Fitzgerald Is Expected to Decide Whether to Seek Indictments

[strandinthewind]

October 23, 2005

Fitzgerald Is Expected to Decide Whether to Seek Indictments

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - After a 22-month inquiry, the special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is expected to announce this week whether he will seek indictments against White House officials, a decision that is likely to be a defining moment of President Bush's second term.


Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, have been advised that they are in serious legal jeopardy in a case that began as a minor irritant for the president's aides but has grown into a raging conflagration for the White House.

It is not publicly known when Mr. Fitzgerald will take action, if any, but whatever he decides, the prosecutor is expected to make an announcement before Friday, the final day of the term of his grand jury. In the past, the grand jury has met on Wednesdays and Fridays.

As the White House braced for a decision by Mr. Fitzgerald, Republicans began suggesting that they would pursue a strategy of minimizing any charges as technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecution.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," compared the leak investigation to the case of Martha Stewart, "where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime."

Senator Hutchison said she hoped "that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality [anyone see irony here ] where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."

Democrats signaled that they would use the leak investigation to help weave a broader tapestry portraying the Republican Party as corrupt and the White House as dishonest with the American people.

"We know that the president wasn't truthful with us when he sent us to Iraq," the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, said on ABC's "This Week." "What got Rove and Libby in trouble was because they were attacking -- which the Republicans always do-- attacking somebody who criticized them and disagreed with them. They make the attacks personal. They go over the line."

The negative effects on Mr. Bush's presidency from indictments of his senior aides, said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington, would be as great as the positive effects of Mr. Bush's handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"This is the most important turning point for his administration in terms of turning down and losing support," Mr. Thurber said.

A weakened White House, he said, could lead to further infighting among the conservatives who provide most of Mr. Bush's legislative, grassroots and financial support, and could leave the administration with even less political clout to sway Democrats in Republican-leaning states to back Mr. Bush's agenda. In the Senate, Mr. Bush has depended on support from at least a few Democrats to push through many of his major initiatives.

Mr. Bush is already facing troubles on many fronts, including his nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court. A deepening of his political woes could undermine support for other contentious aspects of his agenda, including his education policy and his push to make his tax cuts permanent, Mr. Thurber said.

Asked on CBS's "Face the Nation" whether the leak investigation was a distraction that had led to bad decisions at the White House, Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker, replied: "I don't know if it led to bad decisions. But no one who has ever been through this pressure cooker would say to you it doesn't drain energy, that it doesn't drain time and effort."

www.nytimes.com (emphasis and comments supplied)