I work hard at not being a vengeful person, but I can’t help being really delighted with the news that Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, has been indicted on no fewer than five charges related to the Valerie Plame affair.
As spelled out by AP, the grand jusy in the “Plamegate” investigation has charged Libby
- with one count of obstruction of justice, two of perjury and two false statement counts. If convicted on all five, he could face as much as 30 years in prison and $1.25 million in fines.
…In each of the counts, the basic allegation against Libby is that he lied to investigators or [Special prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald’s grand jury about his conversations with reporters. He is not accused of purposely revealing the identity of a covert officer, the potential charge that Fitzgerald was initially appointed to investigate.
Fitzgerald said in a statement, “When citizens testify before grand juries they are required to tell the truth. Without the truth, our criminal justice system cannot serve our nation or its citizens. The requirement to tell the truth applies equally to all citizens, including persons who hold high positions in government.”
Any trial would dig into the secret deliberations of Bush and his team as they built the case for war against Iraq.
Excellent! To quote a famous phrase: “bring it on!”
I think this is just about the best possible outcome from the Fitzgerald investigation one could reasonably imagine. While some people had hoped there would be an indictment of Bush’s vice-chief of staff Karl Rove, and while I myself recently speculated that it would be interesting to see if Cheney would be indicted, still, keeping the focus on Libby– while Rove, Cheney, and many others must also feel that the trial will put them significantly off-balance– is not a bad outcome at all.
I didn’t see Fitzgerald’s presentation to the media. My spouse, who did, said he was extremely articulate, forthright, well-prepared, and persuasive. In the US system of justice, Fitzgerald, as a “Special prosecutor” with wide-ranging powers of sub-poena etc cannot issue indictements in his own name. (And since he was investigating allegations of governmental malfeasance, he couldn’t do so in the name of the US government.) So he has to run his preliminary findings by the special (“grand”) jury, which has been empanelled for that purpose; and it is the grand jury that issues the indictment (the criminal charges) in the name of– I believe– “the American people.”
So now, there will most likely be atrial– uness Libby pleads guilty to the charges. I don’t know what scope Fitzgerald has to offer a plea-bargain to Libby, whereby Libby might plead guilty to some of the lesser charges in return for having the other ones dropped, and therefore no need for a trial. Such plea bargains are fairly common in the US criminal-justice system.
I, however, think that the country and the world deserve to have a trial, in which all the evidence about the concoction of the whole “Niger yellow-cake” excuse for invading Iraq would be fully aired.
Also, though Fitz has now dismissed the grand jury that considered (and endorsed) the Libby indictments, he has said his pursuit of pre-trial investigations has not finished, and that if necessary he will empanel another grand jury to consider future charges.
That AP story I read– sorry I don’t have a link as I’m on a crappy slow connection here in New York– said:
- Rove’s lawyer said he was told by special prosecutor Fitzgerald’s office that investigators would continue their probe into the aide’s conduct. Fitzgerald’s office said Rove would not be indicted Friday, said people close to the Republican strategist, speaking only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy. Rove is deputy White House chief of staff.
The lack of an indictment against Rove was a mixed outcome for the administration. It keeps in place the president’s top adviser, the architect of his political machine whose fingerprints can be found on virtually every policy that emerges from the White House.
But leaving Rove in legal jeopardy keeps Bush and his team working on problems like the Iraq war, a Supreme Court vacancy and slumping poll ratings beneath a dark cloud of uncertainty.
Rove, who testified four times before the CIA leaks grand jury, has stepped back from some of his political duties such as speaking at fundraisers but is said to be otherwise immersed in his sweeping portfolio as deputy White House chief of staff…
Usual caveat here: Where is the Democratic Party leadership??? But apart from that, I just feel overjoyed that the fabrication of this portion of the evidence for launching the ghastly, illegal war against Iraq now has a chance of being fulling investigated and made fully public.
Helena, this is not the final outcome of Fitzgerald’s investigation. This is just the first big move – the chess equivalent of capturing a knight. Do you think Fitz worked his ass off for two years just to catch “Scooter” on a few false statements? Huh-uh. What we are seeing is a classic prosecutorial assault on a crime syndicate. Scooter is the consigliere of the Cheney crime famiy. What’s important is not what he did, but what he knows. In this process, the critical facts are gathered early, before the targets have their guards up all the way. Then you send the FBI around to intimidate the little guys – the interns, the secretaries, people who aren’t about to risk prison time to lie for their bosses. Eventually, you have enough to bring real pressure to bear on the people who do the dirty work for the big boss. Sometimes threats aren’t enough and you have to bring an indictment or two and make them stick. If you’ve got the goods and you know what you’re doing – and there is every indication that Fitz does – the worms will turn in the end. Everybody has his price, or his pain threshold. How would you like to enter the general population of a federal penitentiary if you were a Yale boy with a handle like “Scooter?” Ouch.
I thnk Fitz has pretty much laid out his road map in the current indictment, if you consider what is really being said and implied. And all roads lead to Richard Bruce Cheney.
I found W’s statement, after the indictment, enlightening. He said “In our system, each individual is presumed innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial.” Why are not all those arrested “terrorist” squirreled away in U.S. prisons presumed to be innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial. Jean
Jean
” Why are not all those arrested “terrorist” squirreled away in U.S. prisons presumed to be innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial.
Did you know Why? Didn’t you?
Because they are not on USA land!!!!!
Chaps
before the feeding frenzy starts,where the attention will be on the proof of all we have known and suspected about how we got into this enormous mess, lets not take our eye off the ball.
There are still 150,000 troops from the Multinational Divisions in Iraq and nobody has come up with a plan or a timetable to get them out yet.
There are noises about carrying on with phase two of the Tenth Crusade, despite the debacle of phase 1 and either destabilising or attacking the two neighbouring countries to Iraq.
For those who want to know the scale of casualties to be expected in later phases of this monunmental folly, I commend Robert Fisk’s latest book where he discusses why two million dead Armenians are only referred to as a massacre whereas six million dead Jews is referred to as a Holocaust.
So lets not let a search for someone to blame for the mess (despite the Schadenfreude of watching the wolves circling the crooks) distract us from the search for a solution to the problem.
If we don’t find a solution, and implement it, our grandchildren will be paying the price for our mistakes. Which is the core of Mr Fisk’s message.
Where is the Democratic Party leadership??? .
Schumer, at least, has been helpfully suggesting that more WH aides may need to resign.
“So lets not let a search for someone to blame for the mess (despite the Schadenfreude of watching the wolves circling the crooks) distract us from the search for a solution to the problem.”
Frank, I don’t see the contradiction. Exposing and eliminating the people responsible for our current disastrous course is a necessary part of any solution, is it not? Do you think Dick Cheney is going to change course and get us out on his own?
There’s a very interesting, well-documented article on PlameGate at wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair ). No doubt, much of the information here does not make its way into the MSM because it’s protected by national secuirty laws, etc. The question is, will the real story ever be told, even if there’s a trial?
The article does go some way towards understanding why the CIA insiders were so outraged by Plame’s outing–it put the fear of God into them, no doubt one of Cheney’s main objectives, ie, “you go against us and we’ll get you where you live.”
The information in the article ( see http://tinyurl.com/9wbef ) is so particular, however, I wonder whether the wikipedia poster is not a CIA employee, with some very serious contacts inside the “company.”
In terms of the fallout from the outing of Plame, this article provides a circumstantial speculation by an NSA employee:
“Wayne Madsen, a reporter and former NSA employee, has claimed, “CIA sources report that at least one anonymous star placed on the CIA’s Wall of Honor at its Langley, Virginia headquarters is a clandestine agent who was executed in a hostile foreign nation as a direct result of the White House leak.”
Do you think Dick Cheney is going to change course and get us out on his own?
The Iraqi war and the occupation it’s done by Bush/Dick as ECOs for Cooperates looking for exploring more investments and more profits. This is the way they do the work from Whitehouse.
Thanks John C
There is no contradiction.
However it is important not to lose sight of the fact that General Casey now has 160,000 US troops in country and asked for 2,000 extra UK troops.
The Sunday Telegraph this morning tells us that firefights have broken out on the Syrian frontier between US troops and Syrian border guards and that Special Forces are being deployed into Syria.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=R4SUVLXB0G2BFQFIQMGCM5OAVCBQUJVC?xml=/news/2005/10/30/wsyria30.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/10/30/ixportal.html
The hue and cry in Washington may distract people from the act of widening the theatre of war which may proceed according to plan.
“You know, there’s a lot of talk today in the Democratically controlled judiciary committee about going after the Bush Administration for crimes, for lying to Congress, and etc. And I’m all in favor of that, bring on the indictments, but don’t stop at the Bush Administration. If you want to have a truly bipartisan indictment, you indict Madeleine Albright, you indict Sandy Berger, you indict every person on the Clinton Administration that committed the exact same crime that the Bush Administration has committed today. Lying during the course of your official duty: That’s a felony, that’s a high crime and misdemeanor. That’s language in the Constitution that triggers certain events like impeachment. So let’s not just simply turn this into a Bush-bashing event. This is about a failure of not only the Bush Administration but of the United States of America, and we have to look in the mirror and recognize that, well, all the Bush Administration did is take advantage of a systemic failure on the part of the United States as a whole, a failure that not only involves the executive, but it involves the legislative branch, Congress.”
Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh: Iraq Confidential
“And 69 percent of those surveyed said Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s indictment represented a serious crime, compared to 26 percent who said it was a minor or technical crime.”