Bush Blocking Fitzgerald Cooperation

But Waxman and his staff didn't take no for an answer. They just changed the question. In a July letter to Fitzgerald, also released today, Waxman requested seven categories of documents.

As Waxman writes in his letter to Mukasey: "I have been careful in my dealings with Special Counsel Fitzgerald to narrow the Committee's request to documents that would not infringe on his prosecutorial independence or intrude upon grand jury secrecy. Before the Committee requested any documents, my staff, Justice Department staff, and Mr. Fitzgerald's staff discussed the types of documents that could be properly provided to the Committee. Mr. Fitzgerald's staff agreed that the Committee's request was appropriate and has already produced a number of the requested documents relating to CIA and State Department officials and other individuals."

But that's when the White House intervened, although Waxman doesn't specify exactly who or how: "To date, however, Mr. Fitzgerald has been frustrated in his attempts to transmit documents relating to White House officials to the Committee."

The documents in question are "transcripts, reports, notes, and other documents relating to any interviews outside the presence of the grand jury" of Bush, Cheney, Rove, McClellan, former chief of staff Andrew Card, national security adviser Stephen Hadley and former communications director Dan Bartlett.

Waxman writes that Fitzgerald agreed to give those documents to the committee. "However, to date, four months after the Committee's request, he has been unable to produce these documents to the Committee because the White House has not consented to their production. "

His letter continues: "There is no legitimate basis for the withholding of these documents. Mr. Fitzgerald has apparently determined that these documents can be produced to the Committee without infringing on his prosecutorial independence or violating the rules of grand jury secrecy. As records of statements made by White House officials to federal investigators, outside the framework of presidential decision-making, the documents could not be subject to a valid claim of executive privilege.

"Moreover, there is direct precedent for the production of these records to the Committee. During the Clinton Administration, the Justice Department provided the Committee with dozens of FBI 302 reports of interviews with White House officials. No White House official -- including the President and the Vice President -- was exempted from the production."

Rove's Brain

Having studied Rove for many years now, I can claim a bit of expertise on how his brain works. My conclusion: Quite often, Rove embraces a very particular point that may technically be true -- for instance, that he didn't actually use Plame's name in his conversation with reporters, or that at one very specific moments Democrats were eager to get Bush's war-authorization vote over with -- to argue a point that is, by any normal standard, a lie.

And does it repeatedly, because he isn't brought to account.

That may finally be changing as the public focuses on Rove's recent assertion that the Democrats are to blame for the rush to war in Iraq. It's overwhelmingly, demonstrably obvious that this statement is untrue. Even some of his colleagues have said he's gone too far this time.

Peter Baker writes in Saturday's Washington Post: "Former White House aide Karl Rove said yesterday it was Congress, not President Bush, who wanted to rush a vote on the looming war in Iraq in the fall of 2002, a version of events disputed by leading congressional Democrats and even some former Rove colleagues.

"Rove said that the administration did not want lawmakers to vote on a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq that soon because it would 'make things move too fast,' before Bush could line up international allies, and politicize the issue ahead of midterm elections. But Democrats and some Republicans involved with the issue at the time said yesterday that Bush wanted a quick vote. . . .