[ExI] plamegate: the plot thickens

[Jeff Davis]

On 5/29/07, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:

> Similarly Libby wasn't really the one they wanted.

Who's the "they" you're talking about, Spike?  The CIA?  The Justice
Dept.?  Patrick Fitzgerald?  Remember, the Repubs owned the Congress
and the Executive back in June of 2003 when this started.

Novak revealed Plame's CIA status on July 14th.  The CIA then filed a
complaint with the United States Department of Justice, requesting a
federal investigation.  Attorney General John Ashcroft recused
himself, citing a conflict of interest, and referred the matter to the
U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel.  Patrick
Fitzgerald took it from there.

> I, you and others get
> the feeling the trial was really about the decision to go to war in Iraq.

Huh?  The CIA requested the investigation.  If you're going to
speculate (based on your "feelings"!!! --and you a rocket scientist,
tsk, tsk.) about secret, undeclared conspiratorial motives, at least
start with the folks at the CIA .  Indications are the folks at "the
agency" were none to happy with Cheney et al's arm twisting, Tenet's
obsequiousness, Rumsfeld's intellicrap factory at the pentagon (Office
of Special Plans), or the stovepiping of that intellicrap right
straight into the boy emperor's ear.

Iraq is the context for all of this, sure, but specific acts have
specific causes, why look elsewhere (partisan denial?)?  An
intelligence agent's cover was blown and the matter referred to the
DoJ for investigation.  "A black hole has no hair."

> The problem is that Libby didn't make that decision.  So they went after a
> theory that he was covering for some whitehouse leaker

Puleeeze!  What theory?  This was not some devilishly twisty and
clever Murder on the Orient Express kind of thing.  Novak published
her name and agency connection.  He's a media guy not a psychic, so
somebody musta told him.  Naturally you interview Novak, and then find
and interview those who knew Plame's status.  Gumshoe 101.  Save the
"theory of the crime" stuff for real mysteries.

> by saying he didn't
> remember who told him Mrs. Wilson's identity as an undercover CIA agent and
> that she was married to Ambassador Wilson.  Now we learn that it was Mrs.
> Wilson herself that revealed that relationship.  We learn that Libby's story
> that he couldn't recall who told him is now very believable, since a lot of
> people knew it from the 2002 memo.

No, "a lot of people" did NOT know it.  The memo in question was an
internal CIA document.  Classified.  Besides, we already know that
Cheney told Libby of Plame's status.

>  He thought it general knowledge, again
> very plausible.

In an alternate universe where the CIA publishes it's internal
communications for all the world to see!  Riiiiiight!

>
> Even the jurists [jurors] commented that they didn't have the right person on trial.
> This whole trial was not really about Libby, it was about Bush.

No, it was about Libby's obstruction of Justice and perjury.  Had he
told the investigators the truth, he would have walked away and the
matter would have ended there.  It would have ended because Fitzgerald
knew that prosecuting the leaker would have been difficult.  But Libby
lied his ass off (needlessly it seems, but he didn't know that) and in
so doing embarked on his own little "crime spree", and got busted.
That part's easy.  Why did he lie?  That's still something of a
mystery.

> Libby did
> not make the decision to go to war.

You seem fixated on "the decision to go to war".  That's not what this
was about.  Remember, back in June/July of '03 the war was still a
victory, and as such, the decision to go to war was politically
respectable, the decider was basking in glory.  There was no hint yet
that the "Mission Accomplished" moment (May 1st) would turn to
grotesquerie.

>  He didn't leak Plame's identity.

Actually he did.  He, Armitage, and Rove.

>  The  jury convicted an innocent man.

Innocent of murdering the Lindberg baby, maybe.

When the cops ask you questions, you tell the truth, take the fifth,
ask for a lawyer, or risk going to jail.

<snip>

> Looks to me like an attempt to hang someone in the Bush administration for
> something her own husband actually did.  After the Novak column identified
> Plame as a "CIA agent," Mr. Plame went running around screaming that someone
> had identified her as a "secret agent."  But notice that the magazine
> article did not say she was a secret agent, Mr. Plame did that.  Wilson
> outed his own wife a year after she outed herself.

This is humor, right.  This Spike the jokester, right?

Novak was the first to publish the fact.  Ms. Plame was a CIA
employee.  It was irrelevant whether Novak KNEW OR WROTE that she was
covert.  What mattered was that she WAS covert.

<snip>

> > This, I think, is why the scales are not equal.  Plame
> > deserves the benefit of the doubt:  Libby does not...
>
> If one wishes to advance this argument, I am back to the same place the
> jurist [juror] concluded: the wrong person was on trial here.  Libby didn't make the
> decision to go to war, Bush did.

Bush's decision to go to war based on lies was one crime.  Certainly
the biggest crime in a vast spectacle of executive slash imperial
criminality.  Any juror could be forgiven for his/her very wistful
thought slash ecstatic vision of Bush in the dock.  In the selfsame
juror's dock.    Wouldn't that have been thrilling!  Who in the
reality-based community hasn't dreamed of sitting in the jury box for
the trial of The United States of America vs George W. Bush et al.?

Personally, I think the American experiment is over.  If anything
could restore my faith it would be George W. Bush dressed in an orange
prison jumpsuit and flip flops shuffling the rest of his life away in
the American equivalent of Spandau.  (As for Cheney, he should suffer
Sadam's fate, for all the world to see on YouTube. )

                              *****************************************

Hope you are enjoying fatherhood, Spike, and that you, Shelli, and the
podling are safe, happy, and healthy.

-- 
Best, Jeff Davis

               "Everything's hard till you
                     know how to do it."
                              Ray Charles