Arnold G. York
They got the wrong guy in the box
I’ve been following the trial of Scooter Libby with almost morbid fascination and a certain shameful glee. Scooter, as most of you know, was Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, longtime confidante and ally, number one team player, hatchet man, media contact and also number one leaker when it served Cheney’s purposes not to leak it himself.
Poor Scooter did it all, without question or back talk, a team player to the very end. He was Cheney’s willing co-conspirator in crime until the VP turned on him and decided he was to be the designated felon, thereby throwing him to the wolves.
One particular wolf wore the red-cloaked disguise of Special Counsel (or Special Prosecutor) Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who had spent a considerable amount of time and considerable coin of the realm looking for some poor unfortunate to devour. Now, no special prosecutor wants to come up empty handed because it makes him seem ineffective and frivolous. And, although their charge is to seek justice, don’t you believe it for one second. Their real charge is to bring down some large dangerous game, so after they’ve been doing it for awhile, all caution goes to the wind and they’d drown puppies to get a conviction.
Stop for a moment and think about all the people the special prosecutor could have indicted if he wanted to, mindful of the old adage that “most grand juries would indict a ham sandwich,” if the prosecutor so wanted.
He could have indicted the president, George W. Bush. Well, probably not. There were enough people between the president and the leakers of the highly sensitive information that Valerie Plame was a CIA employee to probably make old W bulletproof. Besides, there are all sorts of constitutional protections given to the president.
Fitzgerald could have indicted Vice President Cheney, who apparently took a very personal and direct role in stage-managing the attempt to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson is the husband of Plame. The ambassador was sent to Africa to find out if the story about Iraq purchasing nuclear material from Niger was true, because the source was somewhat suspect. Wilson came back from Africa and said the entire story was bogus, which did not sit well with the White House because that supposed attempt to buy nuclear material was part of the rationale for going into Iraq.
Now both the VP and Scooter knew that the African nuclear material story was bogus because they saw Wilson’s report. It’s possible the president also knew the info was bogus; that is, if they included the information in his daily CIA briefings, which is an open question. Nevertheless, that bogus material managed to get inserted into the president’s State of the Union address, so the White House was deeply disturbed when Ambassador Wilson took the real information public in The New York Times. Then the White House, led by Cheney, went into a major counteroffensive.
It seems to me the special prosecutor could have indicted the vice president for obstruction of justice, but he didn’t because the veep had an easy defense. All he had to say was that the president ordered him to do it in the interests of national security. Besides, if he indicted the vice president, the entire resources of the federal government would be there in opposition to the prosecution.
Fitzgerald could also have indicted Karl Rove, the president’s right-hand man. The Republican strategist, who was stage-managing the president’s reelection campaign, was also, apparently, knee-deep in leaking the Plame information. But Rove had the same potential defense as the vice president, and besides nothing was going to get in the way of the re-election campaign.
Fitzgerald could have indicted Ambassador Wilson, because I’m sure the information that showed up in the letter to The New York Times was classified and, in effect, he was leaking classified information without authorization. However, the indictment would never fly, since the ambassador was correct and the White House was lying. And Fitzgerald, apparently, didn’t want to take on the White House directly. Besides, the special prosecutor is no fool and he knew it would be a big problem if he indicted someone for telling the truth.
So it looks to me like special prosecutor Fitzgerald made a deal with the White House. He granted Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary, immunity, supposedly without knowing what he would say, which is highly unlikely. Then he backed off on Cheney and Rove, and they then delivered Libby to the wolves on what looks to be some very iffy charges. The White House apparently agreed to support the prosecution and now all the White House canaries are chirping the prosecution song. And unless the jury is very sophisticated, old Scooter will probably go down.
You might well ask, how do I know that Cheney delivered his closest confidant to the prosecutor to save his own neck? The reason is if Scooter had any idea that his old buddy was going to turn on him, he would have covered his backside. He would have worn a wire and taped some of his talks with the VP and with Rove. He would have made copies of all his e-mails with Cheney, Rove and the president, if, in fact, he had direct contact with Bush. He would have grabbed copies of any document he could to make it politically dangerous to indict him. Also, his lawyer could have gone to the special prosecutor early on and bargained for immunity, and in exchange Scooter could have worn a wire for the prosecutor. Apparently, none of that happened because poor old Scooter is sitting in the box and everyone is remembering everything that was said three or four years ago.
By the way, my list of possible people to indict would be incomplete without Robert Novak, the guy who actually printed Plame’s name in his column. The special prosecutor indicted old Scooter for disclosing something that half the Washington press corps already knew, while totally ignoring the guy who brought it public. Very strange and very interesting.
The truth is, I hope old Scooter beats the rap. Not because he’s innocent, which I suspect he’s not, but because the entire prosecution stinks to high heaven and I don’t like to see the justice system used so cynically to cover some political backsides. Besides, they got the wrong guy in the box.