Covert? Overt? The Plame blame game...

[Larry Gude (Premo)]

...has officially become a farce. As if it wasn't before.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...021601571.html

After the testimony of star prosecution witness Tim Russert, Walton scanned the jurors' queries and announced, "There is going to be one question I'm not going to ask. I've concluded that that question is not appropriate and therefore you should not speculate as to what the response would have been."

WTF?

What was he talking about? A moment later, Walton told the jurors: "What Mrs. Wilson's status was at the CIA, whether it was covert or not covert, is not something that you're going to hear any evidence presented to you on in this trial."

"Whether she was, or whether she was not, covert is not relevant to the issues you have to decide in this case," he said.

Yep. The facts don't matter at all. More so, the jurors are not even allowed to consider the facts.

If you've been following this much you know that Fitzgerald pursued Scooter because, as far as he, Fitz, is concerned, Scooter lied to him about what he knew and when he knew it. That's what Libby was indicted for, messing up the investigation. Which, by the way;

Outside the courtroom, Fitzgerald has said that Mrs. Wilson's status was in fact classified. The Libby indictment says that, too. But the judge has not allowed the jury to see the indictment, either.

Read that again.

Now, read this;

"I'm not going to tell the jury the information was classified," Fitzgerald responded. "I will tell the jury that there was an investigation into whether the law was violated."

This is some messed up stuff. Read the link for more judicial chaos.

[vraiblonde]

Interesting note not that Libby is not on trial for leaking classified information. He is on trial for lying to a grand jury. Much like....hmmm...what was that guy's name again? It's right on the tip of my tongue....

Anyway, how can Fitz prove Libby lied to the grand jury if they can't even discuss what he supposedly lied about? I don't understand this trial at all.

[Penn]

"Maybe in the end, jurors will be able to make sense of it all. But it's more likely that even after the trial ends, they'll still have one question they want answered."

That IS messed up!

[RadioPatrol]

Complete Waste of Taxpayer Dollars ............ Expect more of the same if the Dems get the White House in 08, into the Bush Administration

[Lenny]

Originally Posted by vraiblonde

Interesting note not that Libby is not on trial for leaking classified information. He is on trial for lying to a grand jury. Much like....hmmm...what was that guy's name again? It's right on the tip of my tongue....

Not a safe comparison. That other lying bastage had a partisan jury. Sounds like Libby's jury is able to think (at least one of 'em)

[forestal]

One has to wonder what is really going on here...

Fitzgerald is supposed be a real stand-up guy.

Full article...

Trial in Error
If You're Going to Charge Scooter, Then What About These Guys?
By Victoria Toensing
Sunday, February 18, 2007; B01


Could someone please explain to me why Scooter Libby is the only person on trial in the Valerie Plame leak investigation?

Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald charged Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff with perjury on the theory that Libby had a nefarious reason for lying to a grand jury about what he told reporters regarding CIA officer Plame: He was trying to cover up a White House conspiracy to retaliate against Plame's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson had infuriated Vice President Cheney by accusing the Bush administration of lying about intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Fitzgerald apparently concluded that a purported cover-up was sufficient motive for Libby to trim his recollections in a criminal way. So when Libby's testimony differed from that of others, it was Libby who got indicted.

There's a reason why responsible prosecutors don't bring perjury cases on mere "he said, he said" evidence. Without an underlying crime or tangible evidence of obstruction (think Martha Stewart trying to destroy phone logs), the trial becomes a mishmash of faulty memories in which witnesses can seem as guilty as the defendant. Any prosecutor knows that memories differ, even vividly, and each party can be convinced that his or her version is the truthful one.

If we accept Fitzgerald's low threshold for bringing a criminal case, then why stop at Libby? This investigation has enough questionable motives and shadowy half-truths and flawed recollections to fill a court docket for months. So here are my own personal bills of indictment:

* * *

THIS GRAND JURY CHARGES PATRICK J. FITZERALD with ignoring the fact that there was no basis for a criminal investigation from the day he was appointed, with handling some witnesses with kid gloves and banging on others with a mallet, with engaging in past contretemps with certain individuals that might have influenced his pursuit of their liberty, and with misleading the public in a news conference because . . . well, just because. To wit:

· On Dec. 30, 2003, the day Fitzgerald was appointed special counsel, he should have known (all he had to do was ask the CIA) that Plame was not covert, knowledge that should have stopped the investigation right there. The law prohibiting disclosure of a covert agent's identity requires that the person have a foreign assignment at the time or have had one within five years of the disclosure, that the government be taking affirmative steps to conceal the government relationship, and for the discloser to have actual knowledge of the covert status.

From FBI interviews conducted after Oct. 1, 2003, Fitzgerald also knew that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage had identified Plame as a CIA officer to columnist Robert D. Novak, who first published Plame's name on July 14, 2003.

· In January 2001, Libby was the lawyer for millionaire financier Marc Rich, whom President Bill Clinton pardoned shortly before leaving office. Fitzgerald, who was then an assistant U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York, and U.S. Attorney James Comey spearheaded the criminal investigation of that pardon.

· Fitzgerald jailed former New York Times reporter Judith Miller for almost 90 days for not providing evidence in a matter that involved no crime. Yet the two were engaged in another dispute: Fitzgerald wanted Miller's phone records, contending that by contacting an Islamic charity, she had alerted it to a government search the day before it happened.

· Fitzgerald granted immunity to former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer without ever asking what he would testify to; he permitted NBC News bureau chief Tim Russert to be interviewed in a law firm office with his lawyer present, while Novak was forced to testify before the grand jury without counsel present.

· Armitage, like Bush adviser Karl Rove, forgot one conversation with a reporter. Fitzgerald threatened Rove with prosecution; Armitage bragged that he didn't even need a lawyer.

· In violating prosecutorial ethics by discussing facts outside the indictment during his Oct. 28, 2005, news conference, Fitzgerald made one factual assertion that turned out to be flat wrong: Libby was not "the first official" to reveal Plame's identity.

* * *

THIS GRAND JURY CHARGES THE CIA for making a boilerplate criminal referral to cover its derrière.

The CIA is well aware of the requirements of the law protecting the identity of covert officers and agents. I know, because in 1982, as chief counsel to the Senate intelligence committee, I negotiated the terms of that legislation between the media and the intelligence community. Even if Plame's status were "classified"--Fitzgerald never introduced one piece of evidence to support such status -- no law would be violated.

There is no better evidence that the CIA was only covering its rear by requesting a Justice Department criminal investigation than the fact that it sent a boiler-plate referral regarding a classified leak and not one addressing the elements of a covert officer's disclosure.

* * *

THIS GRAND JURY CHARGES JOSEPH C. WILSON IV with misleading the public about how he was sent to Niger, about the thrust of his March 2003 oral report of that trip, and about his wife's CIA status, perhaps for the purpose of getting book and movie contracts.

· On July 6, 2003, Wilson appeared on "Meet the Press" hours after the New York Times published his op-ed "What I Didn't Find in Africa," which accused the administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the Iraq threat. The piece suggested that Wilson had been sent to Niger at the vice president's request to look into foreign intelligence reports of Iraqi efforts to obtain yellowcake uranium. Wilson told Andrea Mitchell, "The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip there." But Cheney said he had no knowledge of Wilson's trip and was never briefed on his oral report to the CIA.

· Wilson has claimed repeatedly -- including on MSNBC's "Countdown" on July 22, 2005 and at the National Press Club on Oct. 31, 2005 -- that he was sent to Niger because of his "specific skill set" and not because of his wife. But Senate intelligence committee documents indicate that Plame suggested his name for the trip, as did a State Department report and a CIA official who briefed the vice president's office.

· Although Wilson has repeatedly claimed that neither his trip nor his oral report was classified, the CIA sent documents about the trip marked "classified" to the vice president's office and to date has not released the essence of the oral report. A source later identified as Wilson claimed in a Washington Post article on June 12, 2003, that documents related to an alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal were forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." When Senate intelligence committee staff questioned that, as Wilson had never seen the documents, he responded that he may have "misspoken."

· Wilson has continually played coy about his wife's status. On July 16, 2003, David Corn wrote in the Nation: "Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a U.S. intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security -- and break the law -- in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?" Corn acknowledged talking to Wilson but said that Wilson refused to talk about his wife. Yet Corn also published Wilson's rather unsubtle suggestion: "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career."

Plame was not covert. She worked at CIA headquarters and had not been stationed abroad within five years of the date of Novak's column.

* * *


dt@digenovatoensing.com

Victoria Toensing, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, is a Washington lawyer.