An incredibly bad memory

Republicans, and some Democrats, correctly took President Clinton to task for his prevarications and equivocations during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. I wonder how many from the GOP will be bashing former Vice President Dick Cheney, who it turns out was very Alberto Gonzalez-esque in an FBI interview amid the investigation of the Valerie Plame affair. Plame, as you might recall, was allegedly outed as a CIA agent by the White House after her husband, an American envoy, accused the Bush administration of manipulating evidence to support its push for a war against Iraq. During the probe, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said there was a "cloud over the vice president.” And late last week, the FBI provided some support for that statement by revealing the summary of Cheney’s answers during a May 2004 interview. During that questioning, Cheney relied on the old "I can't recall” approach on 72 occasions. That’s six dozen times. Most notably, Cheney was asked whether he might have revealed the CIA status of Plame, whose married name was Wilson, to his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, who ultimately was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the feds. According to the FBI interview summary, "It is possible Libby may have learned about Valerie Wilson’s employment from the vice president ... but the vice president has no specific recollection of such a conversation." Now, if they asked Cheney what he had for lunch on the Tuesday six weeks earlier, I wouldn't blame him for issuing an "I can’t recall.” But when it comes to a central issue in the outing of a CIA operative, I'm a bit skeptical of Cheney's answer. It's a shame they couldn't have hooked him up to a lie detector when they conducted the interview. I'm guessing the machine would have gone through a lot of ink.