Scoot!
After a classically bogus prosecution for a non-crime Scooter Libby no longer faces jail thanks to President Bush. The left is going ballistic. The reality is that this was one of the worst prosecutions – perhaps bar Lord Black’s – which has been mounted in recent years. The prosecutor knew, from more or less day one that the leak had not come from the White House or the Vice President. But he just kept going. Libby was caught in the crossfire and he should not have been.
Justice would have been served by a full pardon; but Bush rarely gets stuff right.
July 3rd, 2007 at 11:53 pm
I don’t believe I’m hearing you right. Libby seriously compromised US national security, and put the life of a CIA agent at risk for nauseatingly vindictive partisan purposes. I expected a yahoo chorus of mouthbreathers to jump to his defence—but not you, Jay. Not you. For shame. This makes a mockery of the rule of law.
Why not stand up for Leonard Peltier if you want to go to bat for the wrongfully convicted?
July 4th, 2007 at 12:04 am
Scooter was not charged with a single one of the things which you suggested he did. Fitz did not have the evidence. (And we still don’t have any evidence that Plame was “covert” for purposes of the statute Fitz was investigating under. And we still have no explanation as to why Armitage – the original and self-confessed leaker – was not charged with anything.)
So Scooter was convicted of the offence of misremembering conversations with journalists.
The rule of law is in no way compromised when the executive takes a step to curb the effects of a prosecutor run amok.
July 5th, 2007 at 3:36 am
That would make the President one busy man. But in this case, the court agreed with the prosecutor, and no appeal has even been heard. Unless you can point to flagrant abuse of judicial process, this action by Bush must be seen for what it is—standing well above the law, he confers that same status on his political stooge.
July 5th, 2007 at 4:30 am
Dawg, at the risk of quoting myself, I deal with your point over at Alan’s http://tinyurl.com/2or6hu
Shorter Jay: the power of Executive (at federal and state levels) clemency is a residium of the English Crown’s capacity to pardon or commute. It is a capacity which is little used in the largely apolitical (in the partisan sense of that term) world of UK/Canadian law. It is more widely used in the US partially, I believe, because the American justice system is, in many cases, overtly partisan.
Bush is not standing above the law, he is exercising a constitutional power as most Presidents before him have. As such it is an overtly political rather than legal act.
July 5th, 2007 at 4:56 am
Sorry, he was convicted. Bush commuted his sentence and made a mockery of the law.
Case closed and God spare us continued nit-picking from people who seem almost sexually aroused by the abuse of power.
People have died, in case you haven’t noticed.
July 5th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Actually, this commutation (and Bush’s accompanying statement that the sentence was “excessive”) is interesting because it goes against this administration’s own record on obstruction of justice cases, where they have consistently argued for applying the maximum possible jail term in pretty much every case. A pardon would have been a purely political act, but lawyers all over the U.S. are now rushing to include the “excessive” quote from the President in their own clients’ appeals. If some judges actually go for this argument, it could have significant effects on the justice system, at least in the areas of perjury and obstruction of justice.
July 6th, 2007 at 5:19 am
>Libby seriously compromised US national security, and put the life of a CIA agent at risk for nauseatingly vindictive partisan purposes.
Was that emailed out as a talking point to a secret distribution list composed of “progressives”? I’ve been reading variations on it all over the web.
The thought is risible that the revelation of one desk jockey’s status, which may not have been well-guarded information, “seriously” compromised anything or put her life at risk. Presumably Armitage and Novak are guilty of the same “crime” (moral if not legal, given the requirements of the IIPA). I wonder how long it will take for Armitage to be airbrushed out of this piece of history.
July 8th, 2007 at 3:14 am
Actually, IrC, Plame was responsible for setting up corporate offices as a businesswoman all around the middle east. By outing her, all of the possibly hundreds of people who worked in those dozens of offices are now endangered, and will be considered a spy, as is anybody who ever visited those offices, either legitimately or for covert reasons. Just a nit-picky point about the true import of what was done simply to punish her diplomat husband for telling the NYT that the Bush administration was lying about the existence of yellowcake uranium in Africa…
The key point, though, is that Plame met the legal requirement for what constitutes a “covert agent,” regardless of what people who aren’t covert agents seem to think about the job of covert agent. There is absolutely no legal doubt about this fact, and there are reasons that these laws exist, and there are reasons that the word “covert” means covert. Who knows what she did? The point is that whatever it was, she can’t do it anymore, and neither can anybody she’s ever been seen with in public.
July 8th, 2007 at 4:26 am
Zoe, I am interested in your source for your assertion that Plame was setting up corporate offices in the Middle East. (Odd choice given her gender.) David Corn has her working for the Joint Task Force on Iraq in a responsible – but essentially administrative – task.
No one has ever been charged with outting Plame to Novack despite the fact Fitz, from day 1, knew that the leaker was Richard Armitage over at State. Now, if Plame’s status was “covert” for purposes of the law, why was Armitage not charged?
July 8th, 2007 at 4:40 am
Oh, and Zoe, if you follow the case you’ll find that Bush did not say that there was yellow cake in Niger; rather he said that Iraq was seeking yellowcake in Niger – a fact that Wilson’s initial report confirmed:
“In the CIA’s view, Wilson’s report bolstered suspicions that Iraq was indeed seeking uranium in Africa. The Senate report cited an intelligence officer who reviewed Wilson’s report upon his return from Niger:
Committee Report: He (the intelligence officer) said he judged that the most important fact in the report was that the Nigerian officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Nigerian Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium, because this provided some confirmation of foreign government service reporting. (factcheck)”
Wilson, in his Times’ piece recast his findings in a manner which clearly suggests he wins the “biggest liar” award. Plus, the man was so dumb that he did not figure out that the head of the Iraqi delegation, Wissam al-Zahawie, was an Iraqi who had a long history of involvement with Iraq’s nuclear program. (Hitchens has great fun in Slate showing what a liar and or fool Wilson was and is.
July 8th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Jay:
Does Iran count as part of the Middle East? Her outing was dangerously stupid, according to this source:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2005/Outed_CIA_officer_was_working_on_0213.html
Was she just a desk-jockey? Not at all:
http://news.aol.com/elections-blog/2007/03/16/cia-director-hayden-valerie-plame-was-covert-agent/
And I know you don’t like Larry Johnson, but here is his comment anyway:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/7/13/04720/9340
I remain amazed that respectable conservatives like yourself, Jay, would support the brazen, destructive partisanship of the President in the Libby case. You concede that Bush’s action was a “political act,” and indeed it was—to cover for one of his stooges, who broke the law and should have paid the price.
If this had happened in a Democratic context, we would have heard howls of outrage from the usual suspects—in whose ranks, regrettably, I now must include yourself. Next you’ll be telling me that Dick Cheney isn’t part of the Executive branch.
July 9th, 2007 at 4:00 am
Dawg, you’re right, I don’t like Larry for a variety of reasons most of which are pretty obvious from the column you cite.
As I said in response to an earlier comment, if Plame was legally covert then why wasn’t Armitage, who Fitz knew from Day 1 was Novack’s source, charged with violating the statute?
And of course the commutation was a political act; all acts of clemency are. It was, in my view entirely justified given that the prosecutor in the instant case was pursuing what had become a political investigation the instant he knew who actually had leaked and then decided to ignore this information and go after people like Libby. Not for the actual crime (if any) but rather for forgetting exact details of conversations with reporters a couple of years before. Libby was prosecuted politically and had his sentence partially commuted politically: they do things differently in the US.
July 10th, 2007 at 6:36 am
The only evidence in favour of Plame’s status as covert was the CIA’s direct statement that it was so, after the fact of publication. Nevertheless, the CIA’s definition of “covert” is broader than that of the IIPA. What really mattered to this case, though, is that the path connecting Valerie Wilson -> Valerie Plame -> CIA employee was not particularly well-guarded. Nor, AFAIK, was it ever shown that Libby knew or believed Plame’s status to be covert. Real covert employees have cover stories which are usually more sophisticated than their own (or perhaps their mother’s) maiden names and don’t discuss their employment. It doesn’t become a weakly guarded piece of information in insider circles.
If the disclosure were criminal, Libby and additional people would all have been charged. None were.
Libby’s conviction is based on competing versions of recollections, not on any print or recorded evidence.
July 10th, 2007 at 7:11 am
“The only evidence in favour of Plame’s status as covert was the CIA’s direct statement that it was so, after the fact of publication. Nevertheless, the CIA’s definition of “covert” is broader than that of the IIPA.”
Well … the CIA’s statement, and the fact that Plame met all the requirements of the IIPA. Insisting that Plame wasn’t a “covert agent” is like insisting that Saddam Hussein helped plan the 9/11 attacks: nobody believes it except right-wing idiots who are impervious to fact.
“If the disclosure were criminal, Libby and additional people would all have been charged.”
Ah, see, this is the usual right-wing-bonehead claim from those who know nothing about the case beyond what they read at LittleGreenSnotballs and its ilk.
Let’s try this:
My gang robs a bank. I’m picked up by the police and questioned about the bank robbery. I lie to them about who did what to whom when, and my lies prevent the cops from discovering who robbed the bank. By the right-wingnuts’ “Save Poor Scooter” argument, the bank wasn’t robbed. If it was, they’d have charged someone, right? But they didn’t, so that proves there was no underlying crime.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Gary, the prosecution proceeded from a rather different perspective.
A bank may have been robbed. A guy not in my gang says, “I robbed the bank” to the cops. The cops, rather than charging the guy who says “I robbed the bank” decide to go after a bunch of people who they think are the sort of people who might have robbed a bank. They use the clever tactic of asking a whole bunch of people a bunch of questions about what they heard about a possible bank robbery and then compare the answers. If some one remembers a conversation differently than someone else they charge that person with lying.
Oh, and the guy who claims to have robbed the bank, well it turns out he can’t be charged because the bank, strictly speaking, was not actually robbed. And, besides, he wasn’t a member of the gang who had the rep for robbing banks.
If you think this looks like justice there is a place for you over with the Kosacks.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
I found Plame’s behaviour after the leaking of her name to be pertinant to the question of her covert status. Instead of keeping a low profile to try and mitigate any potential damage resulting from the leak, she and her husband actively sought the limelight. It seems to me that posing for a photo spread in Vanity Fair is not the sort of activity a covert agent, who genuinely cares about their covert status, would willingly partake in.
July 11th, 2007 at 10:55 am
Try this instead: Armitage told Novak and Novak wrote about it, and neither tried to conceal anything from investigators. A slam-dunk case, except the IIPA doesn’t criminalize disclosure unless the “leaker” knows the employee was supposed to be covert. That important detail is overlooked by many supposedly-not-boneheaded people, but it’s exactly that detail which underpins my statement that the disclosures were not criminal.
The people angry because there’s no skin hanging on the wall believe that somewhere there’s a person who knew Plame was covert and revealed that information to start the ball rolling, and that Libby alone (curiously, considering the number of people who came to be in the know) was the gatekeeper at some point in the chain. But that person would mostly likely be a CIA functionary, because intelligence agencies do not reveal the names of covert employees and sources to the elected and appointed people who pass through the revolving doors of parliaments, houses of congress, and executive administrations. The political operatives need access to intelligence product; they have no need to know who is providing it.
If some CIA guy told one or more political VIPs about Plame’s connection to Joe and to the CIA, then the CIA guy could face charges under the IIPA. But the political VIPs would still all be clean unless CIA guy also told them that Plame was covert.
July 13th, 2007 at 12:29 am
“Try this instead: Armitage told Novak and Novak wrote about it, and neither tried to conceal anything from investigators.”
I thought we were talking about “Scooter” Libby’s role in outing Plame’s identity as a covert agent. Armitage and Novak weren’t his co-defendants or anything, so you’re mounting the “I know you are, but what am I?” defence?
Let’s accept that Armitage and Novak didn’t try to conceal anything from investigators. Goody for them; what do they want, a cookie for not lying? A five-year-old can tell you that lying is wrong.
But Scooty-Puff, the court found, did try to conceal things from investigators. And so he was convicted.
“I found Plame’s behaviour after the leaking of her name to be pertinant to the question of her covert status.”
You may have done, but logic doesn’t. If your kid doesn’t cry when you put out your cigarette on his face, that’s proof that he wasn’t abused, right? Look up “ad hominem” in any list of logical fallacies. Plame’s conduct following her outing has nothing to do with her covert status.
“But that person would mostly likely be a CIA functionary”
The most frequently-heard claim is that such a person would most likely be the vice-president, Dick the Draft-Dodger (“Now that I’m past draft age, I’ll fight to the last eighteen-year-old,”).
“A bank may have been robbed. [...] the bank, strictly speaking, was not actually robbed.”
Oh, man, the way you right-wingnuts cling to that particular falsehood, which has been debunked time and again (good “Big Lie” technique, though). The only ones who claim Plame qualified as a “covert agent” are the CIA, the law, and the court. Coincidentally, on this point they are the only ones whose opinions matter.
The bank was robbed. It is an established fact that Plame was a covert agent at the time of her outing. You may not like the fact, but a fact it remains. Look at it this way: abortion is legal. You may argue that it shouldn’t be, that it’s wrong, that it’s abhorrent, even that no person of good conscience would approve of abortion being legal. What you can’t argue is that abortion is illegal.
The manner in which alleged conservatives bend over frontwards for anti-conservative authoritarians like the Bushies is, frankly, embarrassing, and points to the truth long suspected: that conservatives don’t actually have any principles. Unless they’re not in power; then they have all kinds of principles that everyone else (not them, of course) has to live up to.
July 13th, 2007 at 12:43 am
“The only ones who claim Plame qualified as a “covert agent” are the CIA, the law, and the court.”
I have waited in vain for the CIA, the law (which is a pretty imprecise way of putting it) and the court to actually pony up and make those claims. Judge Walton certainly didn’t. The CIA has temporized and has refused to release the reference letter which got the ball rolling. Fitz has made all manner of outlandish claims but has not charged anyone under the relevant statute.
So I am intrigued, upon what do you base your claim of Plame’s “covert” status?
July 13th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
“the law (which is a pretty imprecise way of putting it)”
Then let’s be specific: the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (you know, the law we were discussing in this thread, that had been referred to multiple times?—your dishonest sophistry does you no credit) specifies criteria for an agent to be considered covert. Plame met these criteria, so what does that make her? (Come on, you can do it.)
This case (Scooty-Puff’s, not Plame’s) has become a litmus test for conservatives, forcing them to decide between principle and “one of us”. Jay, your statements about this case demonstrate that you are not a conservative. Ed Morrissey is a conservative. Conservatives respect the rule of law (why do I have to tell you this?). If you’re convicted of a crime (which Scoot was), you go to jail. If you think the verdict is wrong, you appeal. You don’t go crying to the King (and making vague threats of possible blackmail).
(And yes, of course “Baby Doc” Bush has the legal right to issue pardons and stuff. Nobody’s disputing that. But as your entire argument for poor Scoot hinges on the claim that a legal resolution can still be the wrong one, you simply can’t maintain intellectual honesty if you say that Dubya’s clemency is beyond criticism.)
George Jr.’s clemency is based on the exact same factors he has aggressively campaigned to prevent judges from considering, and bypassed the usual protocols for such clememcy. His team claims to be “tough on crime” and for “law and order”—except, apparently, if you’re one of the “good guys” (who, by these (and other) actions, prove themselves not the “good guys”—just the “other guys”).
“Justice for all, except if you’re one of my inner circle, in which case not so much.” Either Der Leader is protecting a friend, or he’s afraid a crony will spill the beans after half-an-hour behind bars. In the former case he’s corrupt; in the latter, he’s corrupt and a coward.
July 13th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
“Plame met these criteria, so what does that make her? (Come on, you can do it.)”
Did she? Then why didn’t Fitz bother to charge Scooter or Armitage with a violation of the IIPA? Could it be that Plame was not legally covert? Lord knows Fitz was willing; but he is certainly a good enough lawyer to have realized that Plame’s status was a good distance from “covert” as defined by the IIPA and, given that Scooter’s conversations with journalist all took place after Novack’s column was out on the wire, that Scooter, at least, was incapable of being found guilty of an IIPA violation.
(As for Armitage: the IIPA requires that the leaker know that the protected person was covert at the time that the leak is made. It is not obvious that Armitage knew anything of the sort either because Plame wasn’t or because he was simply repeating idle gossip which was current in Washington at the time.)
I’ve read Captain Ed and, in this case, disagree with him. Given his willingness to publish details of publication banned hearings in Canada, I am not entirely sure his position as to “law and order” is as strictly “conservative as you would make it out to be. Rather he recognizes, as do I, that where a case is inherently political there are arguments for extra-legal interventions.
July 15th, 2007 at 3:59 am
“why didn’t Fitz bother to charge Scooter or Armitage with a violation of the IIPA? Could it be that Plame was not legally covert?”
You must be a particularly fortunate individual never to have been lied to in your ife, but let me explain how it works. When someone lies to you, they’re hiding the truth; you can’t tell what the truth is from what they say.
Your argument that “Scooter can’t have lied about what he knew about Plame’s outing, because if he had lied then he would have been charged under the IIPA,” is absurd on the face of it. Again, you’re lucky nobody has ever lied to you, but it is possible to lie about actions that you yourself have not performed. So even if Scooter had no_involvement in outing Plame, and thus is innocent of violating the IIPA, that’s a separate_thing from lying and obstructing justice. Two things, see?—outing Plame, and obstructing the investigation into who outed Plame.
(Jay, you have seemed too smart for this argument. As we all can have our off days, I’m going to assume that you found this right-wingnuts’ talking-point on a blog you trust, and adopted it without looking into it yourself.)
Some critics seem quite sure that Scooty-Puff and Darth Cheney were the individuals who planned and executed the outing as a deliberate act of revenge against Plame’s husband. There is a chain of circumstantial evidence that can be quite convincing. But circumstantial evidence is not (nor should it ever be) enough to convict someone. SuperFitz didn’t charge Scooter with outing Plame because he didn’t think he could prove that beyond a reasonable doubt. However, he thought he could prove beyond a reasonable doubt (and, as that verdict stands, the legal fact is that he did prove beyond a reasonable doubt) that Scooter lied and obstructed justice.
Here are the facts:
1) Plame was a covert agent at the time she was outed. (See, just for example, the unclassified version of her employment record at CIA (http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/070529_Unclassified_Plame_employement.pdf), which states, “At the time of the initial unauthorized disclosure in the media of Ms. Wilson’s employment relationship with the CIA on 14 July 2003, Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.”
2) Someone outed Plame. (Nobody is disputing this. The Preznit himself says it was probably someone in his administration. See http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/07/12/libby-bush.html among others.)
3) Scooter made false statements, perjured himself (i.e. lied), and obstructed justice so we can’t find out who outed Plame.
And I must defend Ed Morrissey against your irrelevant slur:
“Given his willingness to publish details of publication banned hearings in Canada, I am not entirely sure his position as to “law and order” is as strictly “conservative as you would make it out to be.”
Really, this is a new low in your sophistry. Cap’n Ed is an American residing in America, and thus not bound by Canadian law. If he has an opinion about a Canadian issue, he can write anything he wants about it without violating any publication bans.
Are you suggesting that a true conservative should obey even laws from a foreign country—laws that don’t even apply to him? (I look forward to your insistence that everyone is bound by the laws of Iran, Kenya, and France.) American conservatives have repeatedly decried any use of other nations’ (or international) laws and precedents in arguing or deciding American cases.
In any case, Cap’n Ed proves himself a more genuine consevative than, say, Jay Currie. The former believes in the rule of law; the latter says:
“where a case is inherently political there are arguments for extra-legal interventions.”
Holy socks! You’re going beyond championing “Baby Doc” Bush’s powers of clemency (which we all agree he has) to champion “extra-legal” actions? Like what? Maybe you think SuperFitz should have been shot when he brought the indictment?