On December 30, 2003, Deputy Attorney General of the United States, James Comey, wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, authorizing him to investigate "the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity." Thus, the Valerie Plame investigation became the latest in a long line of political tempests given to an independent counsel.
Over two years later, the only indictment from this investigation is the indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby for the peripheral charges of perjury, false statement and obstruction of justice. In essence, what Libby told Fitzgerald, his investigators and the grand jury was different than what someone else said and different than what some records implied.
Libby was not indicted for outing a covert CIA agent. Libby was not indicted for leaking classified information. Supposedly, Libby said that he learned about Plame's employment with the CIA from NBC's Tim Russert when actually he learned about it from government sources a month earlier than his conversation with Russert. The offense of perjury requires that someone lie about a material fact. Whether who told Libby about Plame is even a material fact or not is a discussion for another day. But he certainly has some issues to argue.
Libby's attorneys have begun trying to obtain discovery from Fitzgerald. "Discovery" is a legal term describing documents, statements and other evidence that one side is to turn over to the other side in a court case in preparation for trial.
According to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Fitzgerald is required to turn over certain tangible evidence in his control whether he intends to use it at trial or not. Further, pursuant to the case of Brady v. Maryland, Fitzgerald is supposed to turn over evidence that might be exculpatory. This is where the parties are in the process.
Libby's attorneys requested, among other things, an assessment of the harm, if any, the revelation of Ms. Plame's employment caused. A perfectly reasonable request, one would think, given the fact that such harm was the reason that Mr. Fitzgerald was doing this investigation.
Mr. Fitzgerald, though, wrote back to the defense attorneys, "A formal assessment has not been done of the damage caused by the disclosure of Valerie Wilson's status as a CIA employee, and thus we possess no such document."
If this were April 1st, I would think that the next sentence would be "April Fools!" That has to be Pat Fitzgerald's attempt at humor. Right?
The entire reason for the investigation was because there was some harm caused by the outing of a "covert operative". Right? But here we have the special prosecutor saying that no formal assessment of what harm, if any occurred, and further using the term "CIA employee", instead of "agent", "operative", etc.
Mr. Fitzgerald, other than spending taxpayer dollars and fueling the speculation of leftist bloggers, what the hell have you been doing for the past two years?
As a former prosecutor myself, I have been involved in grand jury investigations. The first assessment that is routinely made is whether the complained of conduct even constitutes a crime. In other words, Mr. Fitzgerald and his team should have, from the beginning, evaluated the relevant statutes, determine whether Ms. Plame's status is covered and THEN make a determination if some harm occurred from the conduct in question.
Apparently, none of that mattered to Mr. Fitzgerald. He doesn't know if any harm has occurred. He hasn't even evaluated to see if any harm has occurred and apparently, hasn't determined whether she was even a covert operative or not on the dates in question.
Again I am forced to ask, what the hell have you been doing for the past two years?
After two years, millions of dollars and one BS indictment, we still don't know if Valerie Plame was a covert operative with the CIA. We still don't know if the revelation of her employment to the world caused any real harm. We do know, however, that her husband is a shameless self promoter who has talked out of both sides of his mouth concerning Iraq, Niger and his wife. We do know, however, that other sources confirmed that Iraq was trying to resume trade with Niger. We do know, however, that the only thing of value that Niger had to sell to Iraq was uranium. Those things are without question.
Mr. Fitzgerald, perhaps it's time you answered some questions.
5 comments:
Steve, don't expect Fitzgerald to answer any questions. He's just doing what the left wants him to be - an "attack dog" who's job it is to play the "blame game" in the Valerie Plame affair. It does NOT matter if a law or laws have been broken or not, it's his job to place any "blame" as HIGH in the Bush Administration as possible. And, if there is no "blame," MAKE IT LOOK AS THOUGH THERE IS, so the left can "say:" 'See? Doesn't that look suspicious? If a Bush cronie appears guilty, then Bush IS guilty.' That's how the left works.
And for the chance at a "gotcha" moment, another dry hole was dug, at the taxpayers' expense.
I always believed the Plame affair was a tempest in a teapot, and, it seems, billions of dollars later, that was a fair assessment.
I agree that Fitzgerald has done a half a@@ed job as investigator here. What bothers me just about as much is that the other investigation, that of Cisneros, is being buried while the MSM is pushing this whole idiotic investigation that Fitzgerald has done. Seems to me that if we paid for the investigation of Cisneros, and we certainly did that, then we are totally entitled to see the results. The same with this mess that Fitzgerald has fomented on us. We need to see what he has done and what he has accomplished with this whole lot of investigation as well as that sham of a press conference he held where he tried and convicted Libby in the press. I think Libby is going to be in the same situation as Ray Donovan was back in the 80's. They held an investigation that found him innocent and his statement to the press was that he wondered where he had to go to get his reputation back after they damaged it. Nobody could answer that then and I don't think they will answer it for Libby now either.
In my humble opinion, this was a fraudulent claim against Libby, for Fitzgerald to make and it is odd how he became the Special Prosecuter, or so I have heard..Plame's husband, the lying SOB, after everything was said and done and he had a trial going, said his wife was NOT a covert agent..The government spends too much money on cases like this, most started by the liberals who whine about deficits, and these trials cost a fortune..Two years is too long, this should be over and done with, there was no outting of a covert agent, ergo, no trial. And how about Karl Rove? He was #1 on the enemie's list....
I wait with bated breath for Democrat campaigns to connect twin issues of corruption and budget deficit. The bridge between those two issues is not a bridge to nowhere but will certainly pass over the Plame case as Democrats stump their states.
Post a Comment