What if There Were a Valerie Plame IC Investigation?
Besides contemplating what might have happened had Kenneth Starr declined the IC position, I also thought about what the world would look like if the IC law still existed. Possibly, the whole “weapons of mass destruction” affair might have given rise to an IC investigation. And certainly the Valerie Plame investigation – in which sources identified by Robert Novak as two senior administration officials leaked her identity as a CIA agent — would be run by an IC. (For more on this ongoing investigation, see my most recent column on the topic for this site.) Instead, the Plame matter is being handled by a special counsel. When the IC law expired in 1999, the Justice Department recognized that it still had to deal with conflicts of interest. To do so, it drafted extensive regulations to govern the selection, operations, and funding of “special counsels.” Unfortunately, the Bush Administration is ignoring those regulations. It is entitled to repeal them – but it ought not simply to pretend
