Libby guilty
A jury found the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, guilty on four of the five counts he was charged with, including lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice.
I obviously didn't see all of the testimony, but color me skeptical that justice was done. Special prosecutor Peter Fitzgerald knew almost immediately upon being assigned this investigation two facts:
Valerie Plame was not a covert agent under the strict definition of the law.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the original leaker.
At that point, Fitzgerald should've closed up shop.
Instead, Fitzgerald went on a crusade in search of a crime -- any crime. The standard Fitzgerald used to charge Libby could've been used against just about anyone involved in the case -- including most of the reporters. The jury concluded that NBC newsman Tim Russert was telling the truth and Libby lying about who said what and when, but there's no evidence outside Russert's word to convict Libby -- no notes, no audio recording, nothing.
Contrast the Libby case with our other most-famous perjury-related case in the past decade -- President Bill Clinton's testimony in the Paula Jones case.
"I tried to walk a fine line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, but I now recognize that I did not fully accomplish this goal and am certain my responses to questions about Ms. Lewinsky were false," Clinton said in a written statement released Friday by the White House.
That's the standard for perjury trials -- not anything that can be characterized as an honest disagreement on months- and years-old memories.
What's really sad about this entire case is that the media is still doing a rather shoddy job of accurately describing the basis of this entire case.
From the Associated Press article linked above:
On July 6, 2003, Wilson publicly wrote that he had gone to Niger in 2002 and debunked a report that Iraq was seeking uranium there for nuclear weapons and that Cheney, who had asked about the report, should have known his findings long before Bush cited the report in 2003 as a justification for the war. On July 14, columnist Robert Novak reported that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and she, not Cheney, had suggested he go on the trip.
When an investigation of the leak began, prosecutors said, Libby feared prosecution for disclosing classified information so he lied to investigators to make his discussions appear innocent.
The problems with this? We don't get any facts -- what we know from James Taranto:
This was a political show trial, and partisans of Joe Wilson will use the guilty verdict to declare vindication. But along the way we learned that virtually all the claims Wilson and his supporters made were false:
You want worse? Check out this "analysis" piece from the AP's Tom Raum.
The case laid bare the inner workings of a presidency under siege and the secretive world of Vice President Dick Cheney.
It showed the lengths to which Cheney went in early summer 2003 to discredit administration critic Joseph Wilson. The former ambassador's assertions had cast doubt on the administration's justification for having taken the country to war in Iraq. And the Libby case showed the president assisting Cheney in the leaked attacks on Wilson.
You find not one word in that piece that Joseph Wilson is a liar -- according to a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee. Not one word! The administration wanted to discredit a critic, you're told, but forget about the fact that the "critic" was lying -- repeatedly -- about what he said, what he found out, what he knew, and who sent him.
The administration was so interested in destroying Valerie Plame because of her husband, the narrative goes, that they made all of these leaks -- which never got reported! They were trying so hard, and the media did nothing. All of their effort for naught until Armitage -- who wasn't even in on the plot -- accidentally let it slip to Robert Novak.
Other things you should read:
Tim Graham compares the Libby conviction coverage to non-coverage of a scandal under the previous administration.
In the aftermath of this case, I maintain what I said the first time Joe Wilson alleged the outing of his wife: if your spouse’s position is of such a classified nature that disclosure of her position would put her job in jeopardy, then don’t write a political op-ed in the New York Times that has implications for what your spouse did to put you in a position to write that op-ed.
Well, duh!
Victoria Toensing on appeals possibilities.
The real scandal has always been that the world’s most lavishly endowed intelligence agency’s idea of an investigation is flying in a politically-motivated tourist for a long weekend.
For extensive discussion on the minutiae, check out Tom Maguire.
Mark Levin makes some interesting points. I'm particularly struck by the fact that Libby may be facing jail time, while Sandy "docs in my socks" Berger got off with a wrist-slap.
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I'm sure it was just a slip. I make them all the time. Peter Fitzgerald is the Senator who appointed Patrick Fitzgerald to serves as the U.S. prosecutor for the Northern District of Illinois. Patrick Fitzgerald has also served as the special prosecutor in the Libby case.
http://drx.typepad.com/psychotherapyblog/2007/03/the_other_fitzg.html