Mueller disgraced the office of Independent Counsel

Apr 23, 2019 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

I believe that Independent Counsel Robert Mueller, by those words against his name, has condemned himself. In so doing, he has dragged the always controversial, always vulnerable, office of Independent Counsel into the graveyard of irrelevancy and immateriality. His failure to rise to what the occasion demanded has besmirched the efforts and records of illustrious and enlightened predecessors in that thankless post.
For purposes of context and convenience, I start with the negative. I do so through a visit to another stalwart, a now infamous one, from the Independent Counsel brotherhood: Kenneth Starr. Mr. Starr discarded dignity and some integrity to pursue a particular agenda of his own, and while spurred on by likeminded diehard conservatives. The word was: Get Clinton. Get this offensive bone out of the throat and out of sight. Get him out of there by any means.
Mr. Starr complied by demonstrating the imprudent and arguably vindictive, through degrading his investigation into a fundamentalist drive to unseat Bill Clinton by any low means. Ken Starr sullied himself when he steered pivotal aspects of the office and objectives of the Independent Counsel to enter into the blatantly partisan.
How different was Mr. Starr’s probe and actions when compared to those of Mr. Mueller: one the very definition of rancorous evangelical distaste and the political divisiveness; and the other, the epitome of an uncomprehending and still unexplained misidentification of what was the purpose of his investigation. In terms of the latter, it was as if Mr. Mueller had already made up his mind to think nothing and write nothing. Nothing of consequence.
In some sense, I detect more than hesitancy; I recognize fear, and the careful withdrawal that is a part of such faintness and sweating.
How different are the records – poles apart as to approaches and energies – of Messrs. Starr and Mueller when matched against the still reverberating resonance of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Independent Counsel Archibald Cox of Richard Nixon and Watergate era notoriety. Together they stand as an incomparable first example of what should prevail as to necessary standards and values. It is those ideals which must be brought to the arena of presidential inquiry and then delivered in spades. Unequivocally. Unflinchingly.
In the instance of Richardson and Cox, the former was willing to stand in integrity and all those other indefinable somethings before his president, and both were ready to fall, willingly or unwillingly, on their swords, and be carried out on their shields with reputation intact. They were.
They don’t make men of that rare calibre and spellbinding honour anymore. And that is anywhere, including Guyana; particularly Guyana. But the Nixonian travails served other functions for wily political partisans on both sides of the American divide. Identified and filed away were the precedents of administrative sloppiness and the price of truth.
Hard lessons were learned and truth went by the wind, as is evidenced in the second example that accrues to the further discredit of Mr. Mueller. It is that of Attorney General Edwin Meese and Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh of Ronald Reagan and those still memorable Iran Contra hearings.
That was the problem that Independent Counsel Walsh faced during his investigation of White House wrongdoing through circumventing the Boland Amendment and possible obstruction of justice by presidential agents: truth and principle vanished at the highest levels.
The lessons learned from Nixon resulted in all the president’s men – McFarlane, Poindexter, Weinberger, and North – not remembering anything, shredding everything, and generally knowing nothing. All the president’s men exhibited the unflagging spirit of all hands being on deck with one deception after another. Endlessly. No truth. No qualms.
Thus, the mistakes, and the lessons, of Nixon and his people were learned. Walsh was stonewalled all the way into innocuousness. And yet he persisted and followed where the evidence led. In fairness, Mr. Mueller’s path had its share of obstacles, but he turned out to be his own biggest one.
Presidential legacies suffer when wrongdoing is bypassed or diluted, and Independent Counsel fail. Sacred public trusts are toyed with and betrayed; the public loses. Clinton: intellectually towering proved himself to be morally crumbling; dissembling and devious, too. Lacking in the genius of truth and a special tutelary spirit. Starr tried everything to nail him; matters lacked the clinical character of objectivity. Mr. Starr hurt the calling of that particular office back then. Reagan is recalled as a doddering pathetic figure; his men wrapped themselves in the American flag and rode the wave by being disingenuous. Walsh stayed at great cost and managed with what he was allowed to access.
Today, a sitting president and his cast reveal themselves to be as artistic as Houdini where facts and standards are concerned. Mr. Mueller pretends at limitations, by limiting himself. He tied his own hands by feebly looking the other way, when he could not make a not-so-hard call, even if his life were to depend on it. The office of Independent Counsel stands as a testimony to meaningless.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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