The convenience
of the court

Members of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington expressed skepticism April 8 over the pleadings of a lawyer representing a dozen media companies.
Attorney Theodore Boutrous Jr. argued that hearings in the court of U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, concerning President Bill Clinton's expansive new claims to executive privilege, should be open to the press and public.
As Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr pursues his investigation into whether the president had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and whether the president then proceeded to urge her and others to lie under oath about his Oval Office Tilt-A-Whirl, Mr. Clinton six weeks ago

went to court and sought sweeping new "executive privilege" immunity from answering such questions.
In the past, such claims, even from the White House of Richard Nixon, were at least based on assertions that national security was at stake -- that public exposure might compromise the identity of some secret agent overseas, or something of the sort. Yet even when Richard Nixon made his pleadings for "executive privilege" during Watergate, those hearings were, themselves, conducted in the fresh air of an open courtroom.
Not so the current Clinton pleadings.
"For the first time, a judge is considering extending this claim of being above the criminal law beyond the President himself, to his wife and everybody on his staff -- in secret," wrote syndicated New York Times columnist William Safire on Thursday. "And the legal arguments protesting the closure of hearings surrounding this change in the public access to the official operations of our government have been

 
filed and answered -- in secret," Mr. Safire continues.
"Here we have a great constitutional issue involving the usurpation of power. It deserves scholarly debate and a thorough airing. But Federal Judge Norma Holloway Johnson -- a Carter appointee insecure about public scrutiny of her peremptory rulings on the most profound matters affecting our system of government -- has sealed the constitutional pleadings and, in the President's delighted interpretation, sealed all lips."
And what is Judge Holloway Johnson's rationale for this unprecedented black-out of press coverage and public debate about the not-unsubstantial question of whether we shall continue as a republic of laws, or instead awaken to discover our "sovereign" now has the same power to corrupt justice unchallenged as was once the prerogative of Ferdinand the Fifth, his co-regent Isabella, and their loyal factotum, Tomas de Torquemada?
Why, Judge Holloway Johnson simpers that admitting reporters for hearings on legal arguments, and then clearing the courtroom any time a grand jury matter should arise, would be "too disruptive."
"What more can she say?" asked U.S. Circuit Judge David Tatel on Wednesday,

apparently in full agreement with his subaltern. "She said it would be too disruptive," scolded Circuit Judge Judith Rogers: "What more do you want the district judge to do?"
Oh, I don't know. Preserve our 300-year tradition of open courtrooms, where the public can see which of their safeguards against tyranny are now being proffered up to the shredder, perhaps? After all, as Mr. Safire points out, "The last President to claim executive privilege did it in open court. All the briefs were on the record. Judge John Sirica polled the grand jury in open court without 'disruption,' and the media reported the decision instantly."
Mr. Clinton's decision to thrust his wife -- never elected to any office -- into a position of substantial power may have turned out to be unwise, but the president is free to elevate such advisors and assistants as he will.
However, for him now to claim that neither she nor any other White House plumber, fixer, fund-raiser or bagman can be questioned about substantive allegations of outright felonies, is not only another attempt to change the rules halfway through the game -- it is an outright assertion of the powers of monarchy.
The court would entertain such a claim, and then not even let the public hear the arguments pro and con