Back in 2001, just before Sept. 11, I wrote a story for National Review about the Bush White House’s impressive success in preventing leaks. Compared to his father’s team, I wrote, George W. Bush had put together a staff that was extraordinarily disciplined and showed a “remarkable cohesiveness.”

Fast-forward to the federal courthouse in Washington on Tuesday.  Opening arguments were under way in the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Any Bush White House cohesiveness, remarkable or otherwise, blew up before the public’s eyes as Libby attorney Ted Wells gave the jury Libby’s view of the case. 

The Bush White House screwed up with the famous, or infamous, “16 words” episode in the 2003 State of the Union address and then, later, with the leak of former CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity, Wells told the jury.

In the controversy that followed, the political and legal heat was on, and the White House was desperate to protect political guru Karl Rove, whom former ambassador Joseph Wilson was pointing to as the culprit in the case. 

But somebody had to take the blame.  And that somebody was Lewis Libby, who would be offered up to the angry press and prosecutors to take the fall for the White House’s incompetence.

Now mind you, this was not some left-wing blogger’s theory of the case. It was Lewis Libby’s.

“I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected,” Libby said, as quoted by Wells.

The scene in the courtroom was an ugly picture of an administration in some degree of disarray — the vice president’s former top aide, under indictment, swinging wildly at the president’s top political adviser in the most public of forums.

“[Mr. Libby] was concerned about being the scapegoat,” Wells told the jury. “Mr. Libby said to the vice president, ‘People in the White House are trying to set me up, people in the White House are trying to make me a scapegoat.’”

Then Wells moved in on the target. “People in the White House are trying to protect a man named Karl Rove, the president’s right-hand man.”

Wells said he will present a note written by Dick Cheney himself about a conversation with Libby. In part, the note says, “Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.”

Wells continued: “The person to be protected was Karl Rove … Karl Rove was President Bush’s right-hand person. His fate was important to the Republican Party if they were going to stay in office. He had to be protected … The person to be sacrificed was Scooter Libby.”

Libby’s new defense — a surprise, even for people who followed the case — was, to put it mildly, not a good sign for the Bush administration.

To have a former top official engaged in a running battle with his old colleagues — and, by extension, with the president himself — is an embarrassing spectacle.

Up until now, most observers expected Libby to mount a simple “memory” defense, arguing that he was so busy with so many important things during the time of the Plame leak that he simply did not remember all the contacts he had had with reporters. Therefore, he did not commit perjury but instead simply forgot a few details.

Libby still argues that, of course, but he has also decided to lob a few grenades at the White House.

The ironic thing about this is that, throughout the Plame matter, the most virulent of Bush critics have viewed the Bush White House as a finely tuned conspiracy machine, with officials carefully directing a plot to smear Joseph and Valerie Plame Wilson.

But the picture emerging in the Libby trial is of something entirely different: a White House divided, at cross-purposes, and filled with intrigue.

At the end of my 2001 article, I wrote that the Bush operation would certainly encounter some bumps in the road, but “don’t look for a major breakdown.”

As they say on the Hill, I would now like to revise and extend my remarks.

What has emerged recently is a view of the Bush administration not encountering bumps in the road but rather heading toward a head-on collision — with itself.

And it comes at a time when the president’s job rating is sitting in the low 30s, when he is facing a revolt among Republicans in the Senate over his troop-surge proposal in Iraq, and when he has just lost big in midterm elections.

Of course, it’s when things are going badly that finger-pointing and backside-covering take over in a White House (or any other organization, for that matter.)

From the very beginning, George W. Bush worked hard to avoid the sort of problem that is now facing his administration in the Libby matter.

But it happened anyway. And now, there’s not much the president can do about it.

York is a White House correspondent for
National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week.
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