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What Did the President Know?

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, July 25, 2005; 1:30 PM

Now that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is said to have expanded his investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity to encompass a possible White House coverup, what the president and the vice president knew would appear to be much more relevant.

Fitzgerald interviewed both President Bush and Vice President Cheney more than a year ago, at what seemed at the time like the tail end of his investigation into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.

Bush and Cheney were not placed under oath -- the reasoning apparently being that they had no direct involvement in the potential criminal activity under investigation: the leak itself. We don't know much about either interview, beyond the fact that Bush had his personal attorney at his side.

But now Fitzgerald's investigation appears to have turned its focus to discrepancies in the testimony of White House senior adviser Karl Rove and vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Fitzgerald may be trying to determine whether evidence exists to bring perjury or obstruction of justice charges.

And that raises the issue of what -- if anything -- Rove and Libby told Bush and Cheney about their roles.

So does that mean Fitzgerald might call Bush and Cheney to testify before the grand jury -- under oath? Might he even have done so already? We have no idea, of course, because the White House isn't saying anything at all about the investigation anymore.

Either way, the CIA leak story is taking on more and more of the trappings of the classic Washington political scandal -- the saving grace for Bush being that his party controls Congress, and that thus far, Republicans have closed ranks behind him.

But get ready for more and more talk about the parallels between this story and the Clinton intern scandal -- and of course, Watergate.

We're already hearing some of the prototypical questions being raised. Here's former presidential adviser David Gergen, on ABC's "This Week" yesterday: "What did the president know and when did he know it?"

Are they ever? They learned that lesson from Clinton. You can lie all you want, just don't do it under oath.



What was the reasoning for not being under oath when in front of the 9/11 Panel?

I don't get that whole oath thing.

Politician: "I'll talk to you, but no under oath!"

OK, so you're going to lie to me for the entire conversation, cuz if you weren't, you'd just take the oath. I might as well not bother.

Politician: "I offered to talk, but they refused."

Yeah, sadly that's basically it.

I could be wrong, but I think they do it like that because once they are sworn under oath, they can be asked anything. Like, they could be sworn in, and then be asked, did you accept donations from NAMBLA in exchange for voting against a national sex offender registry. If you were a politician would you want to be sworn under oath? They get paid to lie for a living.

What do you mean by this? I'm not understanding the correlation between testifying under oath, possible perjury charges that could always result, and what you refer to as "taking the oath."

Is it really unclear or are you just making fun of me b/c I'm using the terms incorrectly? If you don't talk under oath, what is to stop you from just lying your ass off?