Are you sure about this?
Paula Jones sued Clinton for lying about her. There was no issue of whether Clinton had committed a crime. Yet Clinton was disbarred for having committed perjury before a grand jury.
Fuhrman in the OJ trial, I believe, was convicted of perjury for having lied about using the "n" word. It wasn't a crime to use the word, but it was a crime for Fuhrman to lie about facts which could reflect on his likelihood of carrying out his duties in an unbiased fashion.
The materiality of a question is not dependent upon whether the question directly involves the details of a crime, but whether the answer is important to the judicial process.
In this case I think I'm right.
The investigation was initiated to determine if the law protecting the identity of covert agents was violated. For perjury to occur, a false statement must be material to the investigation of the underlying crime. From the perjury angle, sources are immaterial because there is no proof that anybody actually knew she was a covert agent or reasonably believed that she was at the time of the communications. It's immaterial whether Libby heard about Plame from Cheney or a reporter if Fitzgerald cannot prove that the source passed on information that Plame was a covert agent, as opposed to someone merely working for the CIA.
As far as your analogies are concerned, I find them inapt and untrue.
Jones sued Clinton for sexual harassment. Her case was settled.
Fuhrman was discredited, but never convicted of perjury.
Actually, Clinton's license to practice law was suspended for five years for lying about having sex with Paula Jones.
A majority of the panelists who met Friday to consider two complaints against the president found that he should be disciplined, the Supreme Court said.
"This action is being taken against (the president) as a result of the formal complaints ... and the findings by a majority of the committee that certain of the attorney's conduct, as demonstrated in the complaint, constituted serious misconduct," the committee said in the document released by the state Supreme Court.
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Wright cited Clinton for civil contempt last year and fined him $90,000 for giving "intentionally false" testimony.
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Clinton disbarred from Supreme Court
The Supreme Court said today that a lawyer who was disciplined in his home state of Arkansas cannot practice law before the High Court. The action was totally unremarkable, except that the lawyer in question is former President Bill Clinton.
The justices’ action followed Clinton’s acceptance earlier this year of a five-year suspension of his law license in Arkansas and his payment of a $25,000 fine to the Arkansas Bar Association [stemming from a sexual-harassment suit filed in 1994 by Paula Corbin Jones].