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How Will the Libby Trial End?
Methinks that it will end with a whimper and not a bang.
Can you say hung jury?
And while we’re at it, how is it that Scooter Libby was the only person who lied?
24 Responses to “How Will the Libby Trial End?”
wouldn’t it be more accurate to say Libby is the only person ‘charged’ with lying?
and while the trial itself may end with a whimper, I expect the partisans on both sides will use whatever outcome – acquittal, guilty, mistrial – as ammo to continue their respective bickering.
Interesting to take a closer look at how so few from this administration will be held accountable. We’ll never know if Cheney lied, because he was never sworn in by Fitzgerald. Rove may have lied, but an administration that swore to fire anyone involved in the leak, decided it wasn’t necessary.
Other scandals have been similarly contained. The lead prosecutor for the Foggo case was fired, even though she had had stellar job performance reviews, just as the probe on defense contract steering was widening to include other members of Congress. The Abramoff scandal was nipped in the bud by offering a judgeship to the lead prosecutor. Enough to make you want to go hmmmmmmm.
Shaun, that is a fantastic picture!!! It could only be better if Cheney was photoshopped with a hunting rifle in his hand!! hahahahahahahahahaha. Libby’s expression is priceless.
IMHO…Libbygate was significant in that it exposed the incestuous relations between media and government to an extraordinary degree.
Most blogs – even liberals – seem to believe that the media knew far more about all of this than revealed in court. Indeed, Fitzgerald went to the mat to stop Andrea Mitchell’s testimony.
Regardless of one’s politics, such relations are not healthy for the Republic.
Journalists seem to have become fatter and lazier than ever, content with scraps of meat handed them by folks in power…and addicted to socializing and protecting inside-the-beltway relationships.
I think the lasting memory of this trial…at least for those who are following it…will be of this media-government cabal.
Yeah, there sure were a lot of reporters who didn’t remember being told things that Ari Fleischer and others testified to telling them…
Marlowecan:
I agree with you 100 percent. If I was to write a history of the Wilson-Plame affair, the duplicity of the press would be the main ingredient, followed by the culture of lying.
PatHMV,
Those reporters weren’t under oath or in charge of policy and a couple wars.
Anyone who thinks this is a new thing, or a Republican thing, or a Bush thing, is completely delusional.
Leaking to the press goes back to prior to the U.S. even being a country.
Another aspect of this is that despite all the crocodile tears shed about the evils partisanship, on one side you have primarily Democrats and Liberals saying that the Libby affair is a danger to Constitutional Democracy, and the other side only Republicans and Conservatives seemed concerned about Sandy Berger stealing and destroying classified information.
We all seem to view the legality and the justification for bending the rules through our own partisan glasses.
AR Almost good, Berger wasn’t a public servant when he did his deed. Berger’s actions were probably selfish, for his own interests, not to defnd his boss.
You disappoint me Rudi. You normally are very good at seeing the big picture. You really think he did that on his own, not at the direction of Bill/Hillary?
That is an example of what I was just talking about.
Let’s say it is 5 years from now. Congress is investigating something that happened on Hillary/Obama’s watch, but there is evidence that the problem stretched back into the Bush administration. Condi goes to the National Archives, steals a bunch of documentation that appears to be related to the investigation, and destroys them.
Would you feel the same way, that this likely was just Condi protecting herself, and Bush/Rove/Cheney had no involvement?
AR Weren’t Berger’s documents copies? Berger’s folly hasn’t cost any lives or CIA assets. If these were originals he would share a cell with Scooter and a horny mad bear.
Rudi,
The DOJ took Berger’s word on it that he only took copies. It came out a month or so ago that some of the staffers saw him acting susciciously on numerous occasions and that he asked for privacy, so he could have had opportunity to take other documents that we’ll never know about. There’s also some possibility that he may have taken a copy that had handwritten notes on it and the remaining copies may lack that info.
Hmm- I thought it was only the liberals that played “bait and switch” here. The thread is about accountability for leaking a CIA agent’s identity and the role the WH plays in disseminating information to the press, yet it gets twisted by the conservatives back to Berger. The guy was tried and copped a plea. What more do you want? Those who think Bush is upfront and honest need to check out the tape of him promising to fire anyone found to be leaking classified information at the WH.
Kritter said: “The guy was tried and copped a plea. What more do you want?”
Rudi said: “Weren’t Berger’s documents copies? Berger’s folly hasn’t cost any lives or CIA assets. If these were originals he would share a cell with Scooter and a horny mad bear.”
Rudi, who died from Libby’s leak? As for Berger, I would like to know what it was all about. As C Stanley says, Berger was only caught towards the end by sharp-eyed archive officials. They had been suspicious for some time before he had the documents we know about.
What was Berger doing? Bill Clinton laughed it off as “Sandy’s bad record keeping”.
Many of the documents Berger had access to were originals. The collection had not yet been annotated. No one…other than Clinton-era officials…knew what was in them.
Berger was revising history before it was written. Why?
Marlowe- There’s no proof of what you are saying- since no one really knows what Berger took or why. Are you trying to say that Berger was trying to keep Clinton from being blamed for 9/11? That’s a bit of a stretch.
And I’ve asked before, but I’ll ask again. If this administration was so concerned with Iraq and Iran’s burgeoning WMD programs, why would they out a high level CIA official whose responsibility was tracking those programs? You don’t think that puts anyone at risk???
You really think that is a stretch, Kim? I don’t see it that way at all, and I wouldn’t if the party affiliations were reversed. You wouldn’t have similar suspicions if there were a major terrorist attack after Bush left office and then Condi Rice were caught stuffing documents in her clothing?
And also, Kim, don’t you think it’s a stretch to believe the story that Berger gave to explain his odd behavior? I mean it’s one thing to take a magazine home from the doctor’s waiting room because you didn’t get to finish reading that article about 100 uses of toothpaste; but stuffing classified documents in your socks and pant legs so that you can peruse them later at home (and then admitting to “accidentally” destroying some of them??)is odd, to say the least. Why would he risk getting caught doing this if there wasn’t some evidence that he felt he needed to destroy? Who knows, maybe it was something that showed some personal culpability on his own part and he couldn’t deal with the truth of it coming out.
Without feeling any need to defend Berger at all…
I wonder why some feel the need to blame Clinton for it.
It just strikes me as incompatibly odd. I sure hope none of my ex-employees rob where I used to manage, or else I may get blamed too…
Rudi said: “Weren’t Berger’s documents copies? Berger’s folly hasn’t cost any lives or CIA assets. If these were originals he would share a cell with Scooter and a horny mad bear.�
A few things Rudi . First of all, why would a person destroy mere copies? Second, why would Berger return documents he didn’t destroy? He obvious answer would be that the copies he destroyed differ in some ways from those he returned. At some point common sense applies.
Berger had access to originals which had not yet been copied. But the real hot items were the destroyed copies. Copies are most often the ones which are used when handwritten notes are taken. This is to keep the originals pristine. Often times you will have several copies given to different people and containing handwritten notes by each.
But you are welcome to believe Berger stole simple copies and decided to destroy some of them and return others for no reason. But if that doesn’t make sense to you apply some common sense and you will have your answer
egrubs,
I mentioned one scenario that might implicate Berger rather than Clinton: that perhaps there was documentation of something that he personally did as NSA that reflected badly on him. Could be something potentially criminal that caused him worry of consequences, or could be just that he truly felt some personal liability for not preventing the attacks and didn’t want that to be public knowledge.
Yeesh, this whole thread turned into proof positive of what I was trying to say.
My point wasn’t to compare Berger to Libby, or make any comments on the relative guilt, innocence, or the impact of their actions, but rather point out that no one seems willing to look at anything objectively, only through partisanship spin.
And damn if the comments here didn’t bare that out!
By commenting on Berger, I didn’t mean to imply lesser concern about Libby- just want to make that clear. I do have lesser concern than some people simply because I’m not sufficiently convinced about the “outing”. If it’s true that Plame’s status was pretty widely known, then I find it credible that the leakers may not have realized that they were spreading information that should have been kept under wraps. However, even in that situation I find it egregious that the administration appears to have purposefully attempted to discredit Wilson by implying that nepotism was involved in his appointment to go to Niger.
Basically in both cases it seems to me that CYA was more important to these officials than the national security.
“By commenting on Berger, I didn’t mean to imply lesser concern about Libby- just want to make that clear.”
It wasn’t YOU who has been diverting this discussion. A well known trick to avoid discussing awkward truths, but some still fall for it…
“If it’s true that Plame’s status was pretty widely known, then I find it credible that the leakers may not have realized that they were spreading information that should have been kept under wraps.”
Afaik there’s only one testimony in the trial that supports this view, so I think this is questionable. And even if the leakers thought, this is commonly known information, they should have checked before they spread it. Afaik you have to underwrite that you acknoledge the rules for handling sensible information and that you’e aware of the consquences, before you get a security clearance. Imho, the actions of the officials in the Plame case constitute criminal negligence.
Agreed on that.
Yes, I agree with AR, that it is difficult to look at this objectively. If I were to try to look objectively, I would say that there are constant cover-ups which prevent accountability in government. Bush and Cheney have definitely done their share, starting with 2001, when Bush limited public access to the records from his father’s administration, and reclassified millions of declassified documents.
Its also true that we’ll never know what was taken from the archives. Its all speculation. Since Watergate, our higher level officials have found ways to confound the justice system in this country, and conceal the truth. Clinton’s administration did it, and Bush is doing it now.
But to me the current issue of Libby/Cheney is what the post was about. Partisanship seems to prevent a healthy discussion of what really was going on in the lead-up to the war. This is bait and switch.
CS- I really think you are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to Bush/Cheney on whether they purposely allowed false intelligence into the SOTU, and then orchestrated a smear campaign against Wilson.That is the larger issue- not Plame’s outing. But they have been shielded from the investigation, and Libby is the fall guy. If you believe that Berger acted for Clinton, how can you say Libby did not act to protect Bush and Cheney at their direction??