You have to feel bad for Patrrick Fitzgerald. If what he just filed is true, then the entire notion that there was a crime committed in the Plame case likely goes right out the window.
President Bush authorized White House official I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to disclose highly sensitive intelligence information to the news media in an attempt to discredit a CIA adviser whose views undermined the rationale for the invasion of Iraq, according to a federal prosecutor's account of Libby's testimony to a grand jury.The court filing by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time places Bush and Vice President Cheney at the heart of what Libby testified was an exceptional and deliberate leak of material designed to buttress the administration's claim that Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear weapons. The information was contained in the National Intelligence Estimate, one of the most closely held CIA analyses of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the war.
Fitzgerald said Libby's disclosure took place as the result of "a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House, to repudiate" claims made in a July 2003 newspaper article by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was hired by the CIA to evaluate whether Iraq sought nuclear material in Niger. Wilson wrote that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
The White House did not challenge the prosecutor's account of Bush's and Cheney's role in orchestrating the effort to discredit Wilson yesterday. Both Bush and Cheney have been interviewed by Fitzgerald, but the details of what they told him are unknown. Fitzgerald's new account is based on Libby's grand jury testimony that Cheney told him Bush had authorized the declassification and disclosure of some of the information.
Because after all -- as Commander in Chief, who has the ultimate authority to declassify information? President George W. Bush. And since it has long been established that he similarly authorized Vice President Dick Cheney to declassify information, any disclosures they authorized would be legal.
I guess Fitmas ain't coming for the Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferers after all
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Comments on If True, No Crime
not true -- libby is charged with lying during his grand jury testimony, which he apparently did if fitzgerald's filing is true. this would still be a crime even if libby did nothing wrong by leaking the information about plame in the first place.
more importantly, if libby's grand jury testimony is true then bush and cheney are both liars, because they claimed (and allowed others to claim) that they had nothing to do with the leaks and intended to punish anyone who did. this may not be a crime, but reflects badly on their integrity.
|| Posted by cba, April 7, 2006 06:12 AM ||Uh, that EO is hardly longstanding.
I suppose that when a Dem president gets elected (which is getting more and more inevitable day by day with acts and rationalizations such as those that the Administration has taken, despite the echo-chamber kool-aid-soaked pronouncements such as yours), any kind of wiretapping, surveillance, leaking of classified information, etc. is fair game, so long as he deems it in the interest of "national security."
Don't forget to say "doh" when you and yours are ultimately hoisted on your own petards, as some on your side have already realized is possible.
|| Posted by vc, April 7, 2006 06:38 AM ||Post a comment