Patrick Fitzgerald's Diary: Watching Them Flop, Squirm, Flip

Dear Diary:

This is like shooting fish in a barrel. Of course, I'd heard about the incompetence of this White House crew -- and the arrogance that makes them so sloppy in covering their tracks -- but despite their lies and amateurish attempts to conceal their involvement, their fingerprints are all over the place.

Rove as the Genius, the Architect, the Ringmaster, running a tight ship with no leaks? These dangerous clowns are total screw-ups. And wimps. Many are willing to finger each other big time to escape the felony counts, or at least lessen their criminal liability. It's embarrassing to watch them flopping around, sending out their lawyers to drop a dime on a fellow conspirator.

Getting some of them to flip on their superiors and colleagues was fairly easy. I just let them have a whiff of what was in store for them unless they agreed to cooperate -- the possibility of long prison terms does concentrate the mind -- and, voila, first one and then another and then another eagerly took the bait. Even Rove and Libby, through the press, are playing "hot potato," trying to make sure the other guy is caught holding it. In short, it's the night of the long knives in the Bush Administration.

I've readied myself for the slime attack, but the fact that I'm a straight-arrow Republican-type guy (in fact I'm not registered with a party), appointed by the Bush Administration itself -- which provided me, in writing, full powers to follow the crime trail wherever it leads -- offers some protection. The initial Bush talking-points are really silly -- that I'm engaged in "criminalizing politics," or that I'm a "son of a doorman," as if that class-biased epithet is some sort of terrible slur, or that I've "run amok" and am going after this crew for "minor" violations of law, "technicalities" like perjury and obstruction of justice. If that's the best they can come up with, they are truly pathetic. (But not surprising; check out Karen Hughes demonstrating her gross ignorance of foreign affairs while touring Indonesia last week, claiming Saddam gassed "hundreds of thousands" of Iraqis! This gang can't shoot straight, think straight, maybe even pee straight.)