The Spitzer MO

Opinion Journal:

The media are doing their best Claude Rains act over the revelation that the office of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer orchestrated a smear campaign against State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. But far from being a unique, out of character event, the episode is a classic example of the Spitzer political method: nasty and exaggerated accusations fed by selective, politically motivated news leaks. The difference is that this time his targets could fight back.

On Monday, the office of Democratic Attorney General Andrew Cuomo released a 54-page report on Mr. Bruno's use of state helicopters, allegedly for personal political purposes. The investigation had been prompted by the Governor's office after Mr. Spitzer's communications aide and hatchet man, Darren Dopp, saw to it that allegations of impropriety against Mr. Bruno had found their way into the hands of gullible, pliant reporters.

Only now it is Mr. Dopp who is in hot water, having been suspended without pay for his role in ginning up a non-scandal about the Republican Majority Leader. The AG cleared Mr. Bruno of any wrongdoing, but in the process uncovered Mr. Dopp's unseemly little scheme to plant the story and then use that as a pretext to call for the investigation.

In dry, clinical language, the AG's report details how Mr. Dopp arranged the collection of detailed travel information about Mr. Bruno and fed that information to the Albany Times-Union. When questioned about it, Mr. Dopp told two different, contradictory stories to explain why the State Police started tracking Mr. Bruno's movements, both of which, as the report details, were false.

This is hardly unprecedented behavior by Mr. Dopp. In December 2005, John C. Whitehead, the former chairman of Goldman Sachs, recounted on these pages a phone call he received from Mr. Spitzer in response to an earlier op-ed Mr. Whitehead had published in The Wall Street Journal. The future governor told Mr. Whitehead, "I will be coming after you. You will pay the price."

...

The difference this time is that Mr. Spitzer faced a political opponent who isn't as vulnerable to intimidation as the private companies and executives he preyed upon as Attorney General. He also ran into journalists at the New York Post who decided to dig beneath the spin coming out of Mr. Spitzer's office and broke the story. In the past, the press corps refused to challenge Mr. Spitzer's claims for fear of incurring Mr. Dopp's wrath and being cut off from future leaks. This is how the modern political-journalism game too often works.

...

If Spitzer were a Republican he would be compared to Nixon during the Watergate era, but he is actually worse. What we are seeing from this former prosecutor is some of the same hubris that afflicted Mike Nifong. Using the power of the state to attack ones political opponents is the kind of thing that Democrats say they oppose. We''ll see.