When Joe Wilson wrote his famous column for the New York Times accusing the Bush Administration of twisting the intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, he left out a few bits of information. The infamous sixteen words in the President's 2003 State of the Union address claiming that Iraq was attempting to acquire uranium in Africa, were said by the press to have been refuted by Ambassador Joe when he said he found no such thing.
But Joe left out the part where he learned that an Iraqi delegation had approached officials from the African country of Niger with a proposal to expand trade between the two countries, and that Nigerian officials took that to be an attempt to open discussions for a uranium deal. Mainstream press coverage of the flap has followed Wilson's lead. Their version of events continues to claim intelligence was twisted, and the visit by the Iraqi trade delegation is rarely, if ever, mentioned.
It has been the hope among many on the right side of the blogosphere that these facts would get an airing in perjury trial of former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff, I. Lewis Libby. Libby, you may recall, is at this very moment on trial for perjury and obstruction of justice as a result of differences between his grand jury testimony and testimony of three reporters - Tim Russert, Matt Cooper, and Judy Miller. What gets little attention is that there is no underlying crime to the case.
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was tasked with discovering who broke the law by revealing the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame, who happens to be Ambassador Joe's wife, and who is also the one most responsible for getting Joe sent to Africa to discover what he and the press don't want to talk about. That being that Iraq was really trying to get uranium. In the course of his investigation Fitzgerald quickly found that Richard Armitage, formerly of the State Department, was the individual who revealed Val's identity, not anybody working in the White House. He then immediately decided that it was not a crime.
Still, Fitzgerald has clung to the theory first publicly voiced by lefty David Corn, that the outing of Valerie Plame was an act of revenge by a White House intent on punishing Joe Wilson for "refuting" the President's claim in the 2003 State of the Union. How inconvenient that the no one in White House outed Valerie Plame. But in order to preserve the dearly held maxim that the Bush White House is evil, the mainstream press has had to gloss over these inconvenient facts. Meanwhile Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald's case against Libby seems to rest on the theory that there really was a White House plot to punish Joe by outing Val, and that Libby was lying to cover it up.
This case is of immense importance to the American people on a number of levels. For one thing the facts of it show that the White House was not involved in any plot to destroy the career of a CIA employee. The case really reveals the emptiness of Wilson's charges. It's been Joe Wilson and his allies in the press who've been twisting the facts, and we can depend on them to continue doing it. For example, the President's decision to declassify portions of the National Intelligence Estimate to refute Wilson's charges has been reported in some circles as "leaking the NIE".
At another level, Fitzgerald has as much as said that the charges of perjury and lying are a surrogate case for revealing CIA employee Val's identity - which he has already said is not a crime. If Libby is convicted of disagreeing with Russert, Cooper, and Miller, the press will be sure convict the Bush Administration in the court of public opinion.
The best place to follow what's going on with the Scooter Libby trial is over at JustOneMinute. Tom Maguire has been providing detailed analysis of this case since it began. That in itself is reason enough to rely on his commentary on it, but he has also drawn a circle of readers and commenters, many of whom are attorneys. D.C. attorney Clarice Feldman is one of them. In addition to her contribution to the JustOneMinute comment sections, she regularly posts at American Thinker. Clarice has also had opportunity to "live blog" the trial. Much as I loath the concept of live blogging, I have to admit her reporting is great.
While bloggers have been given access to the Libby trial, I don't believe it will make much of a dent in public perception of a scheming nefarious White House. The press will win out with this one. They have been too much part of the story to back off now. Joe's ridiculous claims would never have earned credibility on their own. Our anti-administration press had to go along with the program for his story have traction. They have and will continue. You might say they will be covering their own tracks.