Eschaton

Frank Rich:

By keeping the names and court proceedings of his detainees under wraps, John Ashcroft could for months cover up his law enforcement minions' inability to apprehend a single terrorist connected to 9/11. The same stunt has been pulled by designating prisoners "enemy combatants" at Guantánamo. Jose Padilla, the "dirty bomber," whose arrest was trumpeted by the attorney general as the breakup of a major terrorist plot, turns out to be a nonentity who may not be charged with anything. But as long as Mr. Padilla is locked away in a legal deep freeze, that embarrassment can be kept on the q.t. In the same spirit, the F.B.I. is now investigating 17 members of the Senate Intelligence Committee for leaks to the press; revealingly, the leaks that angered Dick Cheney and prompted this investigation were not leaks about intelligence per se but leaks about how our government bungled intelligence on this administration's watch just before 9/11.