Decision ‘08

And You Thought I Could Resist This?

Okay, it’s Hitchens, first of all, and the subject is the absurdity of the Scooter Libby affair, in the second place, so the odds that I wouldn’t blog it are Slim and None - and Slim just left town:

If Scooter Libby goes to jail, it will be because he made a telephone call to Tim Russert and because Tim Russert has a different recollection of the conversation. Can this really be the case? And why is such a nugatory issue a legal matter in the first place?

Before savoring the full absurdity of the thing, please purge your mind of any preconceptions or confusions.

Mr. Libby was not charged with breaking the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

Nobody was ever charged with breaking that law, designed to shield the names of covert agents. Indeed, the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, determined that the law had not been broken in the first place.

The identity of the person who disclosed the name of Valerie Plame to Robert Novak—his name is Richard Armitage, incidentally—was known to those investigating the non-illegal leak before the full-dress inquiry began to grind its way through the system, incidentally imprisoning one reporter and consuming thousands of man hours of government time (and in time of war, at that).

In the other two “counts” in the case, both involving conversations with reporters (Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time), Judge Reggie Walton threw out the Miller count while the jury found for Libby on the Cooper count.

The call to Russert was not about Plame in any case; it was a complaint from the vice president’s office about Chris Matthews, who was felt by some to have been overstressing the Jewish names associated with the removal of Saddam Hussein. Russert was called in his capacity as bureau chief; any chitchat about Wilson and Plame was secondary.

The call was made after Robert Novak had put his fateful column (generated by Richard Armitage) on the wire, and after he had mentioned Plame’s identity to Karl Rove.

Does it not seem extraordinary that a man can be prosecuted, and now be condemned to a long term of imprisonment, because of an alleged minor inconsistency of testimony in a case where it is admitted that there was no crime and no victim?

Well, I don’t take as sanguine a view of perjury as the Hitch, but I do see the absurdity, all right. Read the rest for Hitchens’ three reasons the verdict may fall on appeal…

9 Responses to “And You Thought I Could Resist This?”

1 Scott Says:
June 18th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Mark, no doubt I posted my questions too late on previous threads, so I figured that I’d go first here in hopes of understanding your position.

For what reason do you think that Libby lied? That is, what were his reasons for lying? What “fall” did he take for Cheney?
What do you believe was the impact of his lies?
2 too many steves Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 5:21 am
Truly absurd is the fact that Libby lied - absurd and inexplicable. He stands convicted of lying to a grand jury and should be punished. There isn’t much more to say except that Bush is certain to pardon him.
3 Strick Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 7:57 am
I think Hitch is wrong in the second half of his second assertion. I don’t recall anything anywhere that suggests that Fitzgerald determined that the IIPA hadn’t been broken.

Fitz did imply that he didn’t think anyone could be convicted of breaking it, a subtle difference but important given that Fitz is basically asserting the reason he couldn’t get a conviction was that Libby lied.

I don’t think the facts support Fitz’s implied claim (and for that matter there are significant limitations in the law that make it difficult to convict anyone of breaking it), but it’s there and Hitch missed that one.
4 Gwedd Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Comrades,

The question is not whether Mr. Libby lied. It’s whether Mr Russert did, and, if so, why? Who/what is Mr. Russert covering for? Is there another agenda at work here?

Could there, perhaps, be an entrenched bias against the President so great that, grasping at any means to inflict SOME damage, Mr. Russert and his employers might lie to gain such an advantage?

It seems to me that there is much more going on here than certain parties wish to discuss. Conspiracy? Probably not. Adolescent pay-back attempts? Quite possibly.

I have been a jurist. I have been a witness in a criminal proceeding. To say that the truth is being actively sought during any trial in this system of American “Justice’ is absurd, and displays a naivite beyond belief.

Our system searches only for victims, and winners/losers. It is an adversarial system with stringent rules that rewards one side or the other with points towards victory rather than with any pretense of finding the truth of the matter. Truth is irrelevant, other than it’s use or misuse may be, and can, as in this case, be used for further prosecution in the furtherance of political aims.

My money is on Russert being the liar, not Libby, but that’s my own opinion.

Respects,
5 peter Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Hitchens’s first sentence is also incorrect. There were a number of people (I think eight) who directly contradicted Libby, not just Tim Russert. Trying to make it into a single “he said, she said” issue is a non-starter.

The fact that nobody was indicted for disclosing a secret agent is also irrelevant (his suggestion is that perjury is OK provided the underlying issue does not rise to the level of an indictable offense?), as well as the fact that there may not have been an underlying crime (just ask Martha Stewart).

As noted elsewhere, I don’t think that Libby should be jailed because I think his suffering thus far is more than proportional to the crimes. However, watching people like Hitchens reflexively try to argue that there is no harm and no foul when it’s their guy who is guilty shows that his interest is not in being fair or impartial, but rather in continuing this endless game of kickball between right and left.
6 Mark Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
I hardly think Scooter Libby is Hitchens’ guy…Hitchens is certainly not a Bush administration apologist, to say the very least…however, Hitchens does clearly believe that this entire prosecution is a complete waste of time, since the leaker was never under any threat of indictment, and in that, he’s 100% correct…

Scott, I think Scooter Libby lied because he thought that Fitzgerald was sniffing around trying to dig up some dirt on his boss, and he instinctively fell on his sword. The absurd part, as too many steves notes above, is that there was NO NEED to have lied. He misread the situation, in other words, catastrophically, in his case.

The impact of his lies? Very minimal - Fitz had nothing on Cheney, and he wouldn’t have gone after him in any event, since to do so would have required compelling evidence that he not only directed Libby to disclose Plame’s identity, but did so with the knowledge that her identity was protected under the IIPA - an impossible bridge to cross. If Scooter Libby’s telling the truth was the only path to get Cheney, Scooter was going to make damn sure that didn’t happen.

The other reason the impact was minimal was that Richard Armitage had apparently already personally notified every member of the Washington press corps of her identity.

Why did he lie? The instinctive move to make sure your man is covered. Should he have lied? Of course not. Should he go to prison? I agree with Peter that he has already suffered enough…I’ve stated now on too many occasions to count that justice demands he go to prison, therefore I appeal to mercy…
7 Scott Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Fine Mark, I’d like to hear that from Libby. Fitz was willing to cut him slack if Libby would come clean - but he didn’t. He still won’t. You are advocating mercy for an unrepentant liar, seemingly because of your support of his partisian intent.

The fact that he still won’t tell the truth exposes a pretty big hole in your theory.

By the way, what do you think would have happened if Fitz discovered that Cheney had directed Libby to expose Plame, but he didn’t know that she was covert? You know, he did it but without intent to break the law. Would the effect be minimal?
8 Mark Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Yes, because Armitage had already exposed her and the Novak article had already run…
9 Scott Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
So the president says that anyone leaking this information will be removed from his administration. And you say that it wouldn’t matter if it was determined that the VP was behind the leak. And you say this because someone else had done it first??? That doesn’t make any sense.

If two people leak the same information, then second person isn’t responsible??? Is this always true, or only in an election year?

Finally, Novak’s article ran on July 14. The Libby leaks occurred in June and early July, before the article.