A number of people have written to try and convince me that "Portgate" (can't have a scandal without a "gate" nickname) is a much greater outrage than I think. Among my correspondents are several folks whose opinions I respect and their arguments, plus some of the latest revelations in the matter, have me thinking they may be right. Note that I wrote "may be."
As you might imagine, I also got a couple of insulting messages. I don't think, these days, you can type the name of an elected official on the Internet without getting one of those. And I had a nice Bizarro World exchange with someone who has previously accused me of not giving Bush the benefit of the doubt, but thinks the White House is braindead on this one.
Here's a news story about the deal that I found remarkable. Note that this is from the Washington Times, a newspaper that routinely twists itself in knots to portray the current administration as flawless…
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was not aware a Dubai-owned company was seeking to operate terminals in six U.S. ports and that his agency was leading the review until after the deal's approval, an administration official said yesterday. Mr. Chertoff's spokesman, Russ Knocke, told The Washington Times the issue rose no higher than the department's assistant secretary for policy, Stewart Baker. "[Chertoff] was not briefed up to this until after this story started appearing in the newspapers," Mr. Knocke said. Mr. Chertoff is the third Cabinet official to acknowledge he did not know his agency had signed off on the plan as a member of the interagency Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS). Both Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow have publicly said they were unaware of the deal. But Mr. Chertoff's exclusion is more noteworthy because his department headed the CFIUS review and is in charge of security at all U.S. ports.
My first thought on reading this was, "So what? It's Michael Chertoff, the man who didn't know New Orleans was underwater." But it looks like everyone in the Cabinet was blindsided by this one. Even if the port deal was uncontroversial, this is not how we want our government to work, especially in the not-unimportant area of Homeland Security.