Indictment Day Dawns?

Always deliver bad news late on a Friday afternoon, while it's no longer the rule of thumb used in business, there are still some managers that feel it's the best day to deliver bad news. If you have to fire somebody, it's best to be done while everyone is heading out the door and won't be back for two days. One assumes the same holds true for filing indictments against government officials who may have broken a few rules.

The Washington press corps is awaiting with great anticipation the announcements from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, will they have two heads on a platter or just one by the end of business on Friday.

Fitzgerald has let the process go on about as long as it can, with a Friday expiration for his Grand Jury, he will have to fish or cut bait on Friday. Hanging on that hook are two of the more higher profile bureaucrats in the George Bush White House. Karl Rove the behind the scenes broker of power for George Bush and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's main confidante. Both find themselves under the watchful eye of the Special Prosecutor over the Valerie Plame case.

Plame is the CIA operative who was outed by someone inside the Bush White House, the revealing of her identity is considered by many to be punishment for embarrassing remarks by her husband about the administration and it's hunt for Weapons of Mass Destruction prior to the Iraq War. Two years later we finally reach the end of Fitzgerald's investigative maze, to refresh your memory on all of it the Christian Science Monitor has a handy little timeline for us to follow.

Fitzgerald has been tapped to find out who leaked what to whom and when and then set the legal wheels in motion for a prosecution. Some wonder how far the reach will be, or if the buck will stop short of a desk or two in the West Wing. To add to the intrigue, there are reports that Fitzgerald is being fed information from inside the White House, giving him leads and connecting dots for him. In short, somebody there wants somebody out of there!


For Bush it just completes a rather horrible week for presidential happenings. The week began with the reporting of the war dead in Iraq, details reached America that 2,000 US service people had been killed in Iraq since the war began. A figure which for a while was debated by the government through it's Voice of America service. It may not have been the wisest of strategies however, as the 2,000 milestone gained more than enough attention in the mainstream media, none of it particularly favorable to the Bush Administration.

From there came the amazing announcement Thursday, that Bush's Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers had withdrawn her nomination for the Court. Bowing to pressure not only on the Democratic side of the House but from Bush's own Republicans it quickly became apparent that the Miers nomination was a dog that did not hunt.

With Friday about to dawn on Washington, all that remains to top off the week is two of Bush's closest aides to be indicted. A White House that appears to be a fair amount of dis-array will suddenly find even more confusion and panic in the halls.

The consensus seems to be that Scooter will be the one to be named in any indictment, while Rove will either have his investigation continued or be cleared from the deck. Regardless, even the naming of one indictment on Friday will have some serious blowback on the Bush/Cheney White House. Some observers see a nasty fall for the US Economy with any indictments that are named, showing a lack of confidence in the Administration to handle the situation.

Friday dawns as a most interesting day, for Fitzgerald, Rove, Libby, Bush and America!