Libby Loses Contentious Court Case
By Chad A. B. Wilson
Published March 6, 2007, 2:24 pm in News, Ethics, Morality, & Justice.
Wow, a change again. I wanted to discuss the Walter Reed scandal, stating how I think this scandal, when coupled with all of the others, puts the Bush administration's handling of the war in very dim light.
But then I just saw that the Libby trial is now ended, and Libby is guilty. Now that's interesting, and I have to talk about it right now.
A lot of us haven't been paying attention, I know, and I include myself here. It was really interesting at first, but then the whole thing just seemed as if it were silly and maybe even missing the point. Now there are new things afoot. For those who haven't been paying attention, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was charged with five counts of perjury before a grand jury and lying to the FBI, as well as obstruction of justice. He has now been convicted on four of those counts, according to a CNN article: "obstruction of justice when he intentionally deceived a grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame; making a false statement by intentionally lying to FBI agents about a conversation with NBC newsman Tim Russert; perjury when he lied in court about his conversation with Russert; a second count of perjury when he lied in court about conversations with other reporters"
Why would Libby be lying in the first place? Well, it hinges on Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson. Supposedly, Libby leaked to reporters the fact that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA operative. He leaked it because her husband Joseph Wilson, a U.S. ambassador, had written an editorial criticizing the Bush administration for misusing his intelligence. You remember the intelligence, I'm sure: that Saddam Hussein had acquired uranium from Africa. Well, Wilson's intelligence had discredited this, and so he wrote about that to the American people. I hope you remember why it's important, too. It was one of the primary "facts" Colin Powell used in his speech before the U.N. when he tried to convince everyone that Iraq was a danger and should be invaded.
A few days after Wilson wrote this piece, the fact that his wife is a CIA operative appears in the news, and Wilson claims that it was retaliation for his opinion. So Libby supposedly leaked the information and then proceeded to lie about it, claiming that he did not, or that he first heard about it from other reporters, so it wasn't a secret.
There are several things about this that bother me, and I will bring them up one by one:
Dubious Charges Lead to Dubious Convictions
First, the charges of perjury and obstruction of justice are fine by me, but they goes back to old saying about politicians and crime: they never get convicted for things they do; they get convicted of trying to cover them up. Notice that nothing here says that Libby broke the law by leaking Plame's identity. Nothing here says anything about retaliation for the op-ed piece. And nothing definitely says anything about the misuse of intelligence gathered by Wilson. Instead, Libby lied and tried to prevent the investigation by "obstructing justice." Big whoop. It's like getting Al Capone on tax invasion or Nixon on perjury. It's just not the same. People are claiming that justice was served, but I'm not sure. I have a feeling, however, that we're getting to that point.
Even Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, said that "It's about time someone in the Bush administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics...Lewis Libby has been convicted of perjury, but his trial revealed deeper truths about Vice President Cheney's role in this sordid affair. Now President Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct."
Whoa, where did that come from: someone "had been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics"? And Vice President Cheney was proven to have played a role "in this sordid affair"? I didn't see any of that in the charges, and I would say definitively that no one has been "held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence." Nope, nothing like it. Just perjury and obstruction of justice. Get someone on small charges like this, and they may go to jail, but it's not for the thing we want.
I love the preemptive strike there, too. He says that Bush should "pledge not to pardon Libby," even though Bush has never said that he's even thinking of pardoning him. By planting the seed, however, Reid has done something masterful: he has made us think that Bush wants to pardon him. Now Bush can't do it, at least not without a furor over it.
Dubious People Don't Really Matter
Second, not only did the charges miss the point, but they seem to have missed the wrong people.
Even the convictions have been handed down, the trial isn't over. There will be a few appeals, of course, but there's more to it than that. Wilson and Plame actually have a civil suit against Vice President Dick Cheney, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Bush political advisor Karl Rove, and Libby himself. According to a statement by Plame and Wilson, ""The civil suit...hinges on whether or not the defendants violated the constitutional rights of Valerie and Joe Wilson by making those disclosures in a concerted effort to retaliate against Joe Wilson for revealing the falsity of the president's rationale for the Iraq war." Now there's an interesting trial. That one will be worth watching, I think, and I wouldn't miss that one for anything. If they can actually get these guys on the stand and convict them, then that's interesting. Don't count on it, though. As member of the higher ups, they're trying to get immunity. Government officials shouldn't have to worry about getting sued, they say. They're something to that, of course. But if they broke the law, they broke the law, and they should have to stand trial for it.
According to CNN, "One juror, Denis Collins, said, 'There was a tremendous amount of sympathy for Mr. Libby on the jury...It was said, "Where's Rove, where are these other guys?"...We're not saying that we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was the fall guy.'"
Wow, if a juror says that, I wonder how the rest of the nation feels about it.
A Caveat
If anyone has been reading this column since October 2006 when I first started writing it, then you know I started off fairly moderate. I wanted to give Bush the benefit of the doubt; I wanted to give the Iraq war the benefit of the doubt; I wanted to trust my government, that it does the right thing. I was not a republican by any stretch, but I didn't mind them, and I still vote for a few of them in every election. But as the column has gone on, I'm not so sure about these things, and I have a feeling that this will become a strand running through my columns. I know the next one is turning out that way, as I try to discuss Abu Gharib, I mean Walter Reed Hospital.
What I don't want, and what I will try very hard to avoid, is a column that does nothing but engage in Bush bashing. If read the blogs, it's a popular sport right now, and everyone's doing it. Heck, it's a game that's so easy to learn and really easy to excel at. But it doesn't help anyone. I would rather bring up an interesting topic and discuss the ramifications than focus my column on simply bashing the Bush administration. But then everything keeps pointing that way. The news keeps pushing me in that direction; everything I hear sends me more to the left.
After my next column, I will try to find something more moderate to say, though. I promise: I will not bash Bush in every column. At least I will try not to...
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