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Pulitzer Prize Winners Take the Stand in Libby Trial
Dana Milbank describes (for the Washington Post) what Bob Woodward, Robert Novak,`Walter Pincus, Glenn Kessler and David Sanger had to say when took the stand at the Libby trial.
Libby must believe himself to be in desperate legal straits to have six journalists serve as his character witnesses. And, indeed, the reporters’ testimony appeared to do little to dent the prosecution’s case that the former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney eagerly shared CIA officer Valerie Plame’s name with reporters and then said otherwise under oath. But Libby’s team did establish that the defendant wasn’t the only administration official dishing about Plame.
The leadoff witness, The Post’s Walter Pincus, testified that then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told him about Plame’s identity — directly contradicting Fleischer’s sworn testimony. Next, Woodward testified that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told him about Plame. Novak fingered top Bush strategist Karl Rove as well as Armitage. Combine that with earlier testimony that Fleischer and Libby each leaked to two other reporters, and it seems possible prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald would have had an easier time finding out who in the administration didn’t leak Plame’s identity.
[...]
By the time it got to The Post’s Glenn Kessler, the defense lawyer was sheepish. “I pretty much have to ask you this question: Have you won any awards?”Pincus, wearing his reporter’s dog tag around his collar and his tie loose, had the day’s biggest revelation: Fleischer “swerved off” from the topic of a conversation in 2003 and told him about Plame’s identity. As recently as two weeks ago, Fleischer testified otherwise, saying it’s “absolutely correct” that he did not tell Pincus about the CIA worker.
[...]
Novak, whose column identifying Plame started the whole scandal, explained that while Rove and Armitage spoke to him about Plame, he didn’t remember whether Libby did, because “I kind of discard unhelpful conversations in my memory bank.”
The defense lawyers also “won permission to play for the jury a tape of [Woodward's] interview with Armitage.”
Quite an interesting interview style.
You can listen to a part of the interview here and you can read the transcript here (h/t to Tom Maguire he rightfully points out: “Armitage mentions three times that she is a WMD analyst at the CIA, one might almost think he wanted to emphasize that point to Woodward”). Also read this article at The New York Times by Neil Lewis and Scott Shane and this one by Carol Leonnig and Amy Goldstein for The Washington Post).
In short… the entire White House was involved. Absolutely ludicrous. No matter how often I read about this… I cannot help but to be amazed.
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11 Responses to “Pulitzer Prize Winners Take the Stand in Libby Trial”
“No matter how often I read about this… I cannot help but to be amazed.”
Yup! But sadly, the US public seems to have lost the ability of being really shocked about illegal acts of the government some time after Watergate. Where’s the outcry?
:-/
And even when it’s not illegal… it’s still quite immoral.
I don’t understand why there’s not much outrage either Gray.
Yet, there are so many who still want to blame our entry into the war with Iraq on the CIA’s bad intel. If this case proves nothing else, it shows the length that the administration was willing to go to to mislead the public about Saddam’s quest for WMD’s. Seven months after they knew it to be a false claim, those 16 words still made it into Bush’s SOTU of 1-03. Pardon me if I now view the, ahem, evidence that the Iranian government is killing our troops in Iraq with a healthy skepticism!
While I believe Scooter was up to his ears in this scandal, I think he did whatever he did at Cheney’s directive. He admitted to having discussed the matter with Cheney during a flight back to Washington, yet Fitzgerald never put Cheney under oath when he questioned him. While I believe Libby is guilty of obstruction and perjury, I also believe the defense’s claim that he was set up as the fall guy for the entire administration, who were also actively leaking Plame’s identity.
Gray said: “illegal acts of the government”
What illegal acts? Fitzgerald expressly stated that this trial would have nothing to do with prosecuting about leaks. Why?
Andrea Mitchell’s famous comment about Palme: “Everyone in Washington knows who she is.”
Why do you think Fitzgerald has been fighting defense motions to get Mitchell on the stand before the jury?
How many leaks have there been in Washington…entire NSA and CIA programs…yet this is the one Gray and Kritter and the left are outraged about?
Probably because it is the only one that favored the Bush administration.
When the leakers attack Bush, they are courageous whistleblowers!
When the leakers favor Bush, it is “Treason in a Time of War that must be punished to the full extent of the law”.
Because the exposed agent was a high-level operative in the agency’s ME WMD non-proliferation unit. After all of the administration’s outraged claims about leaks which emboldened the enemy , turns out they were selectively leaking with the best of them, regardless of the harm done to national security. It shows that all that mattered to them when push came to shove was petty partisan revenge.
Even if Mitchell claimed reporters were aware of her identity, the only one who purposely wrote a column exposing her was Robert Novak, an administration ally who strongly disliked Wilson.
Because intel proven to be false was put into Bush’s SOTU and was one of the reasons that led us to war.
Kim, the point is that if what Mitchell said was true, then Novak wasn’t “purposely writing a column exposing her”. In that circumstance, he was writing a column which contained information that he thought was common knowledge.
Among Washington reporters, it might have been known, but does that mean that it should have been published in Novak’s column?Reporters often know information that they don’t make public because of national security considerations. I think there’s a distinction between Washington insiders knowing her status and the general public knowing it.
Since Mitchell didn’t get to testify, its difficult to say what she actually knew or didn’t know, but surely Novak knew that Plame would be worthless to the agency after his article came out?????
Not sure why, but I am totally fascinated by this case. Maybe because even more than books like State of Denial or Hubris it reveals the inner workings of Cheney’s office in trying to leak classified information to the press.
Anyway, this just occurred to me. If the Bush administration was so concerned about WMD in Iraq, why would they out a CIA expert in ME proliferation? Did they already know there were no WMD’s in Iraq? Or was it more important to cover their rears on false intel, than to uncover what they believed was a very real threat?
I must admit on this one,that after its smear campaign, the right almost had me convinced that Joe Wilson was lying about the whole thing. (I listened to some talk radio and watched some conservative cable hosts)
“What illegal acts? Fitzgerald expressly stated that this trial would have nothing to do with prosecuting about leaks.”
Right. But this doesn’t say that there isn’t evidence of criminal negligence towards security laws showing up in the testimonies. All those officials outing Valerie Plame as an CIA employee, and not one of them checking if it’s safe to give away this information. That’s scandalous, and if there would be political support for a tough, zero tolerance stance towards these security breaches, this could be grounds for prosecution.
“How many leaks have there been in Washington…entire NSA and CIA programs…yet this is the one Gray and Kritter and the left are outraged about?”
I’m outraged about other incidents, too. But I try to stay on topic.