What Did Bush Tell Fitzgerald?

This editorial from the Ventura County Star asks the right question with regard to BushCo's TreasonGate Scandal:

Did the president tell the special prosecutor's team all the truth he knew, or did he tell them the same thing he told us back then?

We need to know because what Bush was telling us in 2003 — that he knew nothing about the leaks and wanted to find and fire all leakers — ran the narrow gamut from misleading half-truth to bald-faced untruth.

Of course, it is not a federal crime for a president to lie to the American people when he is not under oath. (No, the usual punishment we inflict upon incumbent presidents who lie is to re-elect them.)

But it is a crime for anyone to mislead, impede or lie to federal investigators — whether they are not under oath to tell the truth or not. For a president or a vice president, it can be an impeachable crime. (This point was argued most persuasively by congressional Republicans a few years ago as they made a federal case out of an incident that was not about national security, but consensual oral sex.)

Bush and his spokespeople had maintained ever since the controversy began in the summer of 2003 that neither Karl Rove, nor Vice President Dick Cheney chief-of-staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, nor then-deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley were involved in any effort to discredit Wilson. But that was not true. * * *

The publicly unanswered question is whether the president or vice president helpfully told the special prosecutor's probe all they knew about the effort to discredit Wilson's comments (which cast doubt on Bush's claim that Iraq tried to buy yellow-cake uranium from Niger). Then again, we don't even know if he was asked about it.

To have known so much and said little could have been construed as misleading or impeding a federal investigation. Of course, we have no indication the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wants to go that route against either the president and/or vice president. Still, it is true Bush, Cheney and anyone who knew what they knew could have greatly helped the special prosecutor's mission. Perhaps, indeed, Bush and Cheney eagerly told all they knew. Perhaps.

Well, I guess it is possible that Bush came clean with the prosecutor. After all, Bush did hire a lawyer to represent him on this particular matter and I would have to think that the lawyer advised him not to obstruct justice. But then again, this is an administration that doesn't think it has to follow the law on anything.