The whole investigation was supposed to be about who leaked the name of CIA analyst Valerie Plame to the press, and whether any actual crime had been committed. Instead, special persecutor (no, that's not a typo) Patrick Fitzgerald went after Scooter Libby, not for leaking a name but for lying to FBI investigators and obstructing justice. Special persecutor Fitzgerald KNEW who the leaker was: The State Department's Richard Armitage, a motor-mouth gossip and a critic even at that time of the Bush administration's move toward war in Iraq.
And yet, even though the special persecutor KNEW who the leaker was, he continued to grill everyone else he could investigate, trying to find any inconsistencies in their testimony so that he could persecute them for perjury. A question: Do you remember in which order you discussed a particular issue on your job with people six months ago? Would you be willing to testify under oath about it? The correct answer is, "No, how the hell would I remember something that far back?!?!" And if you had a politically-motivated special persecutor bringing the weight of the "Justice" Department down on your head, you'd be looking at the same sort of sentence as Scooter Libby. Think about that. There, but for the grace of God and the lack of a special persecutor, go you.
If someone has told you that the Bushies deliberately leaked Plame's name as payback for her husband's bogus New York Times op-ed piece about what he claims he found in Niger, then that person lied to you, because Armitage wasn't carrying water for the Bush administration.
And so, we had this travesty of an investigation. There was no underlying crime committed, and THIS was the best that special persecutor Fitzgerald could come up with: A political witch-hunt in Washington. Well congratulations, Cotton Mather! You found that witch, alright. There's no way that a Republican can get a fair trial in that town. As David Frum noted in David Frum's Diary at National Review Online:
Now we remember why Democrats are so much more eager than Republicans to criminalize politics: Because they know that the ultimate power over the lives and liberties of the contestants is held by juries drawn from the most Democratic jurisdiction in the country. Would Scooter have been convicted - would a prosecutor ever have dared to try him - if the capital of the United States were located in say Indianapolis?Or Salt Lake City, the real anti-Washington? No way. And President Bush should pardon Scooter Libby, ASAP.
