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October 30, 2005
If It Says Libby, Libby Libby On The Indictment....
Yes, the first shoe of the Plame investigation has dropped, with Dick Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby getting indicted on Friday and resigning. (I'm going to avoid the too-easy comments about a grown man allowing himself to be called "Scooter," although Pete has an amusing twist on the joke.)
First of all, there's so much to discuss here... first of all, for an outstanding overview of the case, of what Libby's indictment means, what could be next, and why this matters so much in the first place, I urge you to check out Fire Dog Lake, whose authors have really gone very in-depth in their analyses.
Libby's indictment is being whined about incessantly by conservatives, many of whom seem to believe that they are above the law and that any effort to challenge them on that assertion results from a conspiracy of liberal politicians or the liberal media. It's been almost amusing to see the froth coming from their mouths over the Fitzgerald investigation, the claims of it being a politically motivated witch hunt in which the primary goal is less investigating a crime than charging someone with one; in Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson's words, "And secondly, I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."
Gee, sounds an awful lot like what the Ken Starr investigation debacle was, doesn't it Kay-Kay? Ken was supposed to be investigating Whitewater, was he not? And yet the charges against Clinton stemmed from his lying to the grand jury about Monica Lewinsky (who was totally unrelated to Whitewater) -- whom he was asked about in relation to his testimony relating to Paula Jones (also uninvolved with Whitewater). So even assuming for one moment, for the sake of argument, that there were no crimes committed in the leak of Valerie Plame's name (there were, but let's just pretend). Hutchinson, her Republican cronies, and conservative toadies across the country are now telling you this: When Republicans spent $52 million of your taxpayer money seven years ago to find something -- anything -- on Bill Clinton, that was okay... but now that someone's doing it to us, it's really not fair and we don't like it.
"I think we should be very careful here, especially as we are dealing with something very public and people's lives in the public arena. I do not think we should prejudge. I think it is unfair to drag people through the newspapers week after week after week," Hutchinson has said. Okay, Kay. Whatever you say. See Bill Clinton, 1998-1999. These're some ugly chickens come home to roost, ain't they kids? That's simply assuming that there were no crimes committed.
(By the way, is anyone really surprised that Libby and Rove are already trotting out the tried and true Republican response of "I don't recall?" It's a pathetic insult to the intlligence of the American people that every time some member of this party -- Oliver North, John Poindexter, Bud McFarlane, Ronald Reagan, just to name a few... and now Scooter Libby and Karl Rove -- gets their misdeeds suddenly exposed to light, they suddenly develop an epic case of amnesia. Just one more reflection of this administration's lack of character.)
There is a very real question that has still yet to be answered: just how did Valerie Plame's name and identity manage to find their way into Robert Novak's column -- especially when Plame's identity and role within the CIA was under cover? Bob Novak didn't just walk over to Langley one afternoon and ask the gate guards if anyone associated with Joseph Wilson worked there. He didn't find out casually. Someone told him. The two questions left are: Who? And why?
The why seems self-evident: because someone was seeking to discredit Joseph Wilson for his public declaration (you know, the one that time proved incontrovertibly true?) that the yellowcake uranium from Niger story was bogus. Someone wanted revenge. Someone wanted to cover up this administrations lies, to keep the cover from coming off the carefully constructed yet wholly phony story that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he was ready to use against the United States and its allies. And that's the bigger picture people shouldn't lose focus on here.
There were two crimes committed in this case. The first is that somebody leaked Valerie Plame's name and identity to the press, thus potentially endangering national security. (No, that's not a stretch. If you've ever had any exposure to the intelligence community, you know that association means everything. Even though Plame was back in the US and doing work at CIA headquarters, she had previously been in the field... and in her job would have had to associate with foreign nationals. Lots of foreign intelligence agencies, not to mention terrorist organizations, have long memories when it comes to associating with Americans... it's likely that anyone who associated with Plame during her time in the field now has some 'splainin' to do to someone who wants to know what exactly they used to say to the CIA agent, and whether they knew who she was. If the person in question had since infiltrated a sleeper cell or was letting the US know what a hostile government knew about things in their part of the world, that person may well now be in mortal danger -- and the potentially life-saving information the US might have gotten from them is now lost. Sure, it might not be that dire. But it could be -- and this administration irresponsibly ignored that, and put our national security potentially at risk, in a petulent, spiteful attempt to extract revenge on a domestic political opponent.
The second crime is a larger one, and I fear it's being lost in the noise around Libby, Plame, and what Rove may have said to whom. The allegations at the heart of this matter -- that Saddam Hussein tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger -- were completely and totally bogus, based on forged documents. Someone assigned by the CIA -- not to mention other members of the intelligence apparatus -- told George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and everyone as much. And yet rather than acknowledge the reality before them, this administration -- Rove, Libby, Cheney, and up to this president -- made the choice to instead try and discredit the messenger, and pressed forward full speed ahead with their invasion plans. This government knew that its pretense for war with Iraq was a lie, and they took our nation to war anyway.
2000 lives and $2,000,000,000 later, people are focusing on who said whose name to whom, and when. I just hope that this is not the iceberg, but merely the tip. If the Plame scandal takes down Libby, and maybe Rove, over the leak of a confidential name... it's a defeat wrapped in a victory. For if this is the extent of the prosecution -- or even of the focusing of attention -- than we the American people will have missed the critical larger point.
