[Mb-civic] This Time, the Prosecutor's a Corker - Tina Brown (yes, HER) - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

This Time, the Prosecutor's a Corker

By Tina Brown
Thursday, October 27, 2005; Page C01

It's one of the ironies of our media culture that the mystique of 
Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case, 
grew to mythic size simply by virtue of Fitzgerald keeping his mouth 
shut until he has something to say.

Manhattan media circles have been so excited by Fitzgerald's silence 
right up to the eve of the grand jury's term tomorrow that they've 
forgotten his casting as a First Amendment assassin and turned him into 
a cross between Philip Marlowe and the Shadow: fearless, honest, 
independent, laconic and unstoppable. Especially laconic -- and on that 
point they're demonstrably right. Unlike Kenneth Starr's late, 
unlamented operation, neither Fitzgerald nor anyone around him leaks.
"Incorruptibility by money is the old story," the New Republic's Leon 
Wieseltier commented to me this week. "Now it's incorruptibility by media."

That's the new integrity standard: How long can you hold out? How long 
can you turn down the entreaties of the "Today" show? The seductive 
power of "deep background?" The lure of A-list dinner invitations?

Fitzgerald has shown no interest in any such media baubles. His silence 
has been another kind of shock and awe, especially at a moment when the 
media themselves can't stop blabbing. NBC Universal CEO Bob Wright was 
quoted this week in the New York Post as saying the NBC network is 
"desperate" because of its ratings. Last week's hand-wringing e-mail to 
the New York Times staff from Executive Editor Bill Keller was another 
noisy session on the couch for the paper of record. Keller "wished" that 
"we had dealt with the controversy over our coverage of WMD as soon as I 
became executive editor." He "wished" that "when I learned Judy Miller 
had been subpoenaed as a witness in the leak investigation I had sat her 
down for a thorough debriefing." Wishin' and hopin', hopin' and wishin'. 
By the end of the e-mail, the reader is wishin' that Keller would stop 
abasing himself before his own staff -- and hopin' he'll fire somebody 
for a change.

Meanwhile, Fitzgerald's powerful silence has made him a blank canvas on 
which Democrats have projected their fantasies, Republicans their 
anxieties. We are living in an uneasy moment of moral crisis and 
institutional disintegration in politics as well as journalism. No 
administration as tightly wound and paranoiac as the Bush regime could 
hope to hold together after five years of supremacy and sectarian 
ruthlessness, governing only for its base.

Fitzgerald has been thrust into the role of the un-George W. Bush -- the 
gritty cop vs. the rhinestone cowboy. In this corner, the scholarship 
kid from Brooklyn who worked summers as a doorman and went on to be the 
stellar student mentoring the less gifted. In the other, the son of 
privilege who goofed off at school, ducked the draft and always fell 
back on his dad's influential pals to -- in the memorable phrase of 
Colin Powell's former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson, writing this 
week in the Los Angeles Times about Powell's role in the Bush White 
House -- clean all the dog poop off the carpet.

It's hard not to see Fitzgerald as the possessor of authentic 
traditional American virtues. Fitzgerald deals in facts, and lets facts 
speak for themselves. Bush talks ceaselessly of faith. The prosecutor is 
all about substance, the president all about surface. In nominating his 
personal attorney to the most august thinking body in the land, the 
Supreme Court, the president was caught showing the dismissive view he's 
always held of intellectual depth and scholarly accomplishment.

Fitzgerald's noir mystique was only strengthened this week by news 
accounts relating that in contrast to the rapier focus of his mind, 
Fitzgerald lives in a bachelor apartment with old socks stuffed in the 
desk drawer and three-month-old lasagna stiffening in the oven. Remember 
how in the first year of the Bush II presidency there was constant 
promotion of this administration's crisp corporate values? New-broom 
indicators like the CEO starting every meeting on time and retiring to 
bed at 10 p.m. were supposed to signify that personal discipline was a 
sign of intellectual rigor. But an empty desk can sometimes mean an 
empty head, one that's comfortable only with spoon-fed executive 
summaries and filtered "coverage" instead of self-processed information.

"It takes firm leadership to preside over the bureaucracy," Wilkerson 
wrote in his startling blast against Bush. "But it also takes a 
willingness to listen to dissenting opinions. It requires leaders who 
can analyze, synthesize, ponder and decide."

Republicans have been searching for a handle on Fitzgerald. They are 
trying, seemingly unconsciously, to offload onto him their own bad faith 
left over from the Clinton impeachment fiasco. Sen. Kay Bailey 
Hutchison's shameless display on Sunday's "Meet the Press" was the cake 
taker. Hutchison had the gall to blandly rabbit on about overzealous 
prosecutors and perjury just being an itsy-bitsy crime. The narrative of 
Clinton's impeachment is being replayed, only this time without such 
incidental grotesqueries as a thong-snapping intern and a prissball 
prosecutor leaking like a fire hose and the recourse to churchy lines 
like "sex isn't the issue, the issue is lying." It's one thing to say, 
"If he'll lie about sex, he'll lie about something important." But what 
if the thing being lied about is already important? For Democrats, the 
prospect of indictments coming down feels like poetic justice for five 
years of cynicism and sanctimony.

We thought we wanted transparency from the Bush administration. Now 
we're getting it, thanks to Fitzgerald (and no thanks to the White 
House), and it feels ominous. We've already had a preview of what the 
Bush presidency will look like with its Praetorian Guard down. Karl 
Rove's absence with kidney stones and his legal distractions in the last 
six weeks gave us a glimpse of the Bush presidency minus Bush's Brain: 
the out-to-lunch Katrina response, the botched Miers nomination. At 
least before they could pretend to have their act together. Now, as 
Thomas DeFrank's scoop in Monday's New York Daily News reveals, a 
panicky, irritable president is taking out his frustrations on what's 
left of his inner circle, which he could never see beyond to begin with.

It's not a reassuring spectacle. With a full 39 months to go, Prince Hal 
is morphing into Prince Lear. Little wonder we are obsessed with the 
strength and silence of Patrick Fitzgerald.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/26/AR2005102602524.html?nav=hcmodule