Clarice Feldman, someone who has followed every tiny detail about the Plame case, has written an excellent article today about the travesty we know as the Libby verdict. She details all of the wrongs committed on Scooter and ends with this:
How preposterous is it to watch Nancy Pelosi strutting about the forum today-her record filled with appointments like William Jefferson’s to head Homeland Security and John Conyers to head the Judiciary? A Speaker who has the chutzpah to say,
"Today’s guilty verdicts are not solely about the acts of one individual. The testimony unmistakably revealed — at the highest levels of the Bush Administration – a callous disregard in handling sensitive national security information and a disposition to smear critics of the war in Iraq."
And I explode with laughter at the Cassius-like Kerry who sneered,
"This verdict brings accountability at last for official deception and the politics of smear and fear…. This trial revealed a no-holds barred White House attack machine aimed at anyone who stood in the way of their march to war with Iraq. It is time for President Bush to live up to his own promises and hold accountable anyone else who participated in this smear. It is also well past time for Vice President Cheney, who according to the testimony was protected by Scooter Libby’s lies, to finally acknowledge his role in this sordid episode."
Sordid the episode is, but not because of anything Libby did. And "a troubling picture" of Washington it is-but not of this Administration. The Bush crowd is guilty only of terminal naiveté and the foolish idea that high standards of probity will ever beat the opposition’s utter unscrupulousness and willingness to misuse the legal system to their own partisan ends, even if it means the ruination of an innocent and capable man and enormous hardship to his family.
Here are a few of the wrongs she is calling for justice over:
Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame who cooked up a series of lies to undermine the Administration in the middle of the war?
The media, which megaphoned them and falsely suggested that someone had deliberately outed an undercover agent for political reasons, following the lead of The Nation’s David Corn?Former CIA head Tenet, who insisted the Department of Justice investigate a routine referral for reasons which are still unclear but seem to be pique and revenge? Who refused to clarify the record about Wilson: who sent him, and what he found, and what happened to those findings? For dragging out the declassification of the National Intelligence Estimate which showed the Wilson report supported rather than contradicted the estimate?
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his Deputy Dick Armitage, who knew Armitage leaked and hid from the President and public that fact, letting Libby and the entire White House staff be put through the wringer?
The FBI which poorly investigated the matter, jiggered the notes of the interrogations and somehow lost the key inculpatory notes?
Former Attorney Ashcroft who allowed himself to be nose ringed by the mandarinate into recusing himself from looking into the matter?
While Plame and Joey practically put her status in neon lights around Washington we get a prosecutor who was determined to convict a member of the Bush administation, no matter what. Doesn’t matter if it wasn’t about the actual crime he was investigating. No, he wanted the headlines.
Then we have the fact that one of the jurors was an ex-washington reporter….I mean Libby had no chance. How in the world did this guy get onto that jury?
This was a disgraceful sham that should inspire the right to stop the despicable political frauds from getting anywhere near the houses of governmental power in ’08.
Hopefully.
UPDATE
Tom Maguire updates us about that reporter juror and some of the thinking involved to come to this verdict:
Denis Collins, reporter and Libby juror, continues his fifteen minutes with a long account of the trial and deliberations available at the Huffington Post (don’t wait for the book.)
I like this:
We’ve also heard testimony that [Libby] received from the Vice President a July 6 New York Times article by Joseph Wilson with a handwritten note about Wilson’s wife.
Mission accomplished for Fitzgerald, then. In reality, Libby testified that he never saw that marked-up op ed, and Fitzgerald offered nothing to contradict him. Instead, it was offered as "state of mind" evidence – if it was important to Cheney, it must have been important to Libby
Funny thing is that there was ever any testimony about this article. I could be wrong since I didn’t follow it daily but I believe it was entered into evidence without testimony. But it played a big part in a finding of fact?
WTF!
I mean, think about it. Fitz never presented any kind of evidence that this scribbling was written before the Novak article came out. So how in the world could the jury ever come to the conclusion that Libby saw the scribbling before he talked to Russert?
Other’s Blogging:
- Decision ’08
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- My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
- IMAO
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- Protein Wisdom
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Now that Democrats have acclaimed Fitzgerald as the best proseuctor ever I have an idea.
Extend his stay as Special Prosecutor and add to his responsibilities the investigations of Harry Reids land deal and Clinton efforts to assist Sandy Berger in covering up his “breach of National Security.”
Surely during the interviews of those involved in the case one of them will have forgotten what he had for breakfast three years ago and we can nail him too right?
Oops! I forgot. Like standards of conduct and ethics, the law in ONLY to be applied to Republicans.
From Bill Bennett:
One simple observation about the Libby trial and the celebrations by the media, the Left, and the Joe Wilsons: Now that we have established that no rock and no expense will be left unturned and unspent, that no reporter involved will be left unsubpoenaed for leaking or even purportedly leaking a classified agent’s name, when we have some suspicion that a person who works at the CIA might be covert (but turns out not to be): Can we please begin the investigation and subpoenaing of journalists—also known as witnesses to a crime—for leaking classified national-security information in a time of war?!
—I’m not making a partisan point, I’m making a serious point about serious breaches of law and public endangerment; I’m not talking about disgruntled spouses with political differences with the president, I’m talking about the disclosure of the most serious war-time planning and procedures to keep our country safe. I’m talking about disclosing the secret detention facilities of high-value terrorists, I’m talking about the disclosure of terrorist surveillance programs, I’m talking about the disclosure of the Treasury Department’s SWIFT program that tracked terrorist financing—all of which are now caput because insiders leaked to the press and the press willingly published these classified secrets—-NONE of the programs that were leaked were illegal, all of them were of great value, all of them are over or changed as a result of the disclosure.
—Can we please start a serious investigation of those, and by all means subpoena the witnesses, that is to say the reporters. If you can do it to nail bit players in a seemingly innocent disclosure of Valerie Plame’s name where her husband started the process, then you can certainly do it over serious anti-terrorism programs that were of the highest level of classification. Link
I like Bill’s thinking here.
Rov