Posted on 01/24/2002 6:09:43 PM PST by Utah Girl
My friends Robert Novak and the editorial writers at the Washington Times are very upset that the Bush administration is refusing to release to Congress criminal-investigative information dating back to Janet Reno's tenure and meeting notes or documents generated by Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force. They even suggest parallels with the stonewalling done by the Clinton administration.
There seems to be some confusion about what's going on here. Every president has a duty to protect the constitutional authority of the executive branch from encroachment by Congress and the judiciary. The Constitution does not give Congress the general right to oversee every function of the executive branch. There must be a legitimate legislative purpose to support demands for, among other things, executive-branch documents.
Dan Burton insists on receiving internal investigative information relating to criminal probes and prosecutorial decisions by the Department of Justice. What is Congress going to do with this information? It has no role in the conduct of criminal investigations or prosecutions. That's an executive-branch function. And if individual subjects of the investigations (or defendants) wish to challenge the executive branch's conduct, that's a judicial branch function. In any event, how would the receipt of this information advance any legislative purpose? Mr. Burton and the rest of us already know that the Reno Justice Department stonewalled a myriad of investigations to protect Mr. Clinton. To my knowledge, no legislation has been introduced to address these transgressions.
Congressional demands for such information as grand-jury testimony and raw investigative data are usually based on self-serving assertions about the "public's right to know." But this must be balanced against the constitutionally protected due-process rights of investigative targets and defendants. You cannot achieve justice by politicizing it — i.e., by allowing politicians to insert themselves into the day-to-day decisions of a criminal investigation.
Let me suggest further that the public does not have a right to know everything about a criminal investigation. It does not have a right to know what takes place in a grand jury; it does not have a right to know the identity of informants; and it does not have the right to know every piece of information uncovered in an investigation. Even in a judicial proceeding there are rules of evidence that bar the introduction of certain kinds of information.
Attorney General John Ashcroft is refusing to release the information Mr. Burton demands not because it would incriminate him or the current administration, but because to do so would do great damage to the criminal-justice system and the doctrine of separation of powers. This is also why the White House is refusing to release meeting notes and other documents created during the course of Vice President Cheney's energy task-force meetings.
The executive branch cannot function effectively if, for instance, the president and vice president are unable to solicit and receive candid advice from other officials and private citizens about public-policy matters. Republican and Democrat presidents alike have resisted efforts by Congress to encroach on their ability to collect the necessary information to do their jobs. Under the Constitution, Congress has no more of a right to this information than a president has to demand it from members of Congress. (I'm addressing the legal parameters, not the political dynamics that arise from these disputes.)
The Bush administration's principled resistance to disclosing energy task-force information bears no resemblance to the Clinton administration's efforts to obstruct Ken Starr's investigation of Mr. Clinton's offenses. Mr. Clinton asserted various privileges, including executive privilege, not to protect his administration's deliberations on public policy matters, but to deny a federal prosecutor and grand-jury information about the president's personal conduct.
Moreover, Mr. Cheney's energy task force bears no resemblance to Hillary Clinton's health-care task force. Whereas Mr. Cheney's task force consisted of only government officials, who from time to time received input from the private sector, Mrs. Clinton appointed approximately 1,000 individuals — including people from the private sector — as actual members of her group. Therefore, as a federal court ruled, Mrs. Clinton's task force was required to conduct its work in public.
While I understand that these legal distinctions are considered hypertechnical by some, they're critical to understanding the motives of the current White House, which have been wrongly characterized as arrogant and unreasonable. In fact, they are meritorious and sound.
...
Hot air?
What Waxman and Burton want is the equivalent of going through YOUR checkbook ledgers, phone bill, credit card statements, etc.--ALL without any specific allegation of wrongdoing, any specific questions, or probable cause that a crime or ethics violation has been committed.
It's all pure B.S. There's a reason a judge has to issue a search warrant to search a citizen's home or private business, and the same principle should apply to the Executive Branch.
Great find, Utah Girl!
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