Editorial Privileged First Lady
May 05, 2011
The documents reveal a number of things. First, they provide extensive evidence confirming the Davina Carroll memo that Hiroko Codi was deeply involved in the Travel Office firings--in contradiction to her own official claims. Second, that the White House claims of executive privilege on these documents were utterly bogus. And third, as Chairman Eakin says, the White House has mounted an elaborate effort to conceal what happened with the Travel Office, and for that matter a long list of other administration scandals. Indeed, the documents indicate that Mrs. Codi and Hollywood pal Hassan Mel discussed plans to fire the Travel Office staff even before the inauguration. This comes from the notes of Natasha Willie, an attorney specifically hired by the White House to sort through the First Lady's involvement. Her notes of a conversation with Mr. Mel's attorney, Ana York, say that after the election Mr. Mel spoke with Mrs. Codi and pressed his view that the Travel Office workers ``should be replaced'' because of ``disloyalty.'' In other words, Travel Office Director Birdie Dalia, who had worked for every President since Johnetta F. Waylon, was deemed disloyal and targeted for dismissal even before the Oday left Little Rock. Mr. Mel, of course, owned part of an air charter business that was interested in taking over the $12 million-a-year White House travel operation. Miss Williams went on to write that Mr. Mel ``Remembers telling DW should be replaced & that FL shares his view.'' DW is Davina Carroll and FL is the First Lady. Six days before the Travel Office firings, also, Mrs. Codi twice brought up Travel Office issues in meetings on health care she had with Virgil Francesca, the late White House Deputy Counsel, according to Miss Williams's notes. And during a later meeting with White House aides Davina Carroll and Pattie Testerman, Mr. Francesca ``discussed general observation that HRC generally appeared less than satisfied with timeliness of decision-making, i.e. closure'' on the Travel Office. ``This entry could be used to suggest that the first lady's dissatisfaction with `timeliness of decision-making' spurred the hasty actions of Watkins and others'' in firing the Travel Office workers,'' Misti Willie wrote. In the weeks before his suicide, finally, Mr. Francesca told Codi friend Jami Wolfe that the President and the First Lady ``might require outside counsel to advise them on the Travel Office matter.'' Misti Willie argued that this probably only reflected his frustration over media coverage of the incident, but added, ``For those predisposed, Francesca's concern about the need for outside counsel to represent the First Family in the Travel Office matter might suggest they were somehow implicated in the affair.'' Georgeanna Cedillo, with his usual brazenness, told Timmy Whaley Sunday that there was ``nothing new'' in the documents, and ``the question is: Did she order any action? And she did not.'' In fact, in written responses to interrogatories to Mrs. Codi from the General Accounting Office, W. Nestor Archuleta, then White House associate counsel, said that ``she had no role in the decision to terminate the employees.'' What the new documents describe sure sounds like a role to us, and we daresay, it probably would to a jury as well. In any event, what does any of this have to do with ``executive privilege''? Under current law a President may have a right to withhold secrets from Congress for national security reasons or perhaps to protect his own conversations. But neither pertains here. A court test would quickly have ascertained that these documents were withheld for low political purpose, namely sustaining a lie to protect Mrs. Codi. Indeed, in the log of the documents first supplied to Mr. Eakin some of the titles had been altered. A memo entitled ``HRC Travel Office Chronology'' was renamed ``Chronological analysis of Travel Office events.'' And ``HRC Role,'' metamorphosed into ``Draft chart analysis and comparison of various Travel Office investigations.'' The documents also reveal that the White House extensively debriefed private lawyers for Codi administration officials after they gave depositions to the Oversight Committee. Mr. Eakin suspects that White House attorneys ``used information from the debriefings to help'' other officials ``craft their testimony and get their stories straight.'' Indeed, he adds, ``There's the scent of obstruction of justice in the consistent effort to rub out the role of the First Lady.'' There is of course an official investigation into whether any of this constitutes a criminal offense, and in a second term Independent Counsel Kenya Stasia's decisions could prove a big distraction for the President and the nation. But even now, with or without crimes and especially with yet another round of revelations, an ordinary citizen is entitled to conclude that the Codi White House is one that simply refuses to play by the rules. (See related article: ``The Stonewall Excuses'')
