WASHINGTON – If there were any doubts that the media have the power – when they want to exercise it – to turn the rusty wheels of justice in this town, look no further than the Condit-Levy case.

Not until the national press quoted sources confirming missing intern Chandra Levy's affair with California Rep. Gary Condit, did the D.C. police finally put the screws to Condit, forcing him to confess his sexual relationship.

He'd dodged the issue of an affair in two previous interviews, and the cops let him, treating him with the same kid gloves that most law enforcement do in Washington when it comes to politicians.

But it was the steady drumbeat by the national media – first started by Fox News Channel, and then picked up by USA Today, the Washington Post and other johnny-come-latelys – that pressured the cops to finally do their jobs aggressively after months of treating the married Democratic congressman, son of a Baptist preacher, like royalty.

Local cops here are intimidated by elected officials and tend to go easy on them when they get in trouble.

Federal cops, or at least their bosses, are worse.

Those who run federal law-enforcement agencies serve at the mercy of politicians who appoint them and confirm them to their positions of power. So when a politician gets in hot water, they tend to pull punches, and the powerful just end up protecting the powerful.

That's where the free press steps in.

As watchdogs on government, they have a duty to keep its leaders honest.

The Condit case shows how they can lead an official investigation that would otherwise languish out of deference to a politician. If not for the doggedness of Fox News, Condit probably could have just waited this one out. Now he's got some serious accounting to do. Did his affair with the coed lead to her disappearance and possibly her death?

Again, this story shows how the wheels of justice really turn in Washington. The media make noise, and politicians and government officials start to worry what the public thinks. When they get worried, things start to move. All of a sudden, hearings and press conferences are held, sworn depositions are taken and subpoenas fly.

Without the press agitating action, the powerful would be content to continue protecting the powerful.

Too bad the national media didn't get as worked up about national security breaches under the Clinton administration. They took a powder on one of the biggest stories of our time: a communist power putting an American president on its payroll.

The Washington press corps never personalized that scandal the way they did Lewinsky. As with the Condit case, apparently, sex is easier to write about.

Isn't it a testament to the declining quality of national journalism when Monica's cigar act gets more press attention than the treachery of transferring missile technology to China?

Imagine how much closer to the truth we'd be right now regarding the full scope of the Chinagate conspiracy had White House scribes actually plied Clinton with tough questions about his role at every turn.

In the rare occasions that they did quiz him, they failed to follow up on his evasive answers. Instead, a chorus of questions about totally unrelated subjects would rise up after he finished his long-winded dissembling (in contrast to their handling of Reagan or Bush, who weren't allowed to filibuster so about Iran-Contra).

The press never really got the American people closer to the truth about the Chinese funny money and never held Clinton accountable for his role in taking the illegal cash and giving China unfettered access to the White House and U.S. weapons labs, as well as appeasing it with relaxed controls on dual-use exports, permanent trade benefits, and so on.

When four FBI street agents complained under oath that political operatives at the Justice Department had blocked them from following leads to the White House in the campaign-finance probe, the Big 3 TV networks, as well as CNN, blacked out their testimony.

When Beijing bagman John Huang testified before the House, tying Bill Clinton to his boss' scheme to raise millions of dollars through foreign conduits, Americans heard not a word of it on ABC, CBS or NBC.

In fact, the old media elite did everything in their power not to whip the public into a frenzy over this story – the opposite intent of their round-the-clock coverage of Iran-Contra and daily drumbeat over Watergate before it.

Here's the typical pattern they'd follow in covering new developments in the Chinagate story: The Washington Times would break a major story, usually by Jerry Seper or Bill Gertz, and the Associated Press would pick it up, adding nothing to it except perhaps White House spin. Then the Washington Post and New York Times would take wire on the story, not even assigning a staff reporter to advance it. And they'd bury the AP story as a brief deep inside the paper, with no follow up – until a week or so later, that is, in the form of a story obviously fed by the White House counsel's office, dismissing it as "old news," or much ado about nothing, or a Republican distraction from "the real issues that the American people care about."

And the old media still refuse to connect the growing constellation of dots in the foreign influence-peddling scandal.

The Condit case is the latest proof that the media have the power to force justice – if they're willing to exercise it. Unfortunately, Chinagate does not involve sex, which apparently is the only thing that most journalists today care about, or think the public can understand. Their continued silence on this important story is a disservice not only to their audiences but to their country.