Bush Bitten by Clinton Cling-ons

Joseph C. Wilson, the Clintonite who is at the bottom of the current flap regarding the leak of his wife's name as a CIA "operative," tried to contribute more money to the Gore campaign than was legally allowed.

Documents from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) reviewed by NewsMax.com indicate that Joseph C. Wilson of Washington, D.C., whose occupation is listed as "Strategic Adviser," sent $2,000 to the Gore 2000 Committee in March 1999, with $1,000 returned to him the following month because he had exceeded the legal limit.

This from a man who has been lecturing the Bush administration about obeying "the law" and saying he could see this entire ruckus resulting in "frog-marching" Karl Rove out of the White House in cuffs. He later admitted he had no information implicating Rove.

NewsMax also has FEC documents showing that Wilson, on May 23 of this year, contributed $1,000 to the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

The picture that emerges is that the administration trusted one Clinton holdover (CIA Director George Tenet) to use judgment in selecting someone to conduct a sensitive mission to determine if there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That person turned out to be another Clinton holdover and Democratic Party contributor.

The White House is mum on whether there is some soul-searching within the administration on taking more care in dealing with former Clinton administration operatives, some of whom remain three years into the Bush administration.

Friends of the administration have been suggesting from Day 1 that the president risked something like this unless the White House either cleaned out political opponents or at the very least kept them at arm's length from sensitive matters.

As to the fake scandal itself, the Wall Street Journal suggested Wednesday the real target in all this is Karl Rove.

ABC's Sam Donaldson, on a local Washington talk show on WMAL-AM, scoffed at that, and said there would be little point in going after Rove, since left-wingers would naturally target Bush. Co-host Andy Parks apparently thought that was naive or disingenuous, noting that "the way to Bush is through Rove."

One veteran of the Reagan White House has advised the Bush administration to accept the fact that a conservative White House can't win a feeding-frenzy argument with the left-wing media. Therefore, the adviser thinks, the best the Bush people can do is to try to find who leaked the name of Wilson's wife as a CIA person, but if that person is not found, to simply apologize and vow to take every step to see that it never happens again.

No one in all this has been able to lay a glove on the president himself.

As NewsMax reported earlier today, Syndicated columnist Robert Novak wrote that the identity of Wilson's wife "was not much of a secret."

Indeed it was not. Besides her name being readily available on the Internet, "Who's Who in America-2003" lists Valerie Elise Plame as Wilson's wife. How "secret" is that?

Supporters of the administration, on and off Capitol Hill, agree that this "scandal" is wholly contrived by the president's opponents.

They are hopeful that the right lessons have been learned when it comes to trusting Clinton Cling-ons and Democratic Party contributors within the administration.

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