Libby and the Campaign

A week or so ago, Matt Yglesias observed that the Libby commutation is extremely unpopular, and suggest that "[t]here's got to be a campaign issue in this somewhere." I'm skeptical of the notion that Libby will be remembered when it matters (or that most people are aware of him even now)...but less so when I see articles like this one, in Monday's Chronicle:

President Bush's rationale for sparing Lewis "Scooter'' Libby from prison -- that his 2 1/2-year sentence was more severe than the former vice presidential aide deserved for lying to a grand jury -- is at odds with his support of new legislation that, by the administration's description, would make such sentences mandatory....

The administration is now proposing to toughen sentencing rules. The Justice Department announced legislation last month that it said would require federal judges to sentence criminals to at least the minimum term provided by federal guidelines -- the term that Bush found too harsh for Libby in commuting his sentence July 2.

The beauty of this is that it's not complicated. You don't have to have a sophisticated understanding of criminal law; you don't even really have to be paying attention to get it. It's too blatant to ignore.

Which I think makes it a perfect focal point for a whole constellation of issues where Bush shows contempt for the law: the U.S. Attorney purge, the secret prisons, the domestic surveillance, the signing statements--et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And on every single one of these issues, every single Republican who might conceivably get the nomination has wholeheartedly supported Bush (and Thompson, going above and beyond the call of ideology, actually served on the board of Libby's defense fund). That's the campaign issue. We have to make sure they're all tied to this; we can't let them skate like Libby did.

And I would formulate it this way: There's one law for you and me, another law for the rich and powerful, and no law at all for Republicans.

That is what it's all about, isn't it?

Late to the Libby Table

On the plus side, I got to live an extra 36 hours or so blissfully unaware that Bush had commuted Libby's sentence. On the minus side, it sucks to come home from five happy days in the wilderness and have that be the first piece of news you get. On the other minus side, other bloggers have already said just about everything (including, of course, our own Kathy). So I'll just add a few random comments on the commentary.

First, proving again that smart people often say stupid things, Michael Kinsley contorts himself to draw a parallel between Libby and Clinton. Been there, done that. Hint to Kinsley: a perjury trap and a 'perjury trap' are two different things.

Meanwhile, Scott Lemieux writes about a case that really does parallel Libby's, with one determinative difference: the other guy isn't connected to the Bush administration.

Finally, while Josh Marshall and Froomkin are right in identifying the most important issue ("it's inappropriate for the president to pardon or commute a sentence in a case in which he...is a party to the same underlying crime", which Marshall shouldn't even have to point out but helpfully does), it's not exactly unprecedented. W may not have learned much from his father, but he did learn the lessons that count.

Move Over, Doug Feith...

...it looks like you have a rival. Richard Cohen has a column today in which he makes a compelling case for his role as the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.

In florid, breathless prose, Cohen writes about the terrible injustice of the Libby prosecution. Here's an excerpt to give the flavor of the thing:

The upshot was a train wreck....The special counsel used the immense power of the government to jail Judith Miller and to compel other journalists, including Time's Matt Cooper, to suspend their various and sacred vows of silence just so they could, understandably, avoid jail. The press held itself up to mockery, wantonly promising confidentiality, anonymity -- what's the diff, anyway? -- and virtual life after death to anyone with a piece of gossip to peddle. Much heroic braying turned into cries for mercy as the government bore down....

As Fitzgerald worked his wonders, threatening jail and going after government gossips with splendid pluck, many opponents of the Iraq war cheered. They thought -- if "thought" can be used in this context -- that if the thread was pulled on who had leaked the identity of Valerie Plame to Robert D. Novak, the effort to snooker an entire nation into war would unravel and this would show . . . who knows?

Yes, gentle reader, it's true; Cohen is so appallingly stupid that he has no idea what the investigation did show: that Dick Cheney orchestrated a conspiracy to destroy critics of administration policy, using any means available, including but not limited to leaking the name of a covert agent.

Cohen is also apparently incapable of distinguishing between genuine sources and government officials using reporters to spread disinformation and otherwise do their dirty work. But then, Cohen isn't alone on that.

Here's some more, if you can stand it:

This is precisely the sort of investigation that Jackson was warning about. It would not have been conducted if, say, the Iraq war had ended with 300 deaths and the mission had really been accomplished. An unpopular war produced the popular cry for scalps and, in Libby's case, the additional demand that he express contrition -- a vestigial Stalinist-era yearning for abasement. No one has yet explained, though, how Libby can express contrition and still appeal his conviction. No matter. Antiwar sanctimony excuses the inexplicable.

Accountability is one thing. By all means, let Congress investigate and conduct oversight hearings with relish and abandon. But a prosecution is a different matter. It entails the government at its most coercive -- a power so immense and sometimes so secretive that it poses much more of a threat to civil liberties, including freedom of the press, than anything in the interstices of the scary Patriot Act....the underlying crime is absent, the sentence is excessive and the investigation should not have been conducted in the first place.

Where to begin? Apparently Cohen believes that the DOJ investigated not at the formal request of the CIA, but because a bunch of us DFH types demanded it. He seems to think the decision to investigate was contingent on the casualty count. He is convinced that the expectation that criminals show remorse is a symptom of incipient totalitarianism. He sees prosecution in itself as a monstrous violation of civil liberties. He fails to understand that no underlying crime charged is not the same as no underlying crime committed.

In short, he is completely, fundamentally, irredeemably clueless on every single detail of the thing.

In fairness to Cohen, of course, while his stupidity rival's Feith's in its magnitude, it is far less destructive. After all, Feith engineered our glorious victory in Iraq; Cohen was just a cheerleader.

Update: and once again, Cohen proves that the one thing he's good at is giving cover to the wingnuts. There are already posts at Heading Right and Captain's Quarters titled, respectively, A Liberal Defends Scooter Libby and The Liberal Case for Scooter Libby.

Don't Read This on a Full Stomach

While we're having fun with headlines, there's this one from a WSJ opinion piece by Fouad Ajami:

Fallen Soldier
Mr. President, do not leave this man behind.

No, he's not talking about any of the 3500 actual fallen soldiers. He's not talking about any of the actual soldiers who are actually being left behind. He's talking about Scooter Libby.

And if that doesn't make you throw up a little, try this quote:

Scooter Libby was a soldier in your--our--war in Iraq, he was chief of staff to a vice president who had become a lightning rod to the war's critics. He didn't sit around the councils of power only to make the rounds in Georgetown's salons insinuating that this was not his war all along. He didn't claim this war when it promised an easy victory only to desert it when it stalled in the alleyways of Fallujah and Baghdad and in the twilight world of Arab politics....Scooter Libby worked tirelessly and quietly to prosecute and explain and defend this war.

Soldier, yes; in Iraq, no. Libby was a soldier in a different war, in America. Libby was a soldier in Bush's (or Cheney's) war against their political opponents.

The scariest thing about this administration is that they don't understand the difference.

Debra Saunders: Still Clueless

Yes, I know: and the sun still rises in the east. Still.

In a column about Fred Thompson's possible candidacy, she can't resist another attack on Fitzgerald:

I think it's an outrage that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald prosecuted Libby for covering up his actions during Fitzgerald's probe into the leak of a former CIA official's identity -- especially because Fitzgerald never saw fit to prosecute the original leak itself.

And yes, once again, she trots out the supposed parallels between Libby and Clinton.

Okay, now, once more for the slow students:

• Fitzgerald has made it clear that Libby's perjury and obstruction made it impossible to determine what underlying crimes may have been committed. That was, in fact, the purpose of Libby's perjury and obstruction. Saunders (like all the other wingnuts who take this line) is saying, in effect, that perjury and obstruction should be charged only if they're unsuccessful.


• The difference between Libby's perjury and Clinton's 'perjury' is that the thing Clinton lied about was not even potentially a crime. It wasn't even relevant to the civil suit in which they originally went fishing for it--a civil suit that was, of course, ultimately determined to have no merit. Again: Libby covered up potential crimes; Clinton didn't. See the difference?

Something tells me I'm still going to have to explain it to her all over again in a week or two...

Instapundit: Still an Idiot

Glenn Reynolds' comment on the latest Plame news:

Regardless, given the many obviously more damaging leaks that no one seems to care about, I'm finding it hard to get excited about this one.

Leaking the identity of a covert operative working on nuclear proliferation and Iran (you remember them--crazy fanatical Muslim jihadi types who have to be bombed before they get The Bomb? Yeah, that Iran)? No damage there:

Intelligence sources would not identify the specifics of Plame's work. They did, however, tell RAW STORY that her outing resulted in "severe" damage to her team and significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation.

So given the real damage from the Plame leak, you ask, what sort of leaks would be 'more damaging' than that?

Simple: any leak of information that makes the Bush administration look bad.

Short Takes

As I said, still catching up. Here are a few tidbits in the meantime:

• Matt Yglesias savages Chris Muir's cartoon talking points ("3100 schools have been renovated, 364 schools are being rehabilitated...") taken from some anonymous e-mail. Reading the shiny happy statistics ("96% of Iraqi children under the age of 5 have received polio vaccinations..."), the first thing that came to my mind was the fact that 1 in 8 Iraqis dies before the age of 5--due mainly to lack of potable water and a shattered healthcare system. That's $400 billion thrown down the rathole, and Iraqis still don't have a reliable water supply. It's worse than losing the war: we've lost the reconstruction.



• Shorter Patrick Fitzgerald: we could have nailed Cheney if Libby hadn't lied. That's Dan Froomkin's take, anyway, and he makes a damn good case for it. And that's exactly the problem with describing Libby's offenses as "an alleged crime stemming from a non-crime" (Jules Crittenden): it asserts that perjury and obstruction are crimes only if they're unsuccessful.



• Yesterday, liberal blogs were all over the confirmation that Valerie Plame was a covert agent, and conservative blogs...not so much. One exception was Patterico, who, to his credit, admitted the obvious (and acknowledged the reasonability of Fitzgerald's investigation); his commenters...not so much ("Read very closely. I believe there's a reason they used "indicates". We need the original documents this claim is based on."). Today, the wingnuts got their talking points and are in full-on pushback mode. Yes, the beauty of the blogosphere is that you get to choose your own reality.

One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

Pity poor Debra Saunders: yesterday she came heartbreakingly close to beating the WaPo editorial board for the coveted¹ Wanker of the Day award. Close...but not quite there. Her near-winning entry began with this:

YOU CANNOT look at Lewis "Scooter" Libby without seeing Bill Clinton.

Well, yeah...if you're a fucking moron.

It goes downhill from there (Clinton perjury blah blah blah, out-of-control prosecutor yadda yadda yadda, Joe Wilson liar and so on and so on). Attacking Fitzgerald is part of her standard repertoire, along with global warming denial and mocking Gore, so who can blame her for indulging in it one last time before it goes out of style forever?

And of course every time she writes this same column, she begins with the premise that Libby's perjury charge is bogus just like Clinton's. I've addressed this false equivalence, but perhaps not as clearly as I could have, because she doesn't appear to have grasped the concept.

So here I provide a handy chart for the easily confused:

	Clinton	Libby
Underlying offense	Not criminal; at worst, arguably relevant (tangentially) to a civil case that was dismissed by the judge as failing to state a cause of action.	Potentially serious criminal offenses (including, possibly, conspiracy) with deleterious consequences for national security.
Practical impact of lie	No apparent impact on litigation.	Made it impossible to determine what, if any, criminal offenses had been committed, or by whom.
Prosecutor	Conservative Republican; active in prior partisan efforts to embarrass the president.	Conservative Republican Unaffiliated; no partisan motivation.
Scope of investigation	Initially limited to Whitewater, later expanded into unrelated areas. Perjury prosecution was for testimony completely irrelevant to original scope of investigation.	Limited to facts surrounding the leakage of a covert operative's identity, scope never changed. Perjury prosecution was for testimony directly related to original scope of investigation.
Media Leaks	Prosecutor's office systematically leaked information embarrassing to the president.	No significant leaks.
Washington press corps party line	This is serious, and the president should resign.	This is trivial, and the prosecutor is out of control.

You're welcome, Debra, and I hope this helps you avoid any further embarrassment.

Update: Edited to correct link and table header (thanks, De).
Other Update: Added a bit of essential information (italicized) I had neglected to include originally. I swear to god I will get this right eventually.
Other Other Update: Corrected re Fitzgerald's partty (non-)affiliation; added a bit re the Paula Jones lawsuit.

¹Joe Klein: "I'm as proud of being named 'Wanker of the Day' as I am of being Sean Hannity's 'Enemy of the State for the week.'"

Libby Verdict; Duelling Quotes

The Washington Post:

Mr. Fitzgerald was, at least, right about one thing: The Wilson-Plame case, and Mr. Libby's conviction, tell us nothing about the war in Iraq.

The San Francisco Chronicle:

The monthlong trial established beyond a reasonable doubt that White House officials at the highest level conducted a campaign to discredit those who questioned their declarations about Iraq's weapon capabilities -- declarations that turned out to be wrong.

Yes, Fred Hiatt is still too stupid to live. And give the Chronicle its due: for all its faults, it isn't nearly as willfully obtuse as the WaPo.

The Importance of Libby

Steve M is underwhelmed by the Libby verdict¹, and comments that it's not

the big deal so many people think it is, mostly because it's contained to Libby and because most Americans can't grasp it (plus, they can't see how it affects their lives). I sometimes think that people who get excited about this may be fighting the last war, the last war in this case being Watergate. And history is not repeating itself.

The point about Watergate is well-taken (and I say this as someone who, as a 13-year-old, obsessively watched the Watergate hearings). Nobody's going to resign this time. There isn't going to be any impeachment. It's fascinating (and gratifying) to watch their criminal behavior finally be uncovered, but it won't solve any of our problems.

But I'm not so sure about the first two points--that it's contained to Libby, and that most Americans can't grasp it. If this article in today's Chronicle is right, most Americans understand exactly what it's about:

People will soon forget the details of the Lewis "Scooter" Libby case, if they knew them in the first place....

What will endure is damning testimony that confirms the public's worst fears about the Bush administration's behavior during the lead-up to the war in Iraq and its truthfulness since then.

The monthlong trial established beyond a reasonable doubt that White House officials at the highest level conducted a campaign to discredit those who questioned their declarations about Iraq's weapon capabilities -- declarations that turned out to be wrong.

And the testimony showed that President Bush either was lying about the White House's role in outing a CIA officer at the center of the scandal or was kept in the dark by top aides who defied his orders to come forward.

I don't know how reliable this is (there are no polling data), but Nancy Pelosi at least seems to agree.

And while I agree with Steve that it is the Republicans' incompetence that most directly affects most people, it's the authoritarian nature of the administration--their imperiousness, their vindictiveness, their obsession with secrecy--that guarantees their incompetence will always lead to catastrophe. Iraq is just one example--the example exposed in the Libby trial--but this dynamic is played out in everything they do. As Josh Marshall said a year ago:

The point...is that they are directly connected. Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It's a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power. Katrina was a good example of this.

Which, incidentally, is worth keeping in mind as the Republicans gush over the most authoritarian candidate in their pack.

So, agreed, let's not count on Fitzmas to bring us any presents besides what little personal satisfaction comes from seeing Libby (maybe) punished. At the same time, I think the growing public understanding of what these people are all about is a very good thing.


¹So is the Washington Post--the difference being that Steve is underwhelmed for very smart reasons, and the WaPo is underwhelmed for astonishingly stupid reasons.

Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!

(Apologies to Garry Trudeau)

Wingnuts, Armitage, and Plamegate

Debra Saunders, who never met a Republican talking point she didn't like, jumps on the Plamegate-is-really-nothing-because-Armitage-was-the-leaker bandwagon:

WITH the disclosure that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the initial source for Robert Novak's July 2003 column that outed CIA operative Valerie Wilson -- also known as Valerie Plame, wife of former ambassador and Iraq-war critic Joseph Wilson -- it is now clear that all the hype about a Bush-inspired vendetta against the Wilsons is bunk.

The basic premise (for Saunders, and for all the other wingnuts repeating the party line) is that only the leak to Novak could possibly be considered wrong, and that any subsequent leak was perfectly okay.

To illustrate one reason why this is ridiculous, here's a little timeline:

• June, 2003: Armitage tells Woodward about Plame; Woodward sits on the information.


• June 23, 2003: Libby tells Judy Miller Wilson's wife might work for the CIA.


• July 8, 2003: Libby gives Miller more details about Plame's position. Armitage meets with Novak and tells him.


• July 11, 2003: Rove tells Marc Cooper.


• July 14, 2003: Novak column about Valerie Plame.

In other words, both Libby and Rove leaked the information before it was common knowledge. Miller testified that Libby was her original source, and Cooper testified that Rove was his.

And then there's the enormous leap of logic to the conclusion that "all the hype about a Bush-inspired vendetta against the Wilsons is bunk." To accept that, we would have to assume that Armitage's leak erases the actions of Rove and Libby--that because Armitage was apparently first, what Rove and Libby did not only wasn't wrong but didn't happen at all. But we know it happened. We know they did what they did. We know that both of them lied about it (although Rove ultimately skated on that charge). We also know that Cheney gave Libby a copy of the Wilson piece with notes that appear to be marching orders for the anti-Wilson pushback ("did his wife send him on a junket?").

I won't go so far that the case is proven...but, really now: we have the documents; we know who Cheney is, and how he operates; we know who Rove is, and how he operates; we know what the administration as a whole is, and how it operates; and it all adds up to circumstantial evidence strong enough for ordinary people (if not a Federal grand jury) to judge them guilty. The claim that the Armitage leak vindicates the White House--that it proves their innocence--is a sad and desperate attempt to deny the obvious.

Update: Via Atrios, I see that the WashPo editorial board are also drinking the Kool-Aid.

[That's all, folks]

Beg Pardon?

Josh Marshall notes that Joe DiGenova is again floating the Libby pardon trial balloon:

So here we have [DiGenova] telling Newsday over the weekend that "I think ultimately, of course, there are going to be pardons" in the Libby case and that Patrick Fitzgerald's indictment of Libby "is the epitome of the criminalization of the political process."

Newsday identifies DiGenova as "a former prosecutor and an old Washington hand who shares that view with many pundits (emphasis added)."

Of course, DiGenova isn't just a 'former prosecutor' and 'old Washington hand'; as Josh reported last November, he's the go-to guy for quotes minimizing Republican wrongdoing and maximizing anything a Democrat does (see Clinton, William Jefferson).

Josh goes on to note the extraordinary nature of this hypothetical pardon:

Presidents do sometimes pardon people who they believe have taken legal hits on their behalf. But this case would be of a different order since the president's pardon would be mainly to prevent a trial which would certainly lead to the airing of highly embarrassing and morally incriminating evidence about senior members of his administration, perhaps including himself.

Extraordinary...but not entirely unprecedented:

Six years after the arms-for-hostages scandal began to cast a shadow that would darken two Administrations, President Bush today granted full pardons to six former officials in Ronald Reagan's Administration, including former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.

Mr. Weinberger was scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 5 on charges that he lied to Congress about his knowledge of the arms sales to Iran and efforts by other countries to help underwrite the Nicaraguan rebels, a case that was expected to focus on Mr. Weinberger's private notes that contain references to Mr. Bush's endorsement of the secret shipments to Iran....

The prosecutor charged that Mr. Weinberger's efforts to hide his notes may have "forestalled impeachment proceedings against President Reagan" and formed part of a pattern of "deception and obstruction." On Dec. 11, Mr. Walsh said he discovered "misconduct" in Mr. Bush's failure to turn over what the prosecutor said were the President's own "highly relevant contemporaneous notes, despite repeated requests for such documents." [emphasis added]

It's been done before; they'll do it again, and for exactly the same reason.

[That's all, folks]

Rove Indictment: No Celebration Yet

Lots of people are excited about news of Rove's indictment. I thought about posting something, but decided against it. For one thing, I don't consider truthout.org a particularly reliable source; I'd like to see some more substantiation. For another, I really want this to be true--and I believe we have a moral obligation to be particularly skeptical of anything that could be wishful thinking. So I figured I'd wait and see.

Yesterday, Mark Kleiman posted some skeptical questions about the story:

1. Who would have told Jason Leopold, but no reporter with a mass outlet, that Rove had been indicted?

2. If the rumors are flying around the White House, why does Leopold have a monopoly on hearing about them?

3. If Rove has been told that he has been indicted, why doesn't he quit to spare Bush the embarrassment of having current, rather than a former, Assistant to the President mugged and booked? Even Clueless Claude Allen could figure out that much.

4. If Rove told Bolten that Rove has been indicted, why didn't Bolten reply, "The President accepts your resignation to spend more time with your family with great regret and great admiration for your loyal service"?

None of this is dispositive, but these do seem like pretty good reasons to remain skeptical.

Meanwhile, Jeralyn Merritt has talked to Jason Leopold; she is convinced he is sincere, but suggests he (and/or his sources) may be confused about the legal details of what's going on.

Bottom line: I'm really not expecting an indictment this week. Leopold has promised to out his sources if they lied to him, so on Wednesday we should know something more; until then, I'm assuming this is another non-story story.

[That's all, folks]

Another Bad News Cycle for Darth Cheney

It's almost comical how assiduously he strives to live up to his nickname. Everything evil that comes out of this White House (which is to say, very nearly everything that comes out of this White House, period) has his fingerprints on it.

Today we have two big stories about Cheney's involvement in two of the most egregiously criminal White House programs. First, there's a report from Fitz:

After former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV publicly criticized a key rationale for the war in Iraq, Vice President Cheney wrote a note on a newspaper clipping raising the possibility that the critique resulted from a CIA-sponsored "junket" arranged by Wilson's wife, covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, according to court documents filed late Friday.

The filing by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is the second that names Cheney as a key White House official who questioned the legitimacy of Wilson's examination of Iraqi nuclear ambitions. It further suggests that Cheney helped originate the idea in his office that Wilson's credibility was undermined by his link to Plame.

Fitzgerald's filing states that Cheney passed the annotated article by Wilson to his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who Fitzgerald says subsequently discussed Wilson's marriage to Plame in conversations with two reporters, despite the fact that Plame was a covert CIA officer and her name was not supposed to be revealed....

The new filing includes the precise annotations that Cheney wrote on a copy of Wilson's July 2003 article in the New York Times, titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa."

"Have they done this sort of thing before?" Cheney wrote. "Send an amb[assador] to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"

And of course it's purest coincidence that Libby passed on the exact talking points Cheney had written. Uh-huh.

Note to Libby: save your sorry ass. Give up Dick.

Also, you know that whole criminal electronic surveillance thing? It turns out Cheney wanted it to be even more criminal (hat tip: Kevin Drum):

In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney and his top legal adviser argued that the National Security Agency should intercept purely domestic telephone calls and e-mail messages without warrants in the hunt for terrorists, according to two senior intelligence officials.

But N.S.A. lawyers, trained in the agency's strict rules against domestic spying and reluctant to approve any eavesdropping without warrants, insisted that it should be limited to communications into and out of the country, said the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss the debate inside the Bush administration late in 2001....

By several accounts, including those of the two officials, General Hayden, a 61-year-old Air Force officer who left the agency last year to become principal deputy director of national intelligence, was the man in the middle as President Bush demanded that intelligence agencies act urgently to stop future attacks.

On one side was a strong-willed vice president and his longtime legal adviser, David S. Addington, who believed that the Constitution permitted spy agencies to take sweeping measures to defend the country. Later, Mr. Cheney would personally arrange tightly controlled briefings on the program for select members of Congress.

On the other side were some lawyers and officials at the largest American intelligence agency, which was battered by eavesdropping scandals in the 1970's and has since wielded its powerful technology with extreme care to avoid accusations of spying on Americans....

Addington, you may recall, is the guy who later replaced Libby as Cheney's chief of staff. Evil and eviler.

[That's all, folks]

Karl Rove, Informant

As Media Matters reported last week, a Time article on the Plame scandal contained statements by Scott McClellan that at least three of the reporters involved knew to be untrue.

John Dickerson, one of the three, then went on the Al Franken Show to defend their actions. Here's Dickerson:

And the reason you can't just come out and say, "They're big liars, they're big liars," is because you end up giving up a source.

And there's the problem: Karl Rove is not a source.

Rove is not providing information. Rove is not upholding the people's right to know. Rove's job is to propagate the party line, and that's exactly what he does. Always. 100% of the time. No exceptions. I mean, really now: if anyone in the Washington press corps is naïve enough to believe that Rove has moments of candor in which he lets slip nuggets of information without calculating the political effect, they have no business working as reporters.

And for those who do know better, there is no conceivable excuse for helping Rove do his job. If somebody is giving you spin, print it with attribution or don't print it at all.

All of which is why this rationale is--to put it as charitably as possible--completely delusional:

You have a source, and you make an agreement with that source not to blow their identity. That, you have to keep that agreement. And the reason you do that, even in a situation where some people may, for all those people who may hate Karl Rove and this White House and want them to be outed, you've got to remember that the same protections are the ones that protected the people who came forth about the NSA wiretapping. And people come forward about things all the time knowing their cover isn't going to get blown. Sometimes it's in an instance that people would like, because it uncovers an NSA wiretapping scheme that they don't think is appropriate, and in some cases it protects people that they hate and would like to see run out on a rail. But you can't pick and chose.

When Karl Rove comes forward and gives some reporter information that is genuinely in the public interest, when he blows the whistle on illegal actions by his superiors or gives us genuine insight into how the White House operates or otherwise provides information that we really ought to know, then and only then will it be anything other than a grotesque obscenity to mention his name in the same breath as the person who blew the whistle on NSA wiretapping. And when and if that happens, I will be all in favor of maintaining Rove's anonymity.

I'm not holding my breath.

[That's all, folks]

Liveblogging the Fitzgerald Press Conference

Importance of confidentiality of CIA identity...Libby first official known to have told a reporter...Very little info for very good reason: needs secrecy. Investigators don't set out to investigate a statute; investigate facts, determine whether and what crimes and by whom. That's how this one was done. National security at stake, so important to get facts. Secrecy important Equally important that witnesses tell complete truth, especially in national security area. Some laws re disclosure clear, some not so clear. Fine distinctions. Thus important witness testimony be accurate.10/03 interviewed Libby: what he knew, what he said, why he said it. Told FBI he was at the end of long chain of phone calls, and Russert told him 'all reporters know', Libby learned 'as if new'. Passed it on to other reporters, including Cooper and Miller. Passed it on understanding it was info from reporter, and he didn't know if it was true. 3/04 testified to same story. Not true. Libby discussed identity of Wilson at least 6 times before Russert conversation, and did not discuss with Russert.

Libby learned identity at least 3 times from government officials in June 03: 6/11, from senior CIA officer & somebody else; 6/12, from VP. At least 3 times discussed it with other officials: June 14 2003, w/CIA briefer; 7/7/03 w/Fleischer; 7/8 w/counsel for VP.

1st discussion w/Miller: 6/23. 7/8 talked about Wilson 'on background', changed attribution to 'former hill staffer', mentioned wife working for CIA. Did not say other reporters were saying it, or didn't know true. Libby's story false: beginning, not end, of chain. Lied repeatedly under oath. Investigation conducted in secret--rules protect all of us. Shows the world the country takes law seriously, everyone bound by law; but also have to show the world everyone has the same safeguards. Take a deep breath, and let justice take its course.

Thanks everybody.

Q: Leak investigation finished? Not over, but bulk concluded; grand jury term concluded, but open to consider other matters. Why no leak charges but perjury & obstruction? If pitcher beans batter, you want to know why; lots of possible motivations, investigate them all and figure out why. Did Libby intend to cause damage, etc.? Obstruction throws sand in umpire's eyes. Harm in obstruction is preventing investigators from making judgments they need to make. Regardless of motivation, we need to know the truth. Anyone who impedes has committed serious crime.

Q: Any evidence that VP encouraged leak or lie? No allegations about anyone not charged in indictment. (Includes Rove. If no charge, can't talk about it.)

Shit. Have to go do work now. [That's me, not Fitzgerald.]

Investigation Update

They were supposed to be releasing some kind of press release at noon (that's 9 am, in a legitimate time zone). I went to the website about 20 minutes early and there was a release with today's date...but the .pdf crashed my browser. Now it's not there anymore, but they have started adding some of the briefs from the journalist cases.

Still waiting, in other words.

Update: They're still screwing around with the website. Those briefs I saw a few minutes ago aren't there now.

Second update: Libby indicted on 5 counts.

It's Not Fitzmas Yet

According to CNN:

The federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity could hand up charges as early as today, but Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is not expected to make any public announcements Wednesday, one source with knowledge of the probe told CNN.

Sigh.

Perjury vs. Perjury

It is immensely satisfying, when someone who (like Kay Bailey Hutchison, for example) says

if there were an indictment, she hoped it would be for "a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime."

then turns out to have said, when Clinton was the target, that

The edifice of American jurisprudence rests on the foundation of the due process of law. The mortar in that foundation is the oath. Those who seek to obstruct justice weaken that foundation, and those who violate the oath would tear the whole structure down.

(via Wampum).

Let's keep in mind, though, that (as is so often the case) 'hypocrisy' is a double-edged sword: if (say) Rove is charged with perjury or obstruction and nothing else, anyone gloating over it is going to be hit with accusations of hypocrisy. After all, we minimized perjury when Clinton was charged with it; how can we turn around and say it's a big deal when the defendant is Rove, or Libby, or Cheney?

The answer, of course, is that the seriousness of lying under oath depends entirely on what it is you're lying about. The obvious common-sense standard would be: is the underlying matter worthy of investigation in its own right?

No one can argue with a straight face that engaging in a consensual affair meets this standard. The wingnuts conceded this with their talking point that it wasn't about sex, it was about lying under oath--a concession that the sex itself, however sleazy or distasteful or hurtful to Clinton's loved ones (and we know the wingnuts have always been terribly concerned about their well-being), was not a prosecutable offense.

Outing Valerie Plame is another matter entirely. The CIA clearly believed there was a potential crime there, or they wouldn't have referred it to the DOJ. The judges who ruled on Miller and Cooper's cases clearly believed there was at least a potential crime. This was a serious investigation into serious crimes, and that in itself--not just the ultimate resolution of the underlying issues--makes perjury and obstruction serious crimes in this case.