Tuesday, January 18, 2011
High Crimes
Five years ago, as we hoped in vain that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald would indict officials in the White House for high crimes in the Plame affair, there was a moment when we thought Vice President Cheney might join former President Nixon in the Justice Department's hall of shame. That didn't happen.
Today, as Fitzgerald prepares to drag peace activists before a grand jury for the trumped up crime of opposing US militarism, we can see that advocating for peace is a much more serious offense in the eyes of the FBI than leading our country into wars based on fraud.
As the movie Fair Game documents the White House scheme to destroy the lives of a CIA agent and her US ambassador husband for shining a light on the lies that led to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, we might rightly ask what values the US government now stands for. While conscientious former FBI agents like Mike German, Colleen Rowley and John P. O'Neill risked their careers and lives to protect Americans from real enemies foreign and domestic, the Department of Justice under Obama has chosen to harass the innocent.
Today, as Fitzgerald prepares to drag peace activists before a grand jury for the trumped up crime of opposing US militarism, we can see that advocating for peace is a much more serious offense in the eyes of the FBI than leading our country into wars based on fraud.
As the movie Fair Game documents the White House scheme to destroy the lives of a CIA agent and her US ambassador husband for shining a light on the lies that led to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, we might rightly ask what values the US government now stands for. While conscientious former FBI agents like Mike German, Colleen Rowley and John P. O'Neill risked their careers and lives to protect Americans from real enemies foreign and domestic, the Department of Justice under Obama has chosen to harass the innocent.
