Libby’s Can Of Worms

by digby

So William Kristol has reluctantly come to the conclusion that Fitzgerald is on a partisan witch hunt because if Libby told the Grand Jury that Cheney instructed him to selectively leak the NIE to Judy Miller that means the rest of his testimony must have been true. Video from Crooks and Liars, transcript via Think Progress:

KRISTOL: In fact, we don’t know she was a covert operative, and Patrick Fitzgerald won’t even claim that. Patrick Fitzgerald isn’t investigating the actual source of the leak of Mrs. Wilson’s name, which was the Bob Novak column. We still don’t know who told Robert Novak, apparently Scooter Libby didn’t. You know, the leak story is absurd, but I now think the whole prosecution is absurd. And I have hesitated to say this, because I have friends who respect Fitzgerald, but I now think it’s a politically motivated attempt to wound the Bush administration. Why did Fitzgerald release — I mean, the theory of Fitzgerald’s perjury case against Libby, which is the only crime that’s alleged here, perjury and related crimes…obstruction of justice through perjury, really, for misleading the FBI or the grand jury. The theory of that case is Libby didn’t tell the truth, he didn’t say that Cheney had told him to do this, he blamed it on reporters, because he wanted to protect the Vice President or the President. Now it turns out that Libby, in testifying to the grand jury, carefully explained that he was authorized to go ahead and discuss the National Intelligence Estimate by the Vice President and the President.

Even Brit Hume recognizes that this misses the point:

HUME: But not Valerie Plame, necessarily.

Exactly. Libby was not charged with perjury for things he didn’t lie about. I would think that would be perfectly obvious. Kristol realizes that at this point, so he starts to spin like a dervish:

KRISTOL: But not Valerie Plame, which was tangential, and which came up toward the end, apparently, of the conversation with Judy Miller. It was never central in those two or three weeks. It seems to me that Fitzgerald’s case is crumbling. He’s refusing to close his investigation of Karl Rove and other people. If you read his 39-page rebuttal to Libby, he focuses now on Cheney. He is now out to discredit the Bush administration. He has bought the argument that there is something improper about the Bush administration responding to Joe Wilson’s charges, and that’s the real meaning of what’s happened these last few days, which is very dangerous for the Bush administration. They now have a special prosecutor out not to convict Scooter Libby, but out to discredit the administration.

That’s nonsense, but it signals that we are finally going to get the pushback we’ve been expecting. This thing is escalating, Bush himself has been implicated, and this is their final fallback position.

For those of you who (like me) get a headache when you read things like Kristol’s spin, let me explain in simple terms what it appears Fitz was actually doing. There’s no proof he’s focusing on Cheney, but Cheney has become important in this discovery process because of Libby’s blanket requests for documents:

• Libby hopes to show that he and others in the White House thought the Plame matter was no big deal and therefore it is reasonable to assume that he just forgot he had earlier told a number of people who she was when he testified to the grand jury that he first learned of Plame’s identity from Tim Russert.
• Libby has asked to review numerous documents that Fitzgerald does not believe are germane to the case, but which Libby claims will bolster this defense. One of the claims is that he needs to review certain documents that will show the “context” of the leaks.
• Fitzgerald is obligated to show why these documents need not be produced and he makes a number of legal arguments to that effect.
• As to the “context” Fitz makes the argument that the “context” actually proves that Libby would not have forgotten these particular details of a high level operation which Libby admitted in his testimony was quite unusual. The odd and unprecedented selective declassification of the NIE, the instructions that Scooter speak on “deep backround” to Judith Miller, the fact that he was tasked with this job rather than Cathie Martin, Cheney’s press secretary, all speak to the fact that this was a special job. The overt acts of cover-up show that he knew exactly what he was doing.

Kristol should probably look a little closer to his own circle if he thinks someone is trying to harm the administration with this investigation. After all, none of this would have come out if Libby hadn’t first lied, and now requested that Fitzgerald allow him to rummage willy nilly through government files under the specious claim that it would help him prove that he forgot the unforgettable.

He and his lawyers know very well that his massive document “context” request would likely result in Fitzgerald presenting the court with his evidence that Bush had declassified the document. You can’t blame him. He’s making Fitzgerald lay out some of his case for his own purposes. But let’s not blame the prosecutor for that. Libby’s doing what’s necessary to save his own skin. And Fitzgerald is using what he has to squeeze others who are in his sights. They both are playing an inside and an outside game.

But make no mistake. This is Libby’s doing all the way (and I suspect that certain high level white house officials are rueing the day they ever met him.) He and Rove lied, crudely and stupidly, undoubtedly under the impression that they could not be caught because the reporters would never testify against him. Rove was a little slipperier and it remains to be seen if he’s been caught. But Libby lost that gamble and now he may take the administration down with him. Fitzgerald is only the instrument of Bush’s problems; Libby is the cause.

I think perhaps Kristol is getting Fitz confused with partisan hack Ken Starr, the man who leaked volumes of disparaging information about Bill Clinton to the press during the Lewinsky investigation. He and his prosecutors actually cooperated secretly with a political lynch mob to try to get the president to resign in disgrace. You can understand why Kristol would get the wrong idea. He, like most conservatives, erroneously believes that all prosecutors are obligated by God to be partisan Republicans. He feels disappointed and betrayed that Fitzgerald is playing it straight so he’s lashing out. Poor baby.

Update: It’s interesting that Fitz says he won’t be calling Rove as a witness and refuses to allow Libby to see the documentation on him. After all, when you’re talking about context of the “concerted effort” to smear Wilson you would certainly be interested in seeing the Grand Jury testimony in which Rove reportedly says this (from Murray Waas way back in March of 2004):

President Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel’s investigation of the matter.

But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak’s column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.

Rove seems to have given detailed testimony about the “concerted effort. Why ever do you suppose Fitzgerald isn’t planning to call him as a witness?

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