Lewis Libby resigns after being indicted


Going for the technicalities because they can't prove the crime
This whole thing reminds me of the Martha Stewart case. Someone is indicted on procedural issues barely related to the supposed crime.

But lets go to the quotes.

During an afternoon news conference, Fitzgerald said, "A CIA officer's name was blown and there was a leak and we needed to figure out how that happened, who did it, why, whether a crime was committed, whether we could prove it, whether we should prove it. Given national security was at stake, it was especially important that we find out accurate facts."

Except no one has established that a CIA officer's name was leaked. If that could be established, then the charge would be violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

"Mr. Libby's story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another, was not true," Fitzgerald said.

"He was at the beginning of the chain of phone calls -- the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter -- and then he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly," he said.

Except no one seems to know who Robert Novak's source was. So apparently Scooter Libby wasn't the "first," and going by some of the other information, Valarie Plame wasn't exactly hiding her employment. Which raises the question how was the investigation justified if she was no longer a covert operative?

My favorite quotes so far come from Fox News.

"The criminal indictments of a top White House official mark a sad day for America and another chapter in the Republicans' culture of corruption. At the heart of these indictments was the effort by the Bush Administration to discredit critics of its Iraq policy with reckless disregard for national security and the public trust," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

The Bush Administration didn't discredit Joe Wilson, a bipartisan Senate investigation did.

"This case is bigger than the leak of highly classified information. It is about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the president," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in a statement.

In 1998, Senators Kennedy and Kerry (among many others) spoke from the floor of the Senate in favor of President Clinton's actions against Iraq. Oddly enough, Mr. Clinton making the case at that time sounded remarkably like Mr. Bush a few years later.

This wasn't an investigation, this was a political operation.

Two years of investigation, and this is all they can turn up?

This entire thing hinges on two issues. First, was Valarie Plame Wilson a covert officer within five years prior to Robert Novak's column "outing" her? Second, who was Mr. Novak's source?

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - October 28, 2005 at 04:34 PM  Tag


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