unable to breach the stone wall of executive privilege or redirect the Tigris and the Potomac through 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to cleanse the cubicles. Nevertheless, his tireless, meticulous spadework has begun to remove some of the offensive leavings and identify their sources.

Libby is indicted, and the evidence against him appears overwhelming. As Brad DeLong points out:

Either Libby is guilty or:

1. An Under Secretary of State
2. A senior officer of the Central Intelligence Agency
3. The Vice President of the United States
4. Libby's own notes of his meeting with the Vice President
5. A briefer from the Central Intelligence Agency
6. Libby's then-principal deputy
7. Judith Miller
8. Tim Russert
9. The White House Press Secretary
10. The Counsel to the Vice President
11. The Assistant to the Vice President for Public Affairs
12. "White House Official A"
13. Matthew Cooper

are lying.

But Libby's guilt is only the beginning, because he was not a hermit. Nor was he in the habit of instigating anything on his sole initiative, whether a significant policy announcement or a minor dirty trick. As "Cheney's Cheney," Libby must have discussed everything with his boss, and he certainly was in the habit of following any orders from him. So Cheney is probably as culpable as Libby. As is Karl Rove, AKA "White House Official A," who leaked to Robert Novak and lied about it. Then there's Bush. While he may not always be the fountainhead of ideas within his administration, it is difficult to imagine that a palpably illegal act like the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson could have occurred without his notice.

Truth Is the Engine

Patrick Fitzgerald is a hero, and we should all be glad for his heroism. He is a meticulous investigator and dedicated prosecutor with an old-fashioned, nonpartisan sense of duty and honor. When he indicted Dick Cheney's right-hand man Scooter Libby today, he said:

We brought those cases because we realized that the truth is the engine of our judicial system.… We didn't get the straight story, and we had to—had to—act.

Truth has been in short supply lately in Washington. Maybe that's why the whole engine of government has been sputtering. But the real scandal is that the Bush administration's aversion to truth was precisely what led members of Congress to imagine that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons, which led to the grant of war powers to Bush, which led to the ill-conceived, disastrously managed invasion and occupation of Iraq, which led to the deaths of 2.012 American soldiers and about 100,000 Iraqis. No wonder Libby lied—the truth was far too ugly for public consumption.

Fitzgerald was clear: the crimes alleged—perjury, false statements, obstruction of justice—were dangerous betrayals of public duty. Though he did not formally charge Libby with leaking CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson's name, he said that Libby's lies were equally culpable, because they made the investigation of that leak more difficult. In response to a reporter's question, he said:

The Divine Right of Presidents

The rigidity and undemocratic nature of the American political system is most obvious at times like these, times of internal crisis, when a dangerous and unpopular administration cannot be readily thrown out of office. In Bush's Rovegate/Libbygate/Plamegate, as in Nixon's Watergate, a president who is a bit too zealous to be sane tricks the electorate into giving him a second term—and the tricks he uses to win that election gradually come to public knowledge and destroy his reputation. But he hangs on, bringing useful government to a standstill and hoping to retain power by means of public bluster and secret dirty tricks. And by means of an ill-conceived war, with the cudgel of patriotism.

It all goes back to the lack of imagination shown by the Founding Fathers when they wrote the Constitution. They spoke the words of democracy, and they created a resilient republic, but they were still deep enough in the eighteenth century that their idea of a chief magistrate was essentially the image of a king. That worked well enough when the president was at heart a benevolent republican, classically schooled in the dangers of imperial megalomania, when he was a man who believed himself simply an instrument to implement the people's will. The best presidents were in effect benevolent kings, who used their power carefully. Washington, Lincoln, and FDR succeeded in times of great external crisis, because they were interested first in the public good.

But put an incompetent, flawed man like Nixon or Bush on the throne, and the entire system falls apart. Their petty selfishness and narrow partisanship gradually become apparent to more and more voters, but nothing can be done to change the government short of impeachment. The king remains the king, unless there is a veritable revolution. These times may try men's souls, but they also highlight the advantages of a parliamentary system, in which a change of government can occur when it is needed and not only when the calendar says it's time.

Death in Iraq, Day 951

Today, the US Department of Defense reported another death:

Staff Sgt. George T. Alexander, Jr., 34, of Killeen, Texas, died at Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, on Oct. 22, of injuries sustained in Samarra, Iraq, on Oct. 17, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Bradley Fighting Vehicle.  Alexander was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Benning, Ga.

Sergeant Alexander was the 2,000th American soldier killed in Iraq. Like the others, he was sent to his appointment in Samarra  by George Bush and Dick Cheney for no reason other than to increase their own political power. Like the others, he was sent under false pretenses, including the lie that Iraq was involved in the crimes of 9/11 and the lie that Saddam Hussein was an immediate danger to the US—especially because of his nuclear weapons, which were also a lie.

The liars are being unmasked, and the Rovegate/Plamegate investigation by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is preparing to show that the highest officials in the Bush administration, almost certainly including Cheney and Bush, were willing to lie blatantly to the American people—and then lie again, under oath, to Fitzgerald and the grand jury. They lied to conceal their earlier lies. They lied to conceal the fact that they are accessories to mass murder.

While Bush is the public face of this conspiracy, Cheney is the still, dark center around which it turns. As Joan Walsh writes in Salon:

It's always been clear that Cheney was at the center of the story, but the Times revelation today about his role in the campaign against Wilson reveals the strange mixture of pettiness, fear and arrogance that prevailed in the White House as its lovely little war, and the rationale for it, came crashing down.…

Whatever laws were broken, though, the obsession with Wilson suggests a dysfunctional workplace indeed, a White House out of control, so obsessed with punishing political enemies that it ignored the nation's real enemies.

Voldemort in Washington

Dick Cheney speaks the language of snakes. He has split his soul and imbued the pieces into various powerful objects: his flag pin and his tie and his lower teeth and his pacemaker. Together with the cabal of Republican Death Eaters, He Who Must Not Be Named has been running the whole show in Washington. But his evil wizardry will soon be unmasked by the special prosecuting wizard Patrick Fitzgerald, and he will be vanquished.

I hope so, anyway. More evidence of Cheney's Voldemortism is leaking out, and it's not pretty—two stories in particular:

• He wants to sanction CIA torture.
• He appears to be at the center of Rovegate/Plamegate.

R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White have the first story in the Washington Post. After 90 senators voted for an anti-torture provision earlier this month, to bring the United States back into line with international law and human morality, Cheney decided the law should apply only to the military, not to the Central Intelligence Agency. So he presented to Senator John McCain—who himself was subject to North Vietnamese torture and therefore had championed the bill—a proposal stating "that the measure barring inhumane treatment shall not apply to counterterrorism operations conducted abroad or to operations conducted by 'an element of the United States government' other than the Defense Department."

This was Cheney's third meeting with McCain to ask him to abandon the idea of limiting torture by the US government. He is persistent. Smith and White continue:

The Other Side of the Mountain

John Taylor and I—and our trusty bicycles—arrived in Santa Barbara at 3 o'clock Friday afternoon, after a long, hot grind over the Santa Ynez mountains, an exhilarating 5-mile plunge back down to the Pacific, and a fog-shrouded slog along the shoulder of the truck-infested 101 freeway. Our trip from the edge of San Francisco to the center of Santa Barbara took 8 days and totaled 380 miles. We saw some of the most spectacular scenery in the United States, and we met lots of friendly and helpful people.

When I cycled the same route in 1973—back when my age was about half what it is now—the trip was somewhat different. It took me 5 days instead of 8; and I traveled alone, which made for a more meditative but less rewarding trip. This time, John and I mirrored and transformed each other's experiences by discussing them as we traveled—sometimes, during the quieter stretches, we conducted veritable colloquia while riding.

Far fewer cyclists were touring 32 years ago, and on that solo trip I met only one who was traveling a long distance, a 20-year-old maniac tearing down the coast road from Canada to Mexico. On this trip, two-wheelers were everywhere. We crossed paths with a group of middle-aged but young-muscled Minnesotans, one woman and three men, in Big Sur and Orcutt and Refugio State Beach and Santa Barbara. Another group of three 30-year-olds from Portland were zipping along to San Diego, passing us on the hills, meeting us in the restaurants.

We also exchanged pleasant words with many cyclists out for a quick day spin of 20 or 30 or 60 miles. A 75-year-old dressed in flame-colored bike togs was on her daily 20-mile constitutional along the beach from Morro Bay to Cayucos for morning coffee. A racer from Fremont, California, was enjoying the coast north of Santa Cruz, at speed. And a deus ex machina named Sam, who descended Monday morning from the second floor of our motel in Carmel to administer magical repairs to John's twisted derailleur, rode from there to Big Sur for lunch and then returned.

Render unto Caesar—Or Not

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is just another Republican plutocrat. During his media-savvy campaign for office, he pretended to be the people's governor—but he's really the governor of tax cheats and criminals. If there were any doubt of where his allegiances lie, several recent vetoes make it clear that he approves of people who steal money from the state of California and he is willing to assist them in their thievery. Evan Halper reports in the Los Angeles Times:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is putting the brakes on efforts to give state investigators more tools to hunt tax evaders, following a period of aggressive enforcement that has generated billions of dollars for California coffers.

The governor has vetoed several bills that would allow agents to go after more businesses and individuals who cost the state millions by cheating on their returns, or not filing at all. He said the measures were flawed and would have unfairly burdened employers.…

"These vetoes basically say to these people that they can flout the law without repercussions," said Lenny Goldberg, president of the union-backed California Tax Reform Assn. "Ordinary taxpayers can't do that."

Et Tu, Hannah?

The Patrick Fitzgerald investigation into the Plame/Wilson leak is reaching its climax, and rumors are flying. Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post has an excellent summary of the many threads in the story:

• The Associated Press reports that senior adviser and possible target Karl Rove appears to be clearing his schedule of public events as he awaits word.
• The New York Times reports that Fitzgerald is not intending to file a final report on his investigation -- and the paper interprets that as a strong sign that he intends to file charges. (The unlikely alternative being that he and his grand jury just fold up and disappear.)
• The New York Daily News reports that Bush scolded Rove two years ago for his "ham-handed" behavior regarding the leak, but is now firmly backing him.
• The National Journal details the possible case against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff.
• There are scattered reports that Fitzgerald has a cooperating witness from inside the White House.

All of these reports indicate that the Bush administration is unraveling under the pressure, and that Cheney and Bush were probably involved in the conspiracy to keep the leak secret, or possibly even to plan the leak. In fact, we may be in the early stages of revisiting Watergate and the crimes of Nixon, when the real question was "What did the president know and when did he know it?"

The cooperating witness, it appears, is John Hannah, a John Bolton aide on loan to Cheney. Hannah may, in fact, have been the person first ordered to break the law by leaking information about Valerie Plame. The questions are who handed down the order and who knew about it, and Hannah may have given prosecutor Fitzgerald the answers. Cheney is rumored (however unlikely it may seem) to be contemplating resignation if he is indicted or named as a coconspirator.

And now Thomas DeFrank reports in the New York Daily News that George Bush knew his right-hand man Karl Rove was involved and even berated him for his "ham-handed and bush-league" way of handling it—before Bush insisted publicly that he did not know and exonerated Rove. If this report is true, the president lied to the public about his knowledge of what happened concerning the public unmasking of a CIA agent, and he concealed the perpetrators of the crime.

But what might happen if Fitzgerald does indict Rove and Libby? How will Bush and Cheney react? More likely than a resignation, it seems to me, would be another Nixonian replay, ousting the special prosecutor who is getting too close to the truth. Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre occurred on October 20, 1973. Special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox was fired, taking with him Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus, who resigned after refusing to do Nixon's dirty deed. It was the sycophantic solicitor general, Robert Bork, who was finally willing to fire Cox.

What if Bush decides that to protect himself he must fire Fitzgerald? Which toady will he find to do the deed? Will anyone now in power in Washington stand firm for the rule of law, as Richardson and Ruckelshaus did? Will any Republicans object?

Constitutional democracy in the United States was deeply wounded in December 2000, when five members of the Supreme Court voted according to party instead of according to law. Unless someone stands up to oppose Bush, his unpredictable defensive maneuvers in the next few weeks may kill it forever.

The Long and Winding Road

Highway 1 from Monterey to San Simeon hugs the cliffs above the Pacific, swooping into little valleys and over towering ridges that plunge a thousand feet into the waves. Soon after we left Carmel on Monday, John spotted this sign, and we abandoned all hope of the life urbane. (Click on this, or on any of the smaller photos, for a larger version.)

Traveling south, with the prevailing winds at our back but our bikes on the edge nearer the ocean, we inched uphill at 5 miles an hour, then soared down at 30 time and time again.

One of the first landmarks we came to was the famous Bixby Bridge, gateway to Big Sur, where I posed hopefully. Robinson Jeffers lived near here, and his poem "Bixby's Landing," written before the bridge was built, catches the power of the natural environment in this part of the world:

Two duckhawks darting in the sky of their cliff-hung     
     nest are the voice of the headland.
Wine-hearted solitude, our mother the wilderness,
Men's failures are often as beautiful as men's     
     triumphs, but your returnings
Are even more precious than your first presence.

We climbed the grueling hill that leads out of Big Sur Valley, past Nepenthe, past the Esalen Institute, and ended the day at Lucia, where we saw this sunset from a thousand feet above the ocean.

And today the road, winding as ever, went through Pacific Valley and Gorda, and after two final mountains, reached Ragged Point. We felt somewhat ragged ourselves, but happy to have done the sexagenarian shuffle over the entire Big Sur highway, that miracle of 1930s engineering and public works, back when the government still did things like public works.

So you can see we're ready for the last three days. Tonight we're in Cambria, and then it's on to Pismo Beach, Lompoc, and Santa Barbara, where our dear wives will join us for a weekend—and one for the road.

The Roads Must Roll

There are few places on earth more beautiful than the coast of northern and central California. My friend John Taylor and I are savoring it this week, mile by beautiful mile, on our bicycles. The first night out of San Francisco we stayed at the Pigeon Point Hostel, about 50 miles south. The hostel is right next door to this beautiful lighthouse, one of the few still functioning. (Click on this photo, and on the others, for larger versions.)

That first day, Friday, began in the fog and chill of Daly City, where we had arrived by BART train to begin the adventure. We rode through the city streets of San Francisco suburbs and reached the beaches of Pacifica, where the surfers were out in force. Here John is gazing at the surf and contemplating the most terrible part of the journey, the ride over Devil's Slide—you can see the mountain in the background. The road is narrow, steep, heavily traveled, and without a shoulder. We were happy to arrive in Half Moon Bay a couple of  hours later—the town was deep into its annual pumpkin festival.

On Saturday our destination was the magical college town of Santa Cruz, made even more magical by the high-school band festival. I would have taken photos of the festivities except for the fact that I was preoccupied by the broken spoke in my rear wheel. Fortunately, we found the best bike mechanic in the developed world at The Spokesman in Santa Cruz, and he rebuilt the entire wheel with excellent new spokes that afternoon.

So today, spoke-enabled, we skirted Monterey Bay, all the way to the city of Monterey. That's me pumping a fist into the air in triumph as we reached the beach, just five miles short of our destination in Carmel-by-the-Sea (as the charming, candycane town is officially called).

But there is a serious hill between Carmel and Monterey (it's not called Mountain of the King for nothing), and our adventures were not over. A section of Viego Road is so steep that John pitched over backwards—yes, it was like a Road Runner cartoon, except for the ensuing real injury as the pedal struck his leg. Fortunately—and so far this trip is a series of serendipitous and fortunate events—the injury was not serious, and we made it to Carmel by four o'clock.

Here's John before his fall, also on the Monterey beach, spreading his arms wide in a what's-the-big-deal gesture. As we reached Carmel, his leg was bandaged and on the mend, and his insouciance was undimmed.

For the next two days we follow highway 1 down the Big Sur coast, where the mountains meet the sea in a landscape of wild exuberance.