Obstruction for What? Libby is charged with lying about a crime that wasn't committed.

Wall Street Journal.com ^ | 29 October, 2005 | unattributed

[YaYa123]

Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation took nearly two years, sent a reporter to jail, cost millions of dollars, and preoccupied some of the White House's senior officials. The fruit it has now borne is the five-count indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff--not for leaking the name of Valerie Plame to Robert Novak, which started this entire "scandal," but for contradictions between his testimony and the testimony of two or three reporters about what he told them, when he told them, and what words he used.

Mr. Fitzgerald would not comment yesterday on whether he had evidence for the perjury, obstruction of justice and false statement counts beyond the testimonies of Mr. Libby and three journalists. Instead, he noted that a criminal investigation into a "national security matter" of this sort hinged on "very fine distinctions," and that any attempt to obscure exactly who told what to whom and when was a serious matter.

[G.Mason]

"Face it, this prosecutor is about as good as they get when it comes to fairness, which is why he was chosen in the first place and why the White House is not going on attack."

Enough of that hogwash already!

Fitzgerald is "good as they get" at spending your tax money. Were he not he would have disbanded the "investigation" within two months, after determining that there was no crimes committed, as Valerie Plame was not a "covert" CIA operative and had not met the definition of the disclosure law in question.

Instead, the "good as they get" prosecutor spent countless dollars and over two years for what, they would have you believe, was a grand investigation of serious national consequences.

This "investigation" is, and always has been, about destroying the Republican administration. [reads ... coup] It is about President Bush lying about facts to go to war.

VP Cheney will be next on the hit list and when that comes the coup will have been successful.

[billclintonwillrotinhell]

I agree with you about the education bill and spending bills. But that's all. When someone obstructs justice, it's often difficult to tell whether an "underlying" crime was committed. That's the whole point of obstructing justice in the first place - to prevent something from being discovered by authorities!

If what Fitzgerald is doing is wrong, I urge all the Libby defenders out there to start campaigning for changes to perjury and obstruction of justice laws. Maybe you'd like for there to be an exception to the laws, saying it's OK to lie under oath as long as no "underlying crimes" can be proven. That would be ridiculous to do, but at least your attacks on Fitzgerald would then make legal sense.

[Cboldt]

Why did W allow Ted Kennedy to write the education bill?

GWB is a fan of Federal control over education. His wife is a teacher (irrelevant aside ... Miers started undergraduate one class ahead of Laura, also as a teacher, and even taught - student taught I presume). GWB has one of his TX buddies in charge of the Department of Education, and likely wanted to provide generous funding for it.

May as well get a DEM to do the dirty work.

[zeebee]

I heard Fitz say he does not know who the leaker was because Libby obstructed the investigation.

[ovrtaxt]

Okay, I'll defer to you. I am manifestly unfamiliar with grand jury proceedings and such. My larger point is that we need to be careful not to advance a double standard just because this is some Republican. Sure, the whole investigation is stupid, but lying under oath is lying under oath. But if you say there's a legal difference, okay.

[MNJohnnie]

Fitzgerald also deserves credit for a lack of leaking by him and his staff in this case. It appears all the leaks were being made by witnesses and their lawyers, who are the only participants allowed to talk about grand jury action.

Utter nonsense. This whole investigation has been one long leak. This fanatical attempt to deflect the very real factual, justifiable, cultism of Fritz will not work. He BADLY blew it. Sorry just because you WANT to believe somethng does NOT make it truth.

[zeebee]

What was Libby's motive to lie?

Maybe he was falling on a sword. There is no way he thought he could get away with his outrageous story. He felt he needed to obstruct and he accomplished that goal.

[angkor]

THE MOST IMPORTANT FACT, is still unknown or uncertain

Oh, c'mon.

Fitz works out of the "Counter Espionage" office of DoJ, an office specifically established to investigate intelligence cases. He knows exactly what Plame's status is and was.

Fitz has clearly stated that Plame held a classified position at CIA until 2003. That's test #1 for a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

And Libby meets every test of being a potential perp due to his own classified position (that's test #2).

But the absence of an indictment under the Act indicates that test #3 was not met: Plame was not "covert" under the law (which requires foreign service).

Given Plame's lack of "covert" status, no one in this matter can be charged under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

What's disturbing is that Fitzgerald would have known very early in the investigation that there was no legal breach of the Act, because Plame wasn't "covert" under the law. Yet he continued to pursue it, with what objective we don't know.

By the way, if Plame is still employed by the CIA in any classified capacity, she's now "covert" and covered by the Act due to her ongoing residence in France.

So don't say anything mean about her.

[Cboldt]

Okay, I'll defer to you. I am manifestly unfamiliar with grand jury proceedings and such. My larger point is that we need to be careful not to advance a double standard just because this is some Republican. Sure, the whole investigation is stupid, but lying under oath is lying under oath. But if you say there's a legal difference, okay.

If you reread my post, you will see that I hold the idictment is based on a lie about a material point.

There are other lies that would literally be irrelevant - e.g., in this case, who cares what he had for lunch, who cares what he names his dog, who cares if he has a pet turtle, etc. In this case, he could lie about that stuff.

But in this case, he cannot lie about where and how he first learned of Plame, and he cannot knowingly point fingers at the press as first giving him that information if he knows he first got that information via independent research, inquiry to the CIA.

[ovrtaxt]

Bush won't ever do that. WHY THE GOP DOESN'T WANT TO WIN (Rush's 'Big Theory' revisited)

[mcshot]

"...just waiting for someone's memory to fail..."


And who has the best failing memory. None other than the wench of Klinton, Inc.

mc

[Hildy]

Were you for or against Martha Stewart? Because this is exactly why Old Martha ended up in Jail. Now, don't be a hypocrite.

[billclintonwillrotinhell]

If you have evidence that Fitzgerald or his team leaked anything from the grand jury, please forward that information to the Justice Department. That would be a serious crime, as Fitzgerald pointed out at his rare but thorough press conference yesterday.

It's funny, I was watching yesterday and thinking how difficult it must be to have Fitzgerald's job. I guess this thread just points that out. I heard a legal friend of Fitzgerald's on TV saying that he was at his house once and there were pizza boxes all over the place. He said Fitzgerald hadn't turned on his stove in 10 years!

I appreciate the service of people like Fitzgerald, who work long hours for their country. He was hired to do the job he did. If you have a problem with his final product, go complain to the people who gave him his mandate in the first place.

[mcshot]

..."But having a knock-down, drag-out trial will hurt the country and the president, and he doesn't need that trouble just now."

But playing possum sure as hell hasn't helped either.

mc

[REPANDPROUDOFIT]

PARDON SCOOTER!

Oh, how I would love to see that! George just pops out to the Rose Garden one fine Fall morning and simply announces, "I have chosen to pardon Scooter Libby". Done. If the press bellows, then let them also address the pardons issued by Clintoon.

[frankjr]

" If Libby won't tell the truth, we may never know exactly what happened in this case."

That's a load. If Fitz is so sure of his perjury charges than he should go with it and say Libby knew about Wilson's wife before speaking with reporters. And if he truly believes that assumption is true, he could have charged Wilson with the leaking of classified information and presented his case.

What if Libby just used the "My recollection is not clear" to Fitz's questions in the GJ? Then what would have Fitz done. Wrap up the case, no indictments, and call it a day?

There is a reason attorneys make careers as public prosecutors or defenders...because they can't cut it in private practice. Fitz's press conference proved why. Fitz may be the cream of the crop of Prosecutors...but that is a low bar indeed.

But hey, if you were impressed with him, more power to ya!

[billclintonwillrotinhell]

Fitz may be the cream of the crop of Prosecutors...but that is a low bar indeed. But hey, if you were impressed with him, more power to ya!

I'm not the only one. Look who hired him!

[MNJohnnie]

What's disturbing is that Fitzgerald would have known very early in the investigation that there was no legal breach of the Act, because Plame wasn't "covert" under the law. Yet he continued to pursue it, with what objective we don't know

Political CYA. He knew his allies in the Dem party like little Chucky Schumer wants their to be something. He knew that after all hysteria in the Dinosaur Media, if he came out and said "No Crime" HE would be the target of the media ream job.

So he threw up anything he could dream up in order to deflect criticism off himself. Considering how we are seeing supposedly "Conservative" posters going out of their way to make excuses for Fitz, I suspect a new talking point has gone out telling the usual suspects to defend Fritz. This Prosecutor made a judgment call to prosecute on side issues that really have no material bearing on the case. That was a gutless call.

[EBH]

"Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this," Novak said on "Crossfire." "There is no great crime here..."

"...Bob Novak called me before he went to print with the report and he said a CIA source had told him that my wife was an operative," Wilson said. "He was trying to get a second source. He couldn't get a second source. Could I confirm that? And I said no."

Wilson said he called Novak after the article appeared citing sources in the Bush administration.

"What was it, CIA or senior administration?" Wilson said he asked Novak. "He said to me, 'I misspoke the first time I spoke to you.' "

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/29/novak.cia/

[livius]

Russert is the one who has been caught in lies. Why wasn't he prosecuted? He initially tried to make it sound as if he had been called by Libby with a Wilson-related tidbit, although Libby said the conversation had actually been primarily about some other issue (welfare reform policy, IIRC). Russert denied it - and then when his notes were supoenaed, it turned out that Libby was right, and they had indeed discussed the other issue, with anything about Wilson apparently being an afterthought and a bit of digging on Russert's part.

Faulty memory? Possibly. Or possibly intentional misleading of the GJ to make things seem worse for Libby. But because this is Russert we're talking about, nothing happened. On the other hand, Libby is being railroaded with even less evidence.

Remember, any jury in DC is overwhelmingly made up of hard-core Dems, and this is something that has to be taken into consideration in this case.