Throughout the CIA leak investigation, pundits have raised the question repeatedly, “Why would White House officials lie and obstruct justice?” Hadn’t they learned by this time the age-old principle that it is the cover-up that gets you in more trouble than the original misdeed? For all the head-scratching that is going on in Washington, there is a clear explanation for the cover-up of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby (not to mention George Bush and Scott McClellan), an explanation that contradicts conventional wisdom. Simply put, there was a method to their madness:

1) The Myth of the Cover-up vs. the Crime. One writer summed up the behavior of the Bush administration this way: “It seems nobody learned the most profound lesson of Watergate: the cover-up is worse than the crime.” But is it really? There is a rather straightforward reason why government officials rarely adopt the strategy of timely truth-telling: Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, telling the truth can also get you in major trouble. Let’s look closely at the circumstances surrounding Leakgate. The actions of Libby and Rove are typically discussed in terms of a turf battle between the White House and the CIA, in terms of the frantic efforts of the administration to prop up arguments for WMD, and in terms of a blame game between different government agencies. While all the factors may have contributed to a culture of fibbing, the most powerful factor motivating the Bush administration is almost never mentioned: The upcoming 2004 presidential election. Nowadays, with the campaign a dim memory, and the election a fait accompli, we forget how tense, uncertain and dramatic the run-up to the election was.

In the summer of 2003, it was crucial to the Bush Administration to establish itself as the party of patriotism and counterterrorism, as the preeminent guardian of national security. When Leakgate first surfaced, critics of the administration pounced on the obvious hypocrisy of a leadership that claimed to be serving the national security, but was willing to play fast and loose with the identity of a CIA operative. In February of 2004, I wrote about the political problems of the Bush reelection campaign, predicting that the president would soon take devastating public relations hit “when the grand jury indicts someone from his administration for outing Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife, a covert agent in the CIA. Scott McClellan, White House Press Secretary, and Mary Matalin, former advisor to Vice President Cheney have already been called before a grand jury. This case may soon explode on several levels…” At the time, I expected such actions to be imminent. Little did I know that the case would take two years to unravel.

Imagine the impact on the presidential election if in February, March, May, or in the summer of 2004, the administration had simply told the truth. It was on June 10, 2004 that Bush made his famous--and disingenuous-- pledge to fire anyone in his administration responsible for the leak. At the time he expressed both outrage at the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s identity, and ignorance about its source. Had the administration simply come clean on the leak, as conventional wisdom would dictate, it would have had a nuclear impact on the 2004 election. The soon-to-be-named Democratic nominee—John Kerry—would have gained a significant foothold in the “I’m tougher and more patriotic than you are” debate that served as the core of the presidential campaign. If the top aides of the President and Vice President were definitively known to have leaked Valerie Plame’s identity, and worse, were known to be in the Special Prosecutor’s crosshairs, the entire campaign would have been turned on its head. Bush and Cheney would have lost their most valued advisors, would have suffered a great loss of credibility, and with a shift of a few votes in Ohio, John Kerry may have won the election. The mission of the Bush administration was a simple one: Kick the can down the road long enough to at least make it through the election. And if Libby, and possibly Rove, had to fall on their swords later, in 2005, or 2006, wouldn’t that be a small price to pay for winning the election?

2) The Melting Away of Reporters’ Privilege. Given the boundless cynicism of the Bush team, the false statements that Libby and Rove made to both the FBI and (under oath) to the grand jury, were nourished by their expectation that their journalistic contacts would hold fast and refuse to unmask them. Indeed, the entire administration played, used, and conned the journalistic fraternity, ultimately playing the angle that the reporters would not give up their sources. How else does one explain Scooter Libby’s howler to the grand jury that it was Tim Russert of Meet the Press who told him about Valerie Plame? Russert and NBC resisted giving information to the prosecutor—for about a minute—and then soundly debunked Libby’s lie, telling prosecutor Fitzgerald that Valerie Plame’s name had never even come up in Russert’s conversation with Libby. If that wasn’t clear enough, Russert subsequently restated this fact on Meet the Press itself.

Probably the first reporter to cooperate with the prosecutor was the scoundrel who first made Plame’s name public, Robert Novak, whose craven silence throughout this episode will serve as a further blight on his reputation. However, it was a full two years into the investigation, in June of this year, that Time Magazine’s Matthew Cooper agreed to testify, after litigating the matter and losing before U.S. Court of Appeals. The last holdout was New York Times writer Judith Miller, who, in going to jail for 85 days, positioned herself as a model of journalistic integrity. Ironically, Miller’s conduct during the Leakgate saga—misleading editors, refusing to let editors see her notes, and arranging with Scooter Libby to intentionally misidentify him as a “former hill staffer”—is now seen as so ethically flawed that NY Times Ombudsman Byron Calame recently wrote, “It seems to me that whatever the limits are put on her, the problems facing her inside and outside the newsroom will make it difficult for her to return to the paper as a reporter.” I have said this before, and I’ll say it again: Journalistic privilege is not, nor should it be, absolute, and Patrick Fitzgerald did a service to all of us by distinguishing between the journalistic protection of worthy whistle-blowers, and that of scoundrels, by distinguishing between insignifican t legal matters and those of great national moment, and by knowing the difference between a leak that serves the public interest and a Nixonian dirty tricks campaign. The reporters involved in this story both retarded its exposure and also ultimately brought crucial facts to light. Initially, however, the principle of journalistic privilege gave Scooter Libby the false hope that he could concoct, in Fiztgerald’s words “a compelling story” that would never be contradicted.

While prosecutor Fitzgerald says that most of his work has been completed, there is still much for journalists to do. Scant mention has been made either by the prosecutor, or by the press of the role of the President in Leakgate. With respect to Bush’s involvement, there remain two stark options: Either his lieutenants lied to him over a period of months and years, or he has known for some time who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame. If Bush knew, he owes the nation an explanation for his silence in this matter. If Rove and Libby lied to him, by what rationale does Karl Rove continue to serve in the White House? I dearly hope—but don’t expect—that the case of Scooter Libby will go all the way to trial, with no plea bargain. The witness list alone, not to mention the testimony, will be riveting.