quote:Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted today by a grand jury on one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of making false statements and two counts of perjury in the CIA leak probe. A news release from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald says Libby allegedly lied "about how and when in 2003 he learned and subsequently disclosed to reporters then-classified information concerning the employment of Valerie Wilson by the Central Intelligence Agency."
I don't have much comment to make, just wanted to get the link up. I will say that anytime the ideal of my country is weakened, I mourn. However, I am impressed with how Fitzgerald is conducting this investigation, and I hope to see truth spoken to power.
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posted
I also am impressed by Fitzgerald. He has announced the Karl Rove is still under investigation. It is note worthy that Libby was not indicted for outing Valerie Plame, so Fitzgerald has not accomplished the goal of his probe. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here.
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posted
Where would you place the various pieces of responsibility to sum to the total? (just curious)
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CT, I honestly have no idea. Libby isn't getting indicted on the actual outing, but on lying to cover it up. I get the feeling that part of the effect of his lies is to make it much more difficult to catch the other people who lied and those responsible (like Rove) for outing Varlerie Plame. I think he's going to be the only conviction and after serving his slap on the wrist punishment, is going to get a lucrative job somewhere. And they'll just fill his spot with someone with the smae poor moral character.
And what it really comes down to is, I don't even care all that much about this particular case of lying and abuse of the public trust. In the grand scheme of things, especially in light of the enormity of the other lies told by this administration, this is rather small potatoes. But it's one they can catch them on, at least partially, which, given the lack of shame demonstrated by this administration in telling lies when they can't be directly punished for it, is about the best we can do.
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quote: A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an "undercover agent," saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency's headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee. "She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat," Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.
posted
So Jay, what's your take on perjury? I'm amazed that someone as astute as Libby would deliberately lie while under oath when talking about smoke and mirrors.
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posted
There is a huge difference between being a CIA employee (desk jockey) and working in one of their clandestine operations. I used to live near Ft. Bragg where Delta Force (supposadly) is. Guys known to be in the army would disappear for a few months and just re-appear with scraggly beards and looking like they haven't slept since they left.
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posted
It seems clear to me that Libby and Rove have definitely lied about what happened, and quite probably lied in the investigation.
I hope they nail them to the wall, and that the air-hammer keeps shooting up the food chain as high as the misdeeds actually go.
What I expect will happen, however, is quite different. I'm in agreement with Mr. Squicky on this. There won't be much air-hammering, unfortunately, because I feel that tampering with a nation's intelligence services like this without lawful authority is treason. Whether or not it was 'known'.
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She was at one time a "secret agent." Compromising her identity now still has a chance of compromising the bulk of the work she did while she was an agent. Sure, her neighbors might know, but does that mean the people she was spying in abroad knew she was an operative?
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posted
You know I find it funny that Wilson even got to go on his little field trip to Africa. And when Libby was asked about it all he said was that it was arranged by his wife who worked at the CIA. I know they’re getting him on some sort of misstep in the time line. You notice that he hasn’t been charged with outing an agent. I think its partisan politics at work on the part of Joe Wilson and his wife to try and make Bush look bad. The Bush haters are grasping at straws just like how they are with Delay. We’ll see if there are any convictions.
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posted
So you're one of the ones who thinks that lying to a grand jury isn't a real crime? It's just a fake crime?
Sweet, that means Clinton wasn't guilty of lying afterall! It's always nice to hear Republicans admit when they are wrong Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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It’s a date difference. Usually that’s called a mistake not a lie. These are dates of conversations years ago. Do you remember what day you talked to someone two years ago? We’ll see what happens.
Clinton was found guilty of lying under oath. And heck he bold face lied to the American people.
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quote: The Bush haters are grasping at straws just like how they are with Delay. We’ll see if there are any convictions.
Jay,
trying to pin a label of "Bush-hater" on Patrick Fitzgerald is futile.
A little background.
My state, Illinois, is pretty corrupt. And it runds through both the Democrat and Republican parties.
When conservative Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald was elected to the U.S. Senate, he was largely responsible for getting Patrick Fitzgerald (no relation) appointed to Illinois.
First, Patrick Fitzgerald went and investigated the administration of governor George Ryan (Republican)as a follow-up to the "license for bribes" scandal. After years of investigations and indictments, the ex-governor is currently on trial himself. Fitzgerald has built his cases carefully and meticulously.
Right now, he's investigating the Daley administration following up on exposure of contract and hiring scandals in the administration. Daley is a Democrat.
BTW, the "reward" Senator Peter Fitzgerald was given for his integrity was that he was driven out by his own party. After making it clear they wouldn't support him for re-election, in spite of his popularity with many of the voters, especially in the suburbs. The party then kind of self-destructed and handed the Senate seat to Democrat Barack Obama.
Patrick Fitzgerald hasn't played any favorites here in Illinois. It's actually amazing they picked someone this talented and respected to do this job.
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quote: It’s a date difference. Usually that’s called a mistake not a lie. These are dates of conversations years ago. Do you remember what day you talked to someone two years ago? We’ll see what happens.
He's being charged on FIVE counts, only two of which are perjury. So what's your excuse for the rest of them? I find your defense of Libby a little astounding, given that none of us know the details of the case, or the proof used to get the indictments.
You're defending him on blind faith and hope, not fact and reason.
And I also find it impossible to gather together any sympathy for the argument that "he isn't being charged with outing Valerie Plame." As if the REPUBLICANS have EVER had a problem with going beyond the scope of an inquiry to try and gather together damaging evidence to hurt the party in the White House. The sad thing is, this is DIRECTLY related to the scope of inquiry, unlike say, the dozens of leads Ken Starr and his ilk pursued when attacking Clinton.
I don't bring that up to defend Clinton, I bring it up to explain how laughable that defense is coming out of the mouth of any Republican.
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quote: You know I find it funny that Wilson even got to go on his little field trip to Africa. And when Libby was asked about it all he said was that it was arranged by his wife who worked at the CIA. I know they’re getting him on some sort of misstep in the time line. You notice that he hasn’t been charged with outing an agent.
It's more than that. He apparently lied about who he heard the information from (he claimed it came from reporters when it actually was his boss, Cheney, who discussed Plame's identity with him). He lied about the nature of his discussions with Cooper, the reporter he kept in jail for months refusing to release her from confidentiality.
These were sworn statements under oath. (yeah, I know the sentence is redundant, but I'm hoping it will sink in.)
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quote:You know I find it funny that Wilson even got to go on his little field trip to Africa. And when Libby was asked about it all he said was that it was arranged by his wife who worked at the CIA.
Wilson served as U.S. ambassador to Gabon, São Tomé, Príncipe and Iraq under President George H. W. Bush and helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton. He was hailed as "truly inspiring" and "courageous" by George H. W. Bush after sheltering more than one hundred Americans at the US embassy in Baghdad.
He was eminantly qualified for the mission to investigate the rumors of uranium sales from Niger to Iraq. The CIA as repeatedly denighed that his wife played any significant role in his selection for this duty. What's more, his conclusions based on that trip, i.e. that Niger was not selling uranium to Iraq have been repeatedly verified by many sources.
If outing Plame was such a trivial thing, why was Libby willing to commit (potentially) 5 felonies to cover up his actions?
Why was Judith Miller willing to spend weeks in jail rather than reveal her source?
If the indictments against Libby aren't serious crimes, why did he resign? DeLay hasn't resigned. The Bush administration has been willing to stand loyal behind others.
The right wing needs to wake up to the reality of what is going on here.
The events of the past three years have proven beyond reasonable doubt that the justification Bush and his administration gave for invading Iraq was wholely false. Iraq had no nuclear program, no bio-weapons program, no chemical weapons program and no WMDs. Hussein had no substantive connections with Al Qaida or any international terrorist groups. We invaded a country that posed not threat to us without any legitimate justification. That is a crime against humanity and we deserve to know the truth about how it happened.
The Bush adminstration would have us believe that they were the victims of bad intelligence. Unfortunately, there is mounting evidence that they were the perpitrators of the lies not the victims. Evidence is mounting, from the outing of Valerie Plame to the Downing street memo, that the Bush administration concocted a bunch of forged and cherry picked intelligence, which they knew to be inaccurate, and used that data to sell a war.
Covering up those lies was a top priority in the Bush administration. It was more important than national security. The people accused in this case aren't lower level officials, Libby and Rove meet daily with the President and Vice President. What they did is clear. They outed Valerie Plame, a federal crime which compromised our national intelligence, in order to intimidate any one with a conscience in National Intelligence who, like Joe Wilson, might come forward and tell the truth.
Two thousand US soldiers have died because of these lies, over 10,000 have been seriously wounded and countless Iraqi's have died. These are not trivial lies.
[ October 28, 2005, 07:03 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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posted
Just for the record, Joe Wilson worked for presidents in both parties and made monetary contributions (about equal) to both presidential campaigns in 2000. I don't know how he voted. Do we have any information that he was "a Bush hater" before all this happened?
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quote:Do we have any information that he was "a Bush hater" before all this happened?
None at all. This investigation wasn't even initiated by Wilson, it was initiated by the CIA which is headed by a Bush appointee. Fitzgerald was appointed as a special prosecutor by John Ashcroft. If Ashcroft now qualifies as a Bush basher, there must be a new definition.
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posted
I'm seriously disappointed that they have not found the person who actually did give out the information on Plame.
I believe there's still a question about whether outing her rises to the level of a crime under the law. We've had that discussion a number of times here and I came away convinced that the level of proof required is extremely high.
I was pretty much preparing myself to see this whole thing chalked up to bumbling idiocy, ignorance of the law, and a large stack of hubris among the Whitehouse staff, ending in now indictments and no resignations or firings.
I think Scooter is taking the fall.
It could be that he tried lying first to cover up a bit for his boss or Rove. But I'm not even sure either of those guys actually DID anything illegal.
One thing people have repeatedly said throughout this period is that the stupidest thing to do with a prosecutor like Fitzgerald is lie. Libby lied. He's paying the price.
He's a small fish, though.
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posted
Bob, I haven't followed all of the discussion here and I am
1. The CIA felt that the outing of Plame constituted a crime under the law. They are the ones who requested an investigation.
2. When the investigation began, the Bush administration agreed that it was a serious crime and Bush vowed to fire anyone involved.
3. After an initial investigation, Ashcroft felt that the crime was serious enough that he recused himself from the investigation and appointed a federal prosecutor.
And finally,
4. It was only after the investigation began to implecate senior whitehouse officials that right wing apologists began insisting it wasn't a serious crime.
Given the history, I have to believe that the outing of Plame was a felony and a serious felony. Serious enough that Libby was willing to risk his career to cover it up. Libby and Rove are not noted for bumbling idiocy.
While the level of proof for needed to convict someone of this crime might be very high, so what. The level of proof needed to convict someone of murder is also high. This doesn't mean that the crime isn't serious.
I would also add, the level of proof needed to convict someone of purgery is also extremely high. That didn't stop republicans from impeaching Clinton for purgery. For the same people who demanded Clinton's impeachment to argue now that this crime isn't serious because it requires an extremely high level of proof is shear hypocrisy.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
James Moore said it much more eliquently than I can.
quote:Leaking the names of CIA agents is not politics; it is a crime. Lying to congress about evidence for a war is not politics; it is a crime. Failing to tell a grand jury that you met with a reporter and talked about the CIA agent is not forgetfullness; it is a crime. Deceiving your entire nation and frightening children and adults with images of nuclear explosions in order to get them to support a bloody invasion of another country is not politics; it is a crime.
. . .
Perjury was a high crime when Bill Clinton fibbed about the blue dress girl but it is being spun into a technicality when you stand accused of historic deceptions that have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents. And that's not politics. That's a crime.
posted
Hmm... Wait a minute! ::yanks down curtain waving in breeze behind Jay:: I knew it! Mr. Murdoch, if we've told you once, we've told you a thousand times. You're insidious mind altering speech patterns have no power here! Begone, foul demon! ::watches in satisfaction as slimy little imp scurries away in fear:: It's ok, Jay. you're free now.
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posted
See, the thing that the nightly punditry (yeah I watched-- shoot me) seem to be hung up over is that it doesn't add up. Libby apparently turned over his notes to Fitzgerald stating that he found out the information about Plame from VP Cheney, and then testified before the grand jury that he heard it from reporters. Pat Buchanan (paraphrased) said that "it doesn't make any sense, unless he's going for an insanity defense, or there's a force at work here that we don't know about."
I am greatly impressed with how the President and this administration is handling the situation. There has been no attempt to subvert or divert the investigation accept by individuals.
So far the only individual we know of that did try to divert the investigation is Mr. Libby.
From the hints being thrown about, there is some question as to whether Mr. Rove also was impeding the investigation, or had problems of memory. That is still being investigated.
Here is how it appears to have fallen out.
Italy gets a report, based on false documentation, that Iraq is looking for yellowcake to make nuclear bombs.
Britain reports Italy's report, but doesn't investigate too much on its own.
The US gets the reports, and takes them as very valuable. Valerie Blame is chosen to look into it because her husband will give her good cover to visit Nigeria and snoop around.
What they find is that the reports are complete fakes.
They report this, but the administration decides their report is not correct.
Wilson, surprised at the error the President is making, leaks to the press that there are problems.
Cheney and Libby are two of the strongest supporters of war with Iraq. They see these leaks as a betrayal and an attack against them. They seek to find out who is making these reports.
This is where Libby first learns about Valerie working for the CIA.
When the charges of Nucler WMD continue, Wilson does what he believes is best, and tells the world that the Nigerian connection is a total bust.
Many people in the White House were talking about this, and the information that Valerie was CIA was mentioned several times in the weeks BEFORE the article.
After the article, Libby began spreading the word that Wilson was not to be trusted, and his word was no good. As an excuse to discredit him, Libby tried to show that Wilson was just a puppet for his CIA wife.
It was not an act of vengeance, a "You tattled on us, we tattle on you." thing. It was colder than that. It was a, "Don't listen to him, his wife is CIA so its all the CIA trying to cover up their mistakes."
What Fitgerald does not know, or can not prove, was whether when Libby told the press those things, if he knew Valier was undercover, which would make it a crime.
However, when Fitzgerald was called in to question Mr. Libby, Mr. Libby said that he was called by the press, and told by them that Valerie was CIA. This was AFTER the Wilson article. His notes show high intense questions about the Wilsons for weeks BEFORE the Wilson article.
This is not a simple case of forgetting exact times.
This was not a mistake.
This was a politician used to people believing his convient stories if they sounded plausible, planning on the convience of "Plausible Deniability" being surprised by a thorough investigation that searched for that rare political commodity--the truth.
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" The lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide is outlining a possible criminal defense that is a time-honored tradition in Washington scandals: A busy official immersed in important duties cannot reasonably be expected to remember details of long-ago conversations."
posted
Well, they *can't* charge Libby with outing Plame, since there was no law against identifying an agent unless she had been undercover recently -- and Plame hadn't. James Moore was lying for effect.
So it's no surprise they aren't charging Libby with this. I'm sure he wishes they would: it would make it all the more obvious how manufactured this is.
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posted
This is an old argument, and I'll do no more to derail the thread than say it...
quote:We invaded a country that posed not threat to us without any legitimate justification. That is a crime against humanity and we deserve to know the truth about how it happened.
We had a legitimate justification. It all could've been avoided had Saddam Hussein complied with his own treaty obligations forced on him for losing an aggressive land-grabbing war.
[/rerail]
Jay, Fitzgerald is obviously not a 'Bush-hater'. Rush Limbaugh would probably have to cough a bit before applying that nickname to him.
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According to the laws I've read, KNOWINGLY revealing Ms. Plame's identity as a CURRENTLY ACTIVE CIA covert operative would be against the law. Whoever gets tagged for the leak, if anyone, will have at least two major lines of defense:
1) Didn't know she ever was covert -- thought she was a desk-jockey 2) Didn't reveal it on purpose, it just "slipped out."
edit: Whoever gets tagged for the leak, if anyone will have at least THREE major lines of defense:
3) At the time of the statements, she wasn't a covert operative.
The burden of proof is apparently very high in these cases (from what others have said) and the chances of nailing an official from the White House are slim.
That's all I was referring to. Not that I don't believe the scenario involving political motivations behind Rove, Libby and Cheney (and Bush for that matter) getting back at Wilson for telling an inconvenient truth. But that proving it is going to be extraordinarily difficult.
And, to date, no-one has been charged with that crime, let alone tried for it.
It'll be interesting to see if Libby implicates others or goes through the trial and takes the fall.
If he does the latter, this will end right there because the only other way to get one of these guys for their actions would be if they implicated themselves. Rove and Cheney aren't likely to do that, malignant trolls they may be, but they aren't stupid.
quote:Whoever gets tagged for the leak, if anyone, will have at least two major lines of defense:
1) Didn't know she ever was covert -- thought she was a desk-jockey 2) Didn't reveal it on purpose, it just "slipped out."
I'm surprised that either of these is a valid defense. Ignorance of the fact that you're doing something illegal, or accidentally doing something illegal doesn't hold water as a defense in other sorts of cases does it? Dag?
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posted
I heard on NPR yesterday afternoon that all five of these indictments are 'intent-specific'. So maybe not in this case...
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posted
Those defenses would not work for leaks of other classified information. I know from working at Los Alamos labs that when you receive a security clearance, it becomes your legal responsibility to know what information is top secret and what is not. It is a crime to leak top secret information by intent or accident.
It is a crime to reveal the most critical types of information even to others with a security clearance. This information is revealed only to those who need to know. I would assume that the identity of undercover agents is at this level but I don't actually know.
The defense "I thought she was a desk-jockey" is very implausible based on the information that has been publicly revealed. The white house learned about Valerie Plames identity from documents that were clearly labeled "Top Secret".
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quote:Most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee
This stands in direct contradiction to the claims of Joseph Wilson and the CIA.
quote:Between us, Valerie and I have served the United States for nearly 43 years. I was President George H.W. Bush's acting ambassador to Iraq in the run-up to the Persian Gulf War, and I served as ambassador to two African nations for him and President Clinton. Valerie worked undercover for the CIA in several overseas assignments and in areas related to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
But on July 14, 2003, our lives were irrevocably changed. That was the day columnist Robert Novak identified Valerie as an operative, divulging a secret that had been known only to me, her parents and her brother.
Valerie told me later that it was like being hit in the stomach. Twenty years of service had gone down the drain. She immediately started jotting down a checklist of things she needed to do to limit the damage to people she knew and to projects she was working on. She wondered how her friends would feel when they learned that what they thought they knew about her was a lie.
So who is lying? I suppose it may be impossible to really be certain. But when two people tell very different stories, it often helps at who stands to win or loose most by lying. Wilson and Plame don't have a record of partisan politics. They have worked under both Republicans and Democrats, including Bush I. There service record is exemplary. It is hard to see what they have to gain by making false claims.
On the other hand, the Bush administration is known for playing "hard ball" to discredit their detractors. Wilson's claims that the administration knowingly lied about Iraqs nuclear program were potentially very damaging to their agenda. It is fully believable that they would lie about this.
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quote:The white house learned about Valerie Plames identity from documents that were clearly labeled "Top Secret".
But from what I understand, that was only one of several possible sources. Talking to someone who knew the couple would have yielded the datum that she is/was a CIA employee without necessarily revealing that she had recently served as a covert operative.
I'm not saying it's a strong defense, but the way the law is written it seems to open the door to a defense of "I didn't do it knowingly..."
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quote:Talking to someone who knew the couple would have yielded the datum that she is/was a CIA employee without necessarily revealing that she had recently served as a covert operative.
According to Wilson, her parents and her family were the only people who knew she worked for the CIA. For that explanation to work, you have to assume that Wilson and Plame are lying out right.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
It is unfortunate that we cannot seem to hold our government officials accountable for the highest of crimes, such as misleading us in order to preemptively invade other countries. It is also unfortunate that we cannot seem to prevent our politicians from using smear campaigns, stereotyping, and misinformation as a basis for getting elected. A leader that leads by misleading and tricking his own people into believeing whatever he or she wants them to believe is not a great leader, at least not in a democracy where the people should be in charge. It is unfortunate that our political system seems to find itself in that situation.
However, just as Al Capone could get convincted on tax evasion, it is nice to know that our government will eventually be held accountable for something, even if it just a small part of the larger picture. When you follow the principle that the desired end justifies any means, and use that principle to circumvent any laws, ethics, or morality, you deserve what Libby and the Bush administration will receive for this. But the question remains, will future politicians learn from these mistakes, or will they continue the macchiavellian pursuit of their own political desires through any means, no matter how unethical?
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posted
Rabbit. I hadn't heard that. I read yesterday that their neighbors knew she was CIA. Of course, knowing someone works at the CIA and knowing that person is a covert operative are two very different things.
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