Decision ‘08

A Sensible Reaction

Contrast the hyperventilating, broad, Greenwald-like response of the New York Times to the Libby verdict (detailed below) to that of the Washington Post, and you’ll see once again why the Times has little appeal beyond Manhattan liberal circles and why the Washington Post continues to rapidly eclipse it in the credibility department:

THE CONVICTION of I. Lewis Libby on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice was grounded in strong evidence and what appeared to be careful deliberation by a jury. The former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney told the FBI and a grand jury that he had not leaked the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame to journalists but rather had learned it from them. But abundant testimony at his trial showed that he had found out about Ms. Plame from official sources and was dedicated to discrediting her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Particularly for a senior government official, lying under oath is a serious offense. Mr. Libby’s conviction should send a message to this and future administrations about the dangers of attempting to block official investigations.

The fall of this skilled and long-respected public servant is particularly sobering because it arose from a Washington scandal remarkable for its lack of substance. It was propelled not by actual wrongdoing but by inflated and frequently false claims, and by the aggressive and occasionally reckless response of senior Bush administration officials — culminating in Mr. Libby’s perjury.

Mr. Wilson was embraced by many because he was early in publicly charging that the Bush administration had “twisted,” if not invented, facts in making the case for war against Iraq. In conversations with journalists or in a July 6, 2003, op-ed, he claimed to have debunked evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger; suggested that he had been dispatched by Mr. Cheney to look into the matter; and alleged that his report had circulated at the highest levels of the administration.

A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false — and that Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife. When this fact, along with Ms. Plame’s name, was disclosed in a column by Robert D. Novak, Mr. Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson.

The partisan furor over this allegation led to the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Yet after two years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald charged no one with a crime for leaking Ms. Plame’s name. In fact, he learned early on that Mr. Novak’s primary source was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, an unlikely tool of the White House. The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame’s identity — and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert.

It would have been sensible for Mr. Fitzgerald to end his investigation after learning about Mr. Armitage. Instead, like many Washington special prosecutors before him, he pressed on, pursuing every tangent in the case. In so doing he unnecessarily subjected numerous journalists to the ordeal of having to disclose confidential sources or face imprisonment. One, Judith Miller of the New York Times, lost several court appeals and spent 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify. The damage done to journalists’ ability to obtain information from confidential government sources has yet to be measured.

Mr. Wilson’s case has besmirched nearly everyone it touched. The former ambassador will be remembered as a blowhard. Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were overbearing in their zeal to rebut Mr. Wilson and careless in their handling of classified information. Mr. Libby’s subsequent false statements were reprehensible. And Mr. Fitzgerald has shown again why handing a Washington political case to a federal special prosecutor is a prescription for excess.

Mr. Fitzgerald was, at least, right about one thing: The Wilson-Plame case, and Mr. Libby’s conviction, tell us nothing about the war in Iraq.

Damn, that’s good…let’s repeat this bit again:

The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame’s identity — and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert.

Quite right…

UPDATE 9:59 a.m.: At the opposite extreme to the Times is the Wall Street Journal, which doth perhaps protest too much:

The word “guilty” had barely crossed the airwaves yesterday in the perjury case of Scooter Libby before critics were calling it proof that President Bush “lied us into war” and demanding that Dick Cheney be strung up next. Maybe now Mr. Bush will realize that this case was always a political fight over Iraq and do the right thing by pardoning Mr. Libby.

The conviction is certainly a travesty of justice, though that is not the jury’s fault. The 11 men and women were faced with confusing evidence of conflicting memories in a case that never should have been brought. In the end, they were persuaded more by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s story line that Mr. Libby, a former aide to Mr. Cheney, had lied to a grand jury about what he knew when about the status of CIA official Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush critic Joseph Wilson.

In hindsight, the defense seems to have blundered by portraying Mr. Libby as the “fall guy” for others in the White House. That didn’t do enough to rebut Mr. Fitzgerald’s theory of the case, and so the jury seems to have decided that Mr. Libby must have been lying to protect something. The defense might have been better off taking on Mr. Fitzgerald for criminalizing political differences.

For that, in essence, is what this case is really all about. We learned long ago–and Mr. Fitzgerald knew from the start of his probe in 2003–that Mr. Libby was not the source of the leak to columnist Robert Novak that started all this. Mr. Libby thus had no real motive to cover up this non-crime. What he did have strong cause to do was rebut the lies that Mr. Wilson was telling about the Administration and Mr. Cheney–lies confirmed as lies by a bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004.

Mr. Libby did talk to some reporters about the Administration’s case for war in 2003, and he did mention Ms. Plame in some cases. So the jury apparently decided that, when asked about those conversations by the FBI and grand jury, he had lied about his own sources of information about Joe Wilson and his wife. In other words, he has not been convicted of lying to anyone about the case for war in Iraq, or about Mr. Wilson or his wife.

Rather, he has been convicted of telling the truth about Mr. Wilson and Ms. Plame to some reporters but then not owning up to it. One tragic irony is that if Mr. Libby had only taken the Harold Ickes grand-jury strategy and said “I don’t recall,” he probably never would have been indicted. But our guess is that he tried to cooperate with the grand jury because he never really believed he had anything to hide. This may also explain why Mr. Libby never retained an experienced Beltway attorney until he was indicted.

Some of that is no doubt true, but the overall tone is a little overblown…

12 Responses to “A Sensible Reaction”

1 mikebdot Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Atrios gave fred hiatt the wanker of the day for that op-ed. Nearly every comment to the online version is negative. You should go offer your support…
2 Mark Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 9:58 am
No surprise, there…Atrios is associated with the George Soros-funded Media Matters, and is a cog in the Left Wing Noise Machine…
3 mikebdot Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 10:11 am
So, you’re going to use the left’s ad hominem attacks on them…fight fire with fire. Whatever floats your boat dude.
4 Mark Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 10:57 am
No, I’m just saying Atrios is a hack…
5 mikebdot Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 11:17 am
How so? No evidence? Just a truism…hmmm, not surprised much.
6 Mark Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Look, I know we’re on opposite sides of the partisan divide, but seriously - have you looked at Media Matters much? It’s a joke! They constantly ‘expose’ how some media figure dared to have an opinion that differed from liberal orthodoxy - it’s laughable, really.

Look at this item blasting Newsweek for daring to have a positive opinion of Rudy Giuliani…it’s all too typical…
7 Mark Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Also, read here for how Media Matters is in the tank for Hillary…
8 too many steves Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 11:56 am
“Rather, he has been convicted of telling the truth about Mr. Wilson and Ms. Plame to some reporters but then not owning up to it.”

Which is called “lying”. That it happened while under oath to tell the truth to a grand jury is, in fact, the point. Big swing and a miss by the Journal today.
9 mikebdot Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
What does any of that have to do with Atrios in specific? It’s guilt by association then? Not to mention the fact that the Newsweek piece is complete puffery, not a “positive opinion”. All complete puffery pieces need to be called out. They’re asinine and they add no value to the public discourse. Baseless truisms are bullspit (because typing the “p” made that comment acceptable…)
10 Mark Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Oh, fine, I just don’t like Atrios - happy? Anyway, my original point is that I wasn’t surprised Atrios would call the WaPo editor a ‘wanker’ for daring to have an opinion that didn’t match his own - and that’s the MO of Media Matters to a ‘T’, an organization with which he is associated…
11 Fargus Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
So you say, Mark, in agreement with the Post, that the trial proved that there was no concerted effort to out Plame?

How come just a few posts ago you were making the point that the trial wasn’t about that at all?
12 Mark Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Well, I don’t totally agree with the way that’s worded. I should have pointed that out when I singled it out…it’s true that the trial was not about those issues, and it would be hypocritical for me to single out for condemnation voices tying the trial to those issues on the left while praising a similar tying of the issues just because I liked the conclusion better, but that’s kind of what I did there.

What I hoped to highlight, and the point I should have made better, is that evidence from the trial just as easily supports the opposite conclusion than the one being drawn by most partisan opponents of President Bush.

But yeah, good catch, the way I presented it was kind of a case of me trying to have my cake and eat it, too. The wording I would prefer would be something along the lines of:

The evidence presented at the trial did not convincingly support the prosecution’s theory of motive, despite the broad-based conclusions being drawn by anti-Bush partisans. However, the prosecution did succeed for the most part in proving the narrower charges explicitly before the jury.