UPDATED: Word to the White House– Don’t Make The Mistake Of Defending Libby
The White House will make another political mistake if it decides to try to defend Lewis Libby. Fortunately –for the country, for the health of America’s governmental institutions– the Bush White House hasn’t pulled a Clinton and trashed the prosecutor. By and large the Bush Administration has respected the judicial process. A Clintonesque trash-the-prosecutor tactic probably wouldn’t work, anyway, given the national press corps’ pro-Democrat bias. Clinton could rely on the national press to amplify his tawdry demonization of Ken Starr. The national press hates the Bush Administration.
If Libby committed perjury he did so out of arrogance. The most likely scenario is this both simple and sad: Libby thought he could get away with it. But then so did Clinton. Clinton lied to a federal judge and lost his bar license for five years. It’s time to give the Beltway Culture a kick. If he’s convicted, Libby should serve time. No one is above the law. If Libby is judged innocent, then he’ll continue to practice law in Washington. As I recall, one of his former clients was Marc Rich (the mega-felon pardoned by Clinton in the waning days of Clinton’s administration).
I was impressed with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s press conference, and this statement in particular:
QUESTION: Just to go back to your comments about the damage that was done by disclosing Valerie Wilson’s identify, there are some critics who have suggested that she was not your traditional covert agent in harm’s way, that she was working, essentially, a desk job at Langley.
Just to answer those critics, can you elaborate on, aside from the fact that some of her neighbors may now know that she was — and the country, for that matter — that she was a CIA officer, what jeopardy, what harm was there by disclosing her identity?
FITZGERALD: I will say this. I won’t touch the specific damage assessment of what specific damage was caused by her compromise — I won’t touch that with a 10-foot pole. I’ll let the CIA speak to that, if they wish or not.
I will say this: To the CIA people who are going out at a time that we need more human intelligence, I think everyone agrees with that, at a time when we need our spy agencies to have people work there, I think just the notion that someone’s identity could be compromised lightly, to me compromises the ability to recruit people and say, Come work for us, come work for the government, come be trained, come invest your time, come work anonymously here or wherever else, go do jobs for the benefit of the country for which people will not thank you, because they will not know, they need to know that we will not cast their anonymity aside lightly.
Joe Wilson is a liar and a fraud– and like Clinton, something of a Baby Boomer bum. Wilson was as involved in exposing his wife’s service as anyone else. That’s an ugly aspect of the Plame Affair. But in this statement Fitzgerald looks beyond Plame. Covert intelligence work is difficult; agents are vulnerable. Enforcement of the Intelligence Identitites Protection Act and Fitzgerald’s hard-nosed investigation do indeed serve a national security role.
UPDATE: Yes, Libby did represent Marc Rich. According to CNN, Libby represented Rich from 1985 to 2000.
Key grafs from the March 2, 2001 report:
Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff testified Thursday he believes prosecutors of billionaire financier Marc Rich “misconstrued the facts and the law” when they went after Rich on tax evasion charges.
The testimony from Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who represented Rich dating back to 1985 but stopped working for him in the spring of 2000, came during a contentious, hours-long House committee hearing into former President Bill Clinton’s eleventh-hour pardons.
Earlier in the day, three former White House advisers all said they recommended that the Rich pardon be denied, but that they supported Clinton’s decision-making process.
Facing intense questioning from Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pennsylvania, Libby hedged on whether he thought Clinton’s pardon was justified, infuriating the congressman.
“Did you represent a crook who stole money from the United States government, was a fugitive and should never have been given or granted a pardon by the facts that you know?” snapped Kanjorski.
“No, sir,” Libby responded. “There are no facts that I know of that support the criminality of the client based on the tax returns.”
Libby then said prosecutors from the Southern District of New York “misconstrued the facts and the law” when they prosecuted Rich.
“(Rich) had not violated the tax laws,” said Libby.
At a later point, Libby said he thought Rich was a traitor for his company engaging in trades with Iran at a time when that country was holding U.S. hostages. “I did not condone it, I didn’t advise it, I don’t admire it,” he said. ..
UPDATE 2: Comment 1 makes a very good point. I’m not giving CIA “a pass”; I agree with the commenter’s suggestion that any CIA involvement in the Wilson agitprop piece be investigated.
UPDATE 3: John Hinderaker at Powerline doesn’t see the Libby indictment as big trouble for the Bush Administration. It won’t be if the administration lets the judicial process go forward.
UPDATE 4: ABC reports Libby may use an “I don’t remember” defense. Clinton Administration minions used this trick several times, particularly in Congressional investigations. Stay tuned.
UPDATE 5: Comment 17 reinforces the point Fitzgerald made vis a vis enforcing laws protecting covert agents. According to what I’ve read, Valerie Plame did not meet the criteria under the act. She hadn’t been under cover for at least five years and she hadn’t been posted overseas in that time period. Be that as it may, Fitzgerald understands the morale, recruitment, and moral dimension of his investigation. Don’t take revelation of intelligence agent status lightly. This post at NRO’s The Corner (hat tip Instapundit) examines other intel-related legal aspects (Espionage Act).
Andy McCarthy observes:
…There are several crimes laid out in the espionage act, but the one that applies most closely on these facts requires the government to prove that a person (a) obtained classified information lawfully (e.g., in his official capacity), communicated it to someone not entitled to receive it, and (c) did so willfully…
…People privileged to handle classified information well know that they mustn’t disclose it even if they personally think there is no good reason for it to be classified or that some higher purpose of theirs would be served by disclosing it. So, if the allegations in the indictment are true, then Libby did obtain classified information in his official capacity and he did share it with reporters who were not entitled to receive it. The rest of the equation is: did he act willfully? Fitzgerald did not charge an espionage act offense. To the extent he spoke about the act today, he explained that he thought it was a statute that had to be used very judiciously to avoid its becoming a British-style official secrets act.
Many of us would like to find out why Ms Plame/Mrs Wilson suggested CIA send her husband to Niger. If “the factors and considerations affecting his selection” remain classified, it’s time to have the classification lifted. Wilson’s NY Times essay had an element of carnival bait and switch fraud to it. He went to Niger and claimed Saddam didn;t seek uranium in Niger. The State of the Union speech didn’t say Niger, it said Saddam sought nuclear material in Africa. Britain stands by this assessment.
UPDATE 6: I see Instapundit is ready to hand the Libby indictment over to the conspiracy theorists. The Plame Affair is ripe for Hollywood treatment — and the bonus is, she’s a blonde. Libby’s service as Marc Rich’s attorney offers another fictional hook, tying a Bush scandal with a Clinton scandal.
But wait, there’s much much more, an ever-expanding darkness:
Now it appears one of Marc Rich’s companies was involved in Oil For Food. According to this Reuters report, Rich’s company denies the allegations.
Key points:
BNP-Paribas was accused of a conflict of interest in representing many traders doing business with Iraq and disguising clients and shell companies to the United Nations.
One such case was a company founded by Marc Rich, the fugitive billionaire oil trader. The firm, Marc Rich & Co., was also accused of paying illegal surcharges, which it denied.
“Although there is no evidence that BNP new or approved the use of its own facilities to pay illegal surcharges, BNP was uniquely position to probe such payments — and failed to do so,” the report said. BNP disputed the findings…
Austin, Lets’s not give the CIA a pass here. While those who serve honorably should have their anonymity protected, especially if they are overseas, that is not a license to do overstep their bounds. The CIA is supposed to provide accurate and usable intelligence, not try to interfere in electoral politics or undermine an administration’s policy. We have seen the CIA do just this with Michael Scheuer’s book, written while he was on the Agency’s payroll. Indeed, Scheuer himself admitted that his superiors encouraged him to be critical of the administration’s policy. Plame effectively outed herself when she came up with the supremely stupid idea of sending her old man, a known partisan hack, on a job for which he was monumentally unqualified. It was also improper and unprofessional on its face, unless Plame herself had partisan motives. For that alone she should have been canned. As Stephen F. Hayes has shown, the CIA has been engaging in a consistent pattern of leaking against administration policy, partly to cover its own incompetence. In fact, if I were President, I would have investigators crawling inside the CIA’s asshole and anybody caught leaking against the administration would be fired. Too often bureaucrats in both the CIA and the State Department think that they make policy. In fact they don’t. If they don’t like a particular administration’s policy, then they should look for another line of work.
Comment by Rich — 10/28/2005 @ 6:04 pm
While Valerie “Plame” “Wilson” or whatever was employed by the CIA she was not a “Secret Agent”.
Comment by Jack Sheffield — 10/28/2005 @ 6:25 pm
Let’s also remember that the CIA has been very selective in its referrals of leaks to the Justice Department, out of which this entire investigation ensued. Oh the horrors, Ms. Plame is mentioned as the procurer of a junket for her disreputable husband, around the same time both are pictured in Vanity Fair tooling around DC in a convertible. Where are all the other referrals from CIA of egregious leaks designed to torpedo the Bush administration’s foreign policy? How about an investigation of Mr. Scheuer AKA “Anonymous.” whose writings were encouraged by high-level apparatchiks at CIA trying to undermine the war in Iraq and the war on Islamofascism. C’mon CIA, why get exercised only by truth-telling from Libby about the certified liar, Joe Wilson, and not about truly treasonous leaks from Langley to the credulous mainstream media? Erik Axelson, New York NY
Comment by Erik Axelson — 10/28/2005 @ 7:19 pm
Joe Wilson is a liar and a fraud– and like Clinton, something of a Baby Boomer bum.
Comment by joe — 10/28/2005 @ 7:37 pm
This is a truly insipid piece, which glosses over one fact - there was NO INDICTMENT FOR VIOLATION OF THE IDENTITIES ACT. Fitzgerald thus had no business mouthing off about someone supposedly “blowing a cover” or that this prosecution has anything to do with “national security”. This so-called investigation found no evidence of crimes other than the ones that it may have created!
Comment by Jay — 10/28/2005 @ 8:09 pm
Ask anyone working in the permanent company town that is DC and you will hear that the CIA is filled with marginally talented partyboys (and grrls). The first criminal referral was for the purpose of covering the CIA’s netherquarters as its problem with its own “intelligence” became more obvious. Joe Wilson is a mountebank and a self-seeking brat. Let’s not kid ourselves that coddling such people is in the national interest.
Comment by Anita — 10/28/2005 @ 8:18 pm
The sad thing is that secure information is babbled about in Washington like standard water cooler conversation… Everyone (but Leaky Leahy) seems to have the ‘proper’ clearance so anyone can blab about anything. I think arrogance is the proper answer as well. When Cheney express interest in info Scooter used his ‘initiative’ to take the problem to the next level Not concerning Plame Game How are the clearances of all parties in a bigwig conversation at the Capital made known?
Comment by Boghie — 10/28/2005 @ 8:51 pm
Fitzgerald needed a crime to have been committed in order to justify an ongoing investigation. It must have been clear early on that the IIPA wouldn’t provide the needed cover, so he chose the all-purpose “unauthorized release of classified information.” As a result he now heads the permanent investigative arm of the CIA insurrection. See Fact Finding
Comment by pbswatcher — 10/28/2005 @ 9:21 pm
When the CIA sends someone on one of these junkets, what is the classified obligation of the person they send? How is it that Joe Wilson gets sent as a CIA representative to a foreign country on matters of national security and is free to come back and tell his story to the press in the first place? This has puzzled me from day one.
Comment by chris edwards — 10/28/2005 @ 9:22 pm
Anybody know if Lewis Libby has a defense fund, because I’d like to contribute.
Comment by patch — 10/28/2005 @ 9:37 pm
I am coming around to the belief in universal national service — not necessarily military — but especially anyone who comes from an Ivy League college (possible exceptions for needs-based scholarship students) or any other institution of similar hubris and arrogance. Just as no one should be hired directly out of college to work for EPA (they should have to have either private sector or state or local regulatory agency service first), no one should be allowed to rise to any position of power in a federal bureaucracy who has not served outside Washington, DC, and its environs and worked shoulder to shoulder with people in “flyover country.” Nor should anyone rise to power in a federal bureaucracy who has a vested interest in its perpetuation. We have far too much bloat and far too many unelected bureaucrats (like Valerie Wilson and her allies at the CIA) who are thumbing their noses at Executive Branch policy (even though they are in fact Executive Branch employees) and even sabotaging national policy initiatives for personal gain. The most egregious example of this kind of power grabbing was what led to the murders of innocent children in Waco.
Comment by Duggan Flanakin — 10/28/2005 @ 10:26 pm
This Canadian lawyer respectfully disagrees with your statements regarding the prosecutor. Everything I have read on the subject tells me that Plame was not a covert agent. I fail to see why it took more than a couple of months for the prosecutor to discover that fact. To continue with his “investogation” when it was clear that no crime had been committed was an abuse of prosecutorial discretion. If Libby lied obviously he should not have but no citizen should be dragged before a Grand Jury when no crime was committed. The prosecutor’s statements that the national interest required that Plame be protected are nonsense and show an unfortunate bias. The national interest required that Joe Wilson be exposed as the liar he is.Since Plame was in the the lie she needed to be exposed- as a CIA deskworker who put him up for the job of attempting to defeat a sitting President through the use of fraudulent statements.
Comment by Terry Gain — 10/28/2005 @ 10:36 pm
“Joe Wilson is a liar and a fraud…. I recollect having arrived at that conclusion early in the game, but didn’t save the references which showed that to be the case. I’ve been doing a search in my off-time today, trying to find a site (or anything) which dots the i’s and crosses the t’s establishing that contention. Austin, do you (or anyone commenting) have a reference to either a site which has that information or to the original statements which justify the conclusion? BTW, I am now reading From Shield to Storm, coauthored by Austin Bay & James Dunnigan. If you’re interested in military history of this conflict, buy it. I recommend it as one of the better overviews of the Gulf War (Desert Storm). Austin: thanks for writing it!
Comment by crosstalk — 10/28/2005 @ 10:52 pm
Let him hang if he’s guilty Austin Bay has some valuable advice I hope the White House is smart enough to heed: Word to the White House– Don’t Make The Mistake Of Defending Libby The White House will make another political mistake if it decides to
Trackback by Small Town Veteran — 10/29/2005 @ 1:52 am
The BBC consistently notes that Wilson is a critic of Bush, and always repeating Wilson’s claim that there was no effort by Saddam to get Uranium in Niger. The heart of the case is that issue: did Saddam try to get African Uranium? If yes, Wilson is a liar, and should be called so, consistently. Libby was trying to expose Wilson as a liar.
Comment by Tom Grey - Liberty Dad — 10/29/2005 @ 4:45 am
I agree, Libby should disappear from the White House agenda, the blogs can take up the slack and knock down the lies. Let’s get on with the agenda and the next conservative on the SC.
Comment by bill — 10/29/2005 @ 5:29 am
Jay–Your logic is flawed. The fact that there was no indictment for a violation of the Identities Act does NOT necessarily mean that no evidence was found of a blown cover or that national security wasn’t involved. It simply means that any evidence that may have been found was not sufficient to prove all elements of the violation. If I had to guess what happened, I’d probably agree with you. But you can’t deduce that solely from the lack of an indictment.
Comment by C B Kiteflyer — 10/29/2005 @ 6:30 am
I especially agree with Comment 12. This special investigation should have been shut down when the crime for which it was established was determined to not be a crime at all. These indictments are nothing more than collateral fallout from a generalized fishing expedition that avoided investigating more serious crimes. Since the special investigation was allowed to expand beyond its initial scope, why didn’t the prosecutor investigate the much more serious crimes, like why the CIA sent Wilson in the first place, or why the CIA is so selective in its Justice Department deferrals, or why Plame was allowed to send her unqualified husband, or why Wilson was allowed to openly talk about supposedly confidential information? Furthermore, just how is an administration supposed to be able to counter or correct such blatantly inaccurate leaks (and attacks) from within the CIA? This whole situation, including the indictments, does not pass the smell test.
Comment by E. T. — 10/29/2005 @ 9:16 am
“The heart of the case is that issue: did Saddam try to get African Uranium? If yes, Wilson is a liar, and should be called so, consistently.” There is evidence that Saddam tried to get Nigerian Uranium, but back in 1999 (some of this evidence comes from Wilson himself). We have no evidence that the Nigerian govt cooperated. However, Wilson was sent to Nigeria to see if Saddam was CURRENTLY trying to get Uranium. He didn’t find any evidence of that. Remember, Bush didn’t just say that Saddam had tried to get Uranium. He said “recently”. I suppose you can argue that 3-4 years back is “recently”, but given that Wilson had just been sent to look for ongoing activity, and given that the falsified documents we do know of proported to show much more recent activity, it doesn’t seem that this was what was meant. So here’s a question: If Bush’s own intelligence services believed that the British were wrong, why did Bush put the statement forward? Making a statement like he did, without pointing out that our own intelligence services disagreed, seems like he was trying to mislead us about the quality of the intelligence. In a democracy, that’s the wrong thing to do. ED NOTE: Do you mean Niger, not Nigeria?
Comment by Tom — 10/29/2005 @ 9:24 am
I agree that “trash the prosecutor” is a bad idea, but not just because the press is so darned pro-Democrat. This is a Republican prosecutor, for heaven’s sake. I think it’s hard to argue that he’s engaged in a partisan vendetta against his own party.
Comment by AN — 10/29/2005 @ 10:03 am
Fitzgerald may be a Republican but he is also human. Give an ambitious and agressive prosecutor an unlimited budget and an unlimited amount of time, throw in a healthy dose of fame, and the results are predictable.
Comment by pbswatcher — 10/29/2005 @ 12:26 pm
This post and the subsequent comments represents the blogosphere at its best. The subject is complicated, a known and respected “authority” opines on it, knowledegable, informed, interested and observant citizens discuss the subject and voila, you have a much better picture of the complexity of the issue and have even reduced it, at least somewhat, to manageable proportions. BTW as a former CIC Special Agent in the late ’50’s/early ’60’s, I recall we all used to joke about the government’s classification procedures. At that time, and I suspect now, once a classification was laid on a matter, it tended to stay on indefinitely whether justified or not. The result: the opportunity to commit a crime by revealing classified information was often disproportionately greater than justified by the value of the information. There needs to be a constant cleansing of classified information to insure we are not clogging the system with irrelevant and confusing data. Finally, I believe Fitzgerald is probably fair and all the rest, however I agree with those who made the point he should have shut this witch hunt down once he discovered there was no underlying crime.
Comment by tom sargent — 10/30/2005 @ 12:15 pm
If wilson told the truth why do the indictments say he lied? Read the indictments. They say libby was told by the cia that wilson was sent at the reccomendation of his wife. Who is the liar? If it is the indictment libby goes free! Right? this is so easy
Comment by john — 10/31/2005 @ 6:11 pm