The liars of Plamegate

Plus the leaker that Fitzgerald and the MSM ignore

1. Joe Wilson

A serial liar who started the whole kerfuffle. Watchblog documents his many lies:

Joe Wilson claimed that VP Cheney and CIA director Tenent both recommended him for the trip. It was a lie. He said his wife did not recommend him for the trip. It was a lie. He said that there was absolutely no evidence that Saddam ever even attempted, asked, or thought about buying yellowcake in Niger. It was a lie. He claimed that the documents were clearly forgeries because the names and dates were wrong. It was a lie because he never saw the documents, and US officials didn't receive them until eight months after his trip to Niger.

2. Valerie Plame

The Raw Story reports:

During last week's hearing with Lurita A. Doan, the Administrator of the General Services Administration, who was found to have violated the Hatch Act by politicking in a federal workplace, Davis attempted to refocus the session on Plame's testimony.

"Valerie Plame Wilson's sworn statements to this committee are irreconcilably inconsistent with her statements to the CIA inspector general and the Senate Intelligence Committee," he said in last Wednesday's hearing. "I would move the committee direct the chairman to issue a subpoena to Valerie Plame Wilson....She should be summoned to appear before this committee and address the irregularities in her sworn testimony."

Byron York at NRO has much more on Plame's inconsistency. Plame testified:

As she was telling me what had just happened, someone passed by, another officer heard this. He knew that Joe had already — my husband — had already gone on some CIA missions previously to deal with other nuclear matters. And he suggested, ‘Well, why don’t we send Joe?’” That, Mrs. Wilson testified, was the beginning of her husband’s mission to Africa.

The unnamed officer walking by ranks with "the dog ate my homework".

3. Patrick Fitzgerald

In his press press conference indicting Libby, Fitzgerald twice claimed that Libby was the first to leak Plame's identity. He did that in the full knowledge that Richard Armitage was the person who leaked Plame's identity to Novak. The public perception, perpetuated by the MSM, is that Libby was guilty of leaking Plame's identity. Fitzgerald lied to get that ball rolling and has done nothing to stop it. For a fascinating to-and-fro on Fitzgerald's conduct, check out this thread at BeldarBlog. Here's one commenter, who has obviously followed the case closely, unloading on Fitzgerald:

While I respect your expertise in legal matters, I find I must strongly disagree with you from a layman's perspective (which is the only one from which I can analyze events.) I strongly believe that Fitzgerald is at least as repugnant as Nifong, on a moral and ethical basis if not a legal one.

I'm prepared to admit that Fitzgerald's actions, assuming that his appointment was legitimate one — which I doubt based on the challenge to it, were LEGAL. Whether or not they were "just," moral, or ethical is another matter.

It has always been my belief that prosecutors were supposed to be more interested in achieving justice than in obtaining convictions, and that an important part of a prosecutor's duty to the citizenry he serves was to know when NOT to indict.

When Fitzgerald was appointed, the action was presented to the public as an investigation into whether there had been an improper leak of the identity of a covert agent, and to determine the source of that leak and punish it as legal and appropriate. There was an underlying theme often reported in the press that it was to determine "if the White House had improperly attacked ‘noble Joe Wilson, the whistle blower.'"

When Fitzgerald accepted his appointment it was already know that Armitage, not a member of the White House staff, was the "leaker." In spite of this, Fitzgerald continued with his investigation. What was he investigating?

Even if the FBI already questioned Libby's story, in what way was his statement MATERIAL to an on-going investigation. The "leaker" had been identified, and apparently had not committed a crime.

It seems that he wanted to find a "conspiracy" in the White House to discredit Wilson the Whistle Blower. What was the law that such a conspiracy would have violated? So long as the actions undertaken were legal, there would be no crime, but Fitzgerald, apparently, wanted to find it and punish it.

While Fitzgerald carefully avoided addressing the issue of whether or not an illegal leak of classified material, in violation of the "IPPA." had taken place during the bulk of the trial, it is important to note that he did NOT charge Richard Armitage with any crime. IF the release of the identity of Wilson's wife was such a critical, illegal and reprehensible event, why was Armitage not charged?

Throughout the investigation, Fitzgerald repeatedly did not pursue leads that might have discredited his theory that the White House was up to something nefarious. He was willing to jail Judy Miller to get her to testify, but he also agreed to not pursue the identity of the other sources that appeared to be referenced in her notes.

He did not interrogate the reporter who had alleged that "one highly placed White House Official had assigned two Administration flunkies to call six reporters to discredit Joe Wilson" (yes, I'm paraphrasing here, but I'm referring to the infamous "1x2x6 theory.")

I believe that he was engaged in a "perjury trap" to get some one in the Administration to "turn" so that he could get the "big shot" who was behind this "sinister conspiracy" even though such a conspiracy, had it exited, would have been legal. Such tactics are repugnant. They represent, to me at least, an attempt to punish some one for doing something that "should be illegal" — in the opinion of prosecutor.

Ultimately, Scooter Libby has been convicted of perjury because his story does not match the story of a reporter, Russert. I'm biased, but I'd tend to believe almost any honest working American before I'd believe a reporter.

Perhaps, indeed, Scooter Libby did lie. It seems a harmless one to me. Where is the "materiality" of it? What CRIME did it cover up? Fitzgerald ALREADY knew who the leaker was.

Fitzgerald's trial tactics continued the pattern. After resisting all attempts to try the "big case" he waited until his final "rebuttal" to introduce claims that Libby had done serious harm to national security, and to imply that he'd obstructed the detection of a sinister conspiracy in the White House. He did this at a point in the trial when it was impossible for the defense to properly challenge his claims. He introduced as facts things that had NOT been proven it court.

I find that approach worthy of the gestapo and not of what an American Prosecutor is supposed to do.

Scooter Libby is to serve 30 months for not having the same memory as a reporter. The person who actually committed the "horrible crime of outing a covert agent," Richard Armitage is not even charged with a misdemeanor. This is JUSTICE?

No, it is not. It is the action of an arrogant prosecutor who feels that he gets to decide what the law should be.

What Fitzgerald has done may well be legal, but it is not just or moral. The man has abused his position. I feel about him as a do about a corrupt cop.

I hope this explains my position in a reasonably coherent manner.

(Minor typos corrected)

Then we have the real leaker, Richard Armitage. He didn't lie, but he did obstruct justice. Fitzgerald ignored Armitage. One can't help thinking that was because Armitage did not work at the White House. From another comment on the BeldarBlog thread:

In fact, Armitage's actions were much more detrimental to the "leak" investigation (given that they hid Armitage's true role as the "first leaker") and bordered on witness tampering (by discussing the case with Marc Grossman before Grossman's first FBI interview and having a friend call Novak to remind him that Armitage's "leak" was inadvertant). Yet, for all his misdeads, Mr. Armitage has barely had to pay for legal counsel since this whole thing began, let alone defend himself in front of a jury for lying to the FBI, obstructing justice, witness tampering, and purjury.

As I noted previously, Armitage left Libby to hang when a simple public confession would have aborted the whole charade.

The only way for Libby to regain his good name is by going through the appeal process and winning.

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Mon Jul 02, 2007