Nov 05 2005
DJ Outs Fitzgerald
We are all getting outed somehow, somewhere! Check out this excellent analysis by DJ Drumond which I think nails Fitzgerald as a partisan hack out to support the Wilson claims without any interest in tracking down the leaking of classified information. Just a taste of Drummond’s analysis
This means that Libby was consistent in his stories. This is important, because that means the indictments all come down to whether one accepts what Libby claims, or what someone else claims. Libby did not contradict himself or change his story. This tells us that Fitzgerald chose to disbelieve Libby, not that the evidence proved he lied.
I agree, there was nothing to prove either side correct – Fitzgerald was driven by preconceptions. My proof is this statement:
FITZGERALD: “And the damage wasn’t to one person. It wasn’t just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us.â€
If we are talking damage done, then why is it Fitzgerald’s evidence supporting the indictment proves Libby did not confirm to the media Valerie’s job a the CIA – even though he clearly knew about it? Libby did not out Val, so this is nothing about her or us! You want to knwo what outing an operative is like Pat?
Try this
In the case of Valerie Wilson, energy consultant for Brewster-Jennings, she traveled overseas in 2003, 2002, and 2001, as part of her cover job.
or this:
She met with folks who worked in the nuclear industry, cultivated sources, and managed spies.
or this:
She was an undercover case officer….
Geez, Fitz. How is it all this still classified detail is still being exposed on blogs of ex-CIA kooks who personally know Valerie – and your not doing anything about it???
UPDATE II:
The more I think about Fitzgerald’s BS statement the angrier I get. If this was ‘done to all of us’ then why is it Fits missed the fact that Tim Russert and Andrea Mitchell were in a meeting discussing Wilson’s wife and the fact she worked at the CIA before the Novak article came out? Did Fitz miss the fact that the NY Times (Kristof, Shipley and others) knew of Valeries’s CIA job back in May? What about Joe outing his wife to Foxnews hosts and guests? If not these people, how about the Kerry campaign – should Fitzgerald had looked into them for this terrible act done against us all! What a bunch of empty posturing and bravado from Fitzgerald. How about the Washington Post – since either Leiby or Pincus, coauthors of a simultaneous outing of Wilson to his own July 6th piece, apparently were at the Wilsons on July 4th.
If this was so damn serious why is it Fitz missed all of these sources?
One more here (Larry Johnson)
Fitzgerald has thrown a stacked indictment at Libby, laying it on him as heavy as the law and propriety permits. He has taken one continuous false statement, out of several hours of interrogation, and made it into a five-count indictment. It appears he is trying to flip Libby – that is, to get him to testify against Cheney — and not without good reason. Cheney is the big fish in this case. And there’s a lot more there than meets the eye.
Typically, federal criminal indictments are absolutely bare bones. Just enough to inform a defendant of the charges against him.
Federal prosecutors excel at these “plain, concise and definite” statement indictments – drawing on form books and institutional experience in drafting them. Thus, the typical federal indictment is the quintessence of pith: as short and to the point as the circumstances will permit.
Libby is charged with having perjured himself, made false statements, and obstructed justice by lying to FBI agents and the grand jury. A bare-bones indictment would address only these alleged crimes.
But this indictment went much further – delving into a statute under which Libby is not charged.
Count One in its first sentence establishes that Libby had security clearances giving him access to classified information. Then it goes on to state: “As a person with such clearances, Libby was obligated by applicable laws and regulations, including Title 18, United States Code, Section 793.
What is it?
It’s the Espionage Act — a broad, longstanding part of the criminal code.
The Espionage Act criminalizes, among other things, the willful – or grossly negligent — communication of national-defense related information that “the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” It also criminalizes conspiring to violate this anti-disclosure provision
But Libby isn’t charged with espionage. He’s charged with lying to our government and thereby obstructing justice. So what’s going on? Why is Fitzgerald referencing the Espionage Act?
The argument goes because Libby has lied, and apparently stuck to his lie, Fitzgerald is unable to build a case against him or anyone else under Section 793.
Cheney provided the classified information to Libby – who then told the press.
Libby admits he learned the information from Cheney at the time specified in the indictment. But, according to Fitzgerald, Libby also maintained – in speaking to both FBI agents and the grand jury – that Cheney’s disclosure played no role whatsoever in Libby’s disclosure to the media.
Libby’s story was that when Libby “passed the information on to reporters Cooper and Miller late in the week, he passed it on thinking it was just information he received from reporters; that he told reporters that, in fact, he didn’t even know if it were true. He was just passing gossip from one reporter to another at the long end of a chain of phone calls.”
This story is a lie. But it is one that reeks of strategic purpose.
It protects Cheney because it suggests that Cheney’s disclosure to Libby was causally separate from Libby’s later, potentially Espionage-Act-violating disclosure to the press. Thus, it also denies any possible conspiracy between Cheney and Libby.
And it protects Libby himself – by suggesting that since he believed he was getting information from reporters, not indirectly from the CIA, he may not have had have the state of mind necessary to violate the Espionage Act.
Libby has been Dick Cheney’s firewall. And it appears that Fitzgerald is actively trying to penetrate that firewall.
AJ,
I feel like a broken record here…but…
Could Fitzgerald be shooting a message across the Administration’s bow? As I see it, he has his fabled career to lose if the details of ABLE DANGER ever see daylight.
Could Libby’s indictment be a signal to Bush to standdown on AD…?
He seemed awfully nervous over a week ago when he announced the results of the Grand Jury… Frankly, I was a bit surprised at how “unconfident” this fabulous prosecutor turned out to be. I’m not trying to slam the guy…I truly thought he looked like a scared rat during that press conference.
Ghost
The only problem I see with that is, I don’t think it is illegal for Cheney to have told Libby anything…the only way Fitz has a shot at Cheney is if Libby says Cheney told him to use it to smear Wilson or as a means of punishment and that just ain’t gonna happen!
Ghost Dansing,
It was Novak’s 14 July 2003 article which Wilson hung his hat upon. Wilson’s claim has been that Novak’s article is proof positive that the Bush Administration “outed” his wife in order to destroy him.
Yet Libby was not one of Novak’s sources…
It appears Rove was Novak’s secondary source. So the BIG question is who was Novak’s primary source? (“Mr. Tenet!…phone call for Mr. Tenet!…”)
AJ….
Something just seems very askew…it almost seems like this is all on purpose (I am thinking it is all playing the press).
Someone made a very good point…he made more, here is one
“…My personal opinion of Fitzgerald is that he couldn’t find his ass with both hands – two years of investigation and all he comes up with are some questionable charges that were ultimately created by his investigation – nothing really to do with the original investigation.
But maybe… maybe he did find a lot of things during his investigation. The problem is that if he found the things we think he should have found, and just blasted away like he should have, maybe it would create a lot of short term and long term problems. CIA would be trashed as a viable government agency. MSM and government would be a long time before they could work together again. MSM would blather and obfuscate like they always do, and no one would ever really know what happened.
Maybe the last minute wrangling with Rove was to deliberately put Libby out there. MSM gets a bone, admittedly, kind of a scrawny chicken wing bone, but they get to make hay with it – and boy do they. The headlines, at least for a couple of days, you could almost see where they scratched out their pre-printed “Rove” and scrawled “Libby”. Didn’t matter, as long as everyone in the world KNEW that Bush did something VERY BAD.
But if Fitz came to Bush with something that would rock the world for a long time – and you know that that is not the game that Bush likes to play – who does Fitz ultimately answer to (er, besides the constitution)? Bush would have said, let’s play this low key, solve the problem for a long time, and not cause huge problems. When this is done, MSM will have been told to go to hell, and will be looking forward to the trip. The half-assed charges against Libby look like they were scraped together from the bottom of the barrel at the very last minute. Fitz had to do some creative blather to make them look good. And Fitz’s rhetoric about no plea deals, and jail for a long time, just smacks of “let’s make this look good”. Let’s make sure this hangs together long enough to at least get through discovery…”
—and what do you know? With the latest leak of the CIA prisons, we can see why!
I don’t always spell it out that well, but I just wonder if they is more than meets the eye!
Maid Marion,
I doubt Fitz is shooting anything – he has nothing. I too noticed he looked really bad during his press conference. The indictments will fail in court, way too weak.
[…] The list of people who knew about Plame working for the CIA is getting quite large! From the Kerry Campaign to most of NBC News to Victor Davis Hanson…. […]