Brent Colton is a retired CIA operations officer now in the employ of the Creighton Corporation, a privately owned think tank that advocates various opinions on world issues, but it’s his clandestine job to solve the dirty problems for their private clients for a million dollar fee with no questions asked. When recovering stolen technology from a Vietnamese industrialist, Colton obtains evidence that he secretly partnered with a U.S. Senatorto rig the recent presidential election and elect him to the nation’s highest office.

WATERGATE FIGURE STATES BUSH SHOULD BE CENSURED
by Terry Heath, 2006

John W. Dean, a central character from the 1970’s Watergate scandal and one-time White House legal counsel for Richard Nixon, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 31 that President George W. Bush has met the criteria of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ as detailed by the Constitution and should be censured for ordering potentially illegal wiretaps on American citizens outside the parameters of current federal law.

Dean appeared before the committee at the request of Democratic Wisconsin Senator Russell Feingold who had previously introduced a resolution to censure the president in the wake of disclosures that Bush authorized the secret wiretapping of potential suspects outside the provisions of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Although support for Feingold’s censure resolution has been lukewarm in the Senate at the moment with only two fellow Democratic senators signing on as co-sponsors, many in Washington and across the country are claiming the current occupant of the White House has broken the law over his authorization of audio wiretaps against suspected terrorists and should instead be removed from office by impeachment. Is that realistically going to happen?

The requirements of Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution to remove a high officeholder states the following: the president ‘shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and on conviction of, treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.’

Has George W. Bush committed any ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ as spelled out in the Constitution to warrant his removal from office on the charges being alleged by civil libertarians? Perhaps not to warrant impeachment but Dean proclaimed to the senators in his testimony urging a censure to hold the president accountable that “it has been the announced policy of the Bush/Cheney presidency, however from its outset, to expand presidential power for its own sake, and it continually searched for avenues to do just that, while constantly testing to see how far it can push the limits.”

But the critics of current administration policy should keep in mind that if Bush is removed from office, then Vice-President Dick Cheney takes over to serve out this term. Yet Cheney previously indicated that he intends to retire in 2009 due to health reasons and not seek his own chance at being president. Would his taking over the reigns of government in this manner force him to consider running for another term if placed into the Oval Office through impeachment or would a censure resolution be the best route for the Democrats to try to keep from having to run their candidate in 2008 against an incumbent who has a long memory on how his predecessor was removed?

So what is an impeachable act that warrants removing a high official from office? You must presume that every chief executive has done something in his tenure that would offend some political group or those of the opposite party who would call for his removal. Have any of Bush’s actions as president call for such an extremist move by the two houses of Congress? Dean would be a good authority on recognizing criminal actions committed by a president since the dealings with his own boss caused him to create the term ‘cancer on a presidency’ as he stood center stage at the destruction of Richard Nixon.

And if such a move by an anxious Congress is successful, then wouldn’t it change the power structure of government if the legislative branch decides, at its own discretion, to remove a chief executive who was duly elected by the American citizens simply because they disagreed with that person’s politics as argued by Nixon in his constitutional troubles with those same legislators in the months before he ultimately gave up?

Only two American presidents have been impeached by the House of Representatives in the history of the United States and both survived being removed from office by the Senate during their respective trials. Andrew Johnson survived by one vote and Bill Clinton by seventeen votes.

Johnson was on the outs with the power-makers during his trial of 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War. He was a Democratic U.S. Senator and later the military governor of Tennessee when it was occupied by troops from the north. Republican incumbent president Abraham Lincoln selected him to be his running mate on the renamed Unity Party ticket in 1864 just as the Civil War was nearing its conclusion. Lincoln was re-elected in a landslide, but was assassinated six weeks into his second term, making Johnson this nation’s third ‘accidental president.’

The new chief executive tried to govern as fair as possible over the conquered states of the south but kept clashing with the Republican extremists of the north commonly known as ‘carpetbaggers’ who were demanding large amounts of reparations from the former confederate lands. He tried to fire Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, for insubordination but that act earned the wrath of the Republican controlled House of Representatives who brought impeachment charges against him to throw him out of office. He was saved from removal by the Senate by one vote and served out the remainder of the term. But he was not re-nominated for president and quietly left office to be replaced by Ulysses S. Grant.

Clinton’s 1998 House impeachment and subsequent 1999 trial by the Senate for removal on grounds of perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice in the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal seems to be a fading memory to the public even though it only occurred seven years ago. The Senate seemed less than enthused debating the merits of his removal and neither charge got a majority of votes, let alone the two/thirds needed for removal. He also served out the remainder of his second term but his vice-president did not succeed him.

Only the crimes of Richard Nixon seemed to be assured of a Senate conviction for removal in the hysteria of the Watergate scandal but he choose to step down when his fate was sealed. Nixon resigned as president on August 9, 1974; two weeks after the House Impeachment Committee voted to send articles for removal to the full House for consideration that he realized was certain to pass. When a June 23, 1972 audiotape made in the Oval Office revealed that he ordered aides to tell the CIA to have the FBI not thoroughly investigate the Watergate Hotel break-in and attempt a cover-up of his underling’s actions then his fate was sealed and he departed Washington in disgrace.

So what action has been committed by this president so he should be removed? There is no evidence of treason or bribery so does Bush’s authorization of eavesdropping on U.S. citizens warrant removal under the ‘other high crimes and misdemeanors’ language of the clause that Congress can use for impeachment or censure? In Dean’s opening statement to the committee he stated “while there is vague law that says Congressional inaction is not a license for executive action, Congress is now confronted with executive branch attorneys who take the most aggressive reading possible in all situations that favor executive power.”

So will Congress make a forceful statement as Dean argues to tell the president that he is wrong on this matter?

We cannot yet determine who has actually been harmed by the actions of the president on this issue. Are there victims of this eavesdropping who can prove damages to their livelihoods and reputations by Bush’s actions to warrant such an extreme move by both houses of Congress to force him out of office? Or will Feingold’s censure motion be an acceptable measured response by both political parties in the foreseeable future to end this debate as we move toward the next presidential election?

Terry Heath California E-Mail readermail@terryheathbooks.com