At the current rate of speed this investigation will never be done.

It’s time to call in the feds

Albany is buzzing. The district attorney has issued a broad subpoena to Gov. Spitzer’s office. The Public Integrity Commission has hired a new lawyer. The moves suggest the probes into Troopergate are entering a dynamic new phase.

Yes and no. For each step forward they represent, the moves also prove that the incestuous nature of Albany politics will never permit the truth. It’s time to stop kidding ourselves. It’s time to call in the feds.

That’s the only way to get honest answers to the questions of possible perjury and obstruction of justice growing out of Spitzer’s efforts to use the state police to smear a political rival. We have to turn the case over to impartial prosecutors free of the political ties that have undermined it from day one.

Troopergate fits the classic definition of a case compromised by politics. As my colleague Elizabeth Benjamin reported in breaking the subpoena story, Albany District Attorney David Soares’ sudden aggressiveness is owing to a sense that Spitzer gave him the runaround - “gamesmanship,” a source told her. This is Rip Van Winkle waking up.

Spitzer, despite his repeated claims that he has cooperated fully, has never cooperated fully with anyone. Not with Attorney General Andrew Cuomo back in July, not with the integrity panel, not with the state Senate’s ongoing probe and not with Soares. He has used the power of his office to fight each probe on various grounds, including tenuous claims of executive privilege.

And Soares let him get away with it. He brushed off the case initially, inviting the governor and his team in for casual chats - no subpoenas, no oaths. Even before he was finished with this cursory approach, he leaked the results, telling reporters the governor did nothing wrong. When he made the whitewash official, he foolishly said the governor and his team acted appropriately.

Now he has been embarrassed and vows not to be fooled again. But Soares is not up to the job and is caught in a web of conflicts. The rookie has little experience, either in prosecutions or politics. What experience he has he owes mostly to Spitzer, who helped fund Soares’ patrons, the Working Families Party.

The last thing Soares wants to do is investigate the governor. My bet is he would welcome a chance to have the feds take over the case and let him off the hook.

Ditto for the Public Integrity Commission. Bad enough that it is dominated by Spitzer’s appointees and that its executive director’s former law firm was a large financial contributor to Spitzer. Now it has hired a general counsel, Barry Ginsburg, who worked with Spitzer at the Manhattan DA’s office.

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