The indictment of Scooter Libby seems to pit the word of Scooter Libby against the word of certain members of our illustrious press over the "outing of Valerie Plame". The press have gone the gamit on this case. At first, it was a crime of dastardly proportions committed by a vengeful White House. The motive was to punish whistle blower Joe Wilson for debunking the President's State of the Union claim that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The notion that Wilson debunked of the State of the Union is a fairy tale that still has legs with the press. It's been seen as late as October 25th of this year in a Washington Post article by Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus.
“Wilson's central assertion -- disputing President Bush's 2003 State of the Union claim that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Niger -- has been validated by postwar weapons inspections. And his charge that the administration exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq has proved potent.”
Interesting wording isn't it. In the Washington Post world view, the failure of Iraq to acquire uranium would constitute proof that Iraq made no attempts get it. But I digress.
To get back to the crime of outing Valerie Plame, when Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper were threatened with jail if they didn't testify in the case, press consensus took a U-turn. The outing of Valerie Plame suddenly wasn't a crime after all. Or if it was, it wasn't a very important crime and certainly not one worth pursuing. Here's what Dan Thomasson had to say then.
As most everyone knows, Valerie Plame was outed as a spy in contravention of an obscure, misguided and highly controversial 1982 law meant to stop that sort of thing even at the risk of criminalizing free speech...
However, after Miller and Cooper had finally both testified and were beyond reach of Special Prosecutor, clamor resumed for someone in the Administration to pay for the outing of Valerie Plame. As the term of the grand jury came towards its end and rumors of indictments were rife, it began to take on the appearance of a crime again. But then the indictments handed down were for perjury, obstruction and lying, not for violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. As things stand at the moment the outing Valerie Plame was not a crime.
In spite of all efforts by the mainstream press to promote otherwise, Joe Wilson did not find any information in Africa that contradicted anything in the President's 2003 State of the Union. By all appearances the outing of Valerie Plame was not a crime, but the press steadfastly maintains that outing her was an act of revenge.
Even though the Administration claims otherwise, the press promotes the the story that the decision to go to war in Iraq was based on poorly forged evidence. Here's what Joe Wilson said in his editorial piece that blew the lid off this whole affair.
In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake...
As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors — they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government — and were probably forged.
Between the the July 7, 2004 report from the Senate Committee on Intelligence and the the May 6, 2003 Kristoff article it's pretty easy to figure out that Joe Wilson was the source in those "news accounts" of "the actual memorandum." Pity there's not much curiosity among the press as to how he might have come to be aware of them. According to that same Senate Report he was not authorized to receive that information. There is even less curiosity among the press as to the origin of the forgeries themselves. We have a curiously dysfuntional press.
Before the Libby indictment came down I held the view that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald was hard nosed and non-partisan. That was when I thought his focus had shifted away from the on again, off again "crime of outing Valerie Plame", and onto something more substantial. I thought he would come in with indictments for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. I thought he would come in with indictments for the selective leaks by the CIA. He didn't, but what he actually did might turn out to be just as good.
The indictment pits Libby's word against the word of several sacred cows in the mainstream press. Russert, Pincus, and Kristoff are a few of the candidates that come to mind. Unless the prosecutor is going to try to make his case without using any witnesses, some of these people will have to take the stand to testify. According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription).
"It's Mr. Libby's right to a fair trial versus editorial privileges, and that isn't a close question," said one attorney closely involved in the case. "Most judges will say the right to a fair trial wins. ... We're over the hump of the identity" of secret sources, the attorney added. "Now we're talking about credibility" of the reporters.
If Libby's defense team is worth its salt they will mount an effective attack on the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses. It's hard for me to imagine there's not a gold mine of reasonable doubt to be had.
So what has Fitzgerald done? Has he shown himself to be a partisan hack by indicting a Bush Administration official for impeding the investigation of a non crime? Or has he found a way to put the press itself on trial?
More likely, putting the press on trial is just one of the unintended consequences of the indictment. At any rate, I can only imagine how marvelously entertaining it will be to watch members of the press try to suppress inconvenient news items while being cross examined under oath. Picture the press defending its First Amendment privilege by taking the Fifth. Wouldn't that be something to see.
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