A Fall Guy’s Final Fall
Former vice presidential chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby has dropped his appeal of his conviction in the Wilson-Plame leak case
Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction but President Bush commuted his 30-month prison sentence.
“We remain firmly convinced of Mr. Libby’s innocence,” attorney Theodore Wells said today. “However, the realities were that after five years of government service by Mr. Libby and several years of defending against this case, the burden on Mr. Libby and his young family of continuing to pursue his complete vindication are too great to ask them to bear.”
Translation: Libby didn’t have a pot to piss in, and even had he won a new trial he may have faced even greater legal jeopardy. And, of course, may not have a sympathetic president to get him off the hook.
As noted here last week, Representative Henry “Mr. Investigation” Waxman, the dogged Democrat from California, is still trying to pry loose Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s FBI files on the case.
Waxman wants the potentially explosive files for an ongoing Oversight and Government Reform investigation because they include information that Fitzgerald did not present to the grand jury — and therefore is not subject to secrecy laws — that subsequently indicted Libby.
19 Responses to “A Fall Guy’s Final Fall”
The appeal, like OJ’s quest to find the “real killers” ten years ago, was always only for the sake of appearances.
He’s a constantly annoying partisan Democrat attack dog, who has long deserved to be muzzled.
That Thanksgiving turkey named “Scooter” is notice to all — I bet Libby is the first guy pardoned during the second Christmas season for Republicans.
For what? The people he’s invested his time and energy into investigating are some of the most corrupt, entrenched allies of the Bush administration, like Gonzo and Libby. These guys were schmucks; they should be put behind bars for their crimes.
Waxman loves to politicize anything and everything he can. His reputation is so well-established that the following story (containing a phrase used by Shaun to start this thread; must be common, too) begins by stating the reputation he has among so many.
The only bad reputation Waxman has, according to the story that DLS linked to, is among Republican defenders of the Bush administration. This shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Scooter Libby was primarily guilty of being in the middle of a nasty political fight. His role was utterly insignificant – other than the fact that he’s the only head the Democratic scandal machine has managed to procure. The obsession which Shaun and other partisan Dems continue to display with the ridiculous Plame non-scandal would be amusing were it not for the ridiculous waste of time and government money. A few Washington law firms made out pretty well though.
Mule Face: “Scooter Libby was primarily guilty of being in the middle of a nasty political fight. His role was utterly insignificant”
WIKIPEDIA: Between 2003 and 2005 intense speculation centered on the possibility that Libby may have been the administration official who had “leaked” classified employment information about Valerie E. Wilson (aka “Valerie Plame”), the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and a covert CIA agent, to New York Times reporter Judith Miller and other reporters and later tried to hide his having done so. In August 2005, as revealed in grand jury testimony audiotapes played during the trial and reported in many news accounts, Libby testified that he met with Judith Miller, a reporter with the New York Times, on July 8, 2003, and discussed Plame with her.
Mule Face: “other than the fact that he’s the only head the Democratic scandal machine has managed to procure.”
WIKIPEDIA: On 2 July 2005, Karl Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, said that his client spoke to TIME reporter Matt Cooper “three or four days” before Plame’s identity was first revealed in print by commentator Robert Novak.
…
After refusing to testify about her July 2003 meeting with Libby, Judith Miller was jailed on July 7, 2005 for contempt of court. Months later, however, her new attorney, Robert Bennett, told her that she already had possessed a written, voluntary waiver from Libby all along.
Oh, and why are you calling Shaun a partisan Democrat? All he’s doing is reporting on Libby dropping his appeal. People who say Bush should have not commuted his sentence (66%, by the looks of it) would want to hear about this.
Sorry about putting up so much text, Shaun. I didn’t think simply linking to the articles in Wikipedia about Valerie Plame and Libby would be specific enough.
DLS- Waxman isn’t the only one. Think of all the hundreds of investigations held by the GOP during the Clinton years–some have just recently ended. In any case the Justice Dept scandal and the CIA leak case were real enough, so was the recent problem with Blackwater. After years of no oversight and lots of excesses, the Bush administration deserves Waxman.
Muleface- Sorry you missed the point about the administration’s lame attempt to out a CIA agent and then cover it up. Remember Bush promised to launch an internal investigation into the leak—and get rid of the leakers —but NEVER did. Scooter took a bullet for his boss, and the commutation/upcoming pardon is his reward for keeping his trap shut.
A compliant AG helped hide the rest of the messes behind expanded claims of executive privilege.
Mule -
“he’s the only head the Democratic scandal machine has managed to procure”
i would really help if we kept to the facts.
Libby wasn’t ‘procured’ by anyone except a grand jury investigaion, led by someone appointed by the Republican administration..
Throwing words around just because they sound
to some folks is not productive in any discussion.
Megaman, kritt & domajot:
Your comments reflect only your own ignorance. The person who really “outed” Valerie was her husband, who was so determined to make a name for himself. The story would have died unnoticed if he hadn’t picked it up again months later.
Final fact – Valerie was not “covert” under the meaning of the intelligence law, for a basic, yet profound reason. She had been exposed in another scandal from the 90′s – by the notorious Aldrich Ames. That’s why she had been a desk jocky in DC for years.
Try doing a little research that isn’t from your favorite partisan hacks. Yet I doubt you will bother. Can’t destroy your favorite myth.
“Try doing a little research that isn’t from your favorite partisan hacks. Yet I doubt you will bother. Can’t destroy your favorite myth.”
The CIA is a partisan hack?
Her husband did what anyone with a conscence would have done by not going along with a lie. I wouldn’t call that trying to make a name for himself.
Plame was working in Dubai at a CIA front company gathering intel on….get this….WMD’s. So yeah they had to go so the lies wouldn’t have outed even worse.
So how are those WMD’s in Iraq claims comming, you hack loving goob LOL.
Yes. The article to which I linked (I didn’t say anything about it earlier, but yes, I read it first, of course!) was quite positive of Waxman (Dems are). (And it discusses the demands made of Clinton and his administration during that time.) His demeanor is irritating but I suppose I could say he’s not as bad as, for example, Schumer often is. That hardly constitutes “scrubbing” or “sanitizing” Waxman, though.
Muleface- It is you who are ignorant. Even General Hayden advised Congress that Plame was covert- she traveled overseas and headed Brewster Jennings a front for her operation. And Wilson only called attention to the administration’s treason. He already had made a name for himself, but was baffled as to why the SOTU still contained the claim that Saddam was trying to get yellowcake from Niger, after it had been debunked.
The right wing media has its alternate universe of “facts” about the leak case. If there was no crime the CIA wouldn’t have asked for DOJ to investigate the leak.
Alright folks – from Nicholas Kristof of the NYT:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E2D6153FF932A25753C1A9659C8B63
Relevant clip:
“And now a few pertinent facts:
First, the C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson’s name (along with those of other spies) to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time, and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.
Second, as Mrs. Wilson rose in the agency, she was already in transition away from undercover work to management, and to liaison roles with other intelligence agencies. So this year, even before she was outed, she was moving away from ”noc” — which means non-official cover, like pretending to be a business executive. After passing as an energy analyst for Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a C.I.A. front company, she was switching to a new cover as a State Department official, affording her diplomatic protection without having ”C.I.A.” stamped on her forehead.
Third, Mrs. Wilson’s intelligence connections became known a bit in Washington as she rose in the C.I.A. and moved to State Department cover, but her job remained a closely held secret. Even her classmates in the C.I.A.’s career training program mostly knew her only as Valerie P. That way, if one spook defected, the damage would be limited.
All in all, I think the Democrats are engaging in hyperbole when they describe the White House as having put Mrs. Wilson’s life in danger and destroyed her career; her days skulking along the back alleys of cities like Beirut and Algiers were already mostly over.
Moreover, the Democrats cheapen the debate with calls, at the very beginning of the process, for a special counsel to investigate the White House”
It was a politicized “scandal” all along. And you minions are willing dupes.
Mule-
The Kristol article is an op ed piece, not a news story. It’s the source for an opinion, not the ‘facts’ you keep alluding to.
The fact that you confuse opinion with facts probably explains the content of your comments.
We can conclude then, that you agree with Kristol.
That may be an interesting personal tidbit, but adds no facts to the discussion, at all.
What you are missing is that the outing of Plame goes way beyond her as an individual. To what extent it endagered her life (and she is receiving death threats, though probably not from froreign powers) is only one aspect of the damage done by the outing. The lives of anyone and everyone she had been in contact with while overseas were immediately in danger.
Even Kristol, your source, cites the operations that had to be closed down as a result.
It is the customary meme of the Righ that no matter what they do, the Dems made them do it. What those in the administration did, way before the Dems had a chance to make them do it, was to blab liberally about a CIA agent WITHOUT FINDING OUT WHAT THE POTENTIAL DAMAGE COULD BE. Anyone with a sense of priorities (country before political interests) would think twice the minute they see CIA next to a person’s name. The one thing about the spy agency that is not a secret is that it is a SPY agency.
The grand jury investigation was a result of that negligence, and whether it was willful or not is less important than the fact that it was irresponsible negligence.
Libby was the only one caught in the trap, and because the proof of intent, a bar almost impossible to cross, is an intrinsic part of the law, he was found guilty of the seconday charge of lying to the investigators.
Pres Bush promised to deal with this. Unless it’s another one of those national secrity secrets, there has been no word that the issue of blabbing carelessly about CIA agents has been dealt with in any way at all. At the very least, one would expect to hear that a new protocol for loose lips would be established.
This is as much about the agents still at the CIA as it is about Plame. What if the next outed agent turns out to be a Republican devotee?
Domajot:
Congratulations. You are the ultimate dupe. The Dem manipulators have utterly pullled you in to their little scandal machine. Dwell in your fantasy land. I will simply laugh & mock you. Sorry, but your blather deserves nothing more.