Walter Pincus reports in the Washington Post today that Patrick Fitzgerald intends to make the classified status of Valerie Plame's CIA employment a key element in his case against I. Lewis Libby.
The classified status of the identity of former CIA officer Valerie Plame will be a key element in any trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, according to special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald has said that at trial he plans to show that Libby knew Plame's employment at the CIA was classified and that he lied to the grand jury when he said he had learned from NBC News's Tim Russert that Plame, the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, worked for the agency.
Libby's lawyers have said their client did not know that Plame's job at the CIA was classified, and therefore he had no reason to remember conversations about her or lie about them to the grand jury.
But in his press conference on the day that he brought the indictment, Fitzgerald said he was making no such claim.
QUESTION: Can you say whether or not you know whether Mr. Libby knew that Valerie Wilson's identity was covert and whether or not that was pivotal at all in your inability or your decision not to charge under the Intelligence Identity Protection Act?
FITZGERALD: Let me say two things. Number one, I am not speaking to whether or not Valerie Wilson was covert. And anything I say is not intended to say anything beyond this: that she was a CIA officer from January 1st, 2002, forward.
I will confirm that her association with the CIA was classified at that time through July 2003. And all I'll say is that, look, we have not made any allegation that Mr. Libby knowingly, intentionally outed a covert agent.
FITZGERALD: We have not charged that. And so I'm not making that assertion.
That was then, this is now? Has new information surfaced? If there is new information, it's apparently not so conclusive as to warrant an indictment of Libby for the crime Fitzgerald was supposed to investigate. There is still no charge against anybody for crime of outing Valerie Plame, not even everybody's favorite suspect Richard Armitage.
Vanity Fair is reporting that former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee says it is reasonable to assume former State Department official Richard L. Armitage is likely the source who revealed CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward.
In an article to be published in the magazine today, Bradlee is quoted as saying: "That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption." Armitage was deputy secretary of state in President Bush's first term.
It's a puzzling case to be sure. Fitzgerald is prosecuting Libby because he attempted to impede the investigation of the very serious crime of revealing the identity of a (covert?) CIA agent. Fitzgerald learned the identity of the administration official who revealed Plame's identity, but says will not reveal the identity of the that official to Libby's defense team because that person has not be charged with a crime. Gee whiz! Why not? Although not important enough to warrant prosecution of a non White House official, Plame's CIA status is the motive behind LIbby's alleged obstruction.
Two possibilities come to mind. One: Fitzgerald considers his job to be to prosecute someone from the White House, the higher up the better. Armitage is from the State Department therefore not subject to prosecution but Libby is -- and Karl Rove would be even better. Fitzgerald continues to hold out hope? Or two: By setting up a confrontation between Libby and members of our loyal fourth estate where it's Libby's word against theirs, is the diabolically clever Fitzgerald putting the press on trial? It's hard for me, as a non lawyer, to imagine that LIbby's defense team will be forbidden from proposing an alternate scenario to the one laid out by Fitzgerald -- the one in which Libby's motive is of utmost importance. Will the defense not be permitted to suggest that Libby was subject to other motivations?
Call me a dreamer but this trial could still wind up being all about the war in Iraq and press collusion with rogue elements of the CIA, in spite of Fitzgerald's apparent attempts to limit the scope.
