After 10 days of deliberating, a jury convicted Libby on four counts of lying and obstructing an investigation into how former CIA operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked to reporters after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Portrayed by defence lawyers as a fall guy who simply has a lousy memory, the former chief of staff for Vice-President Dick Cheney faces several years in prison.
I don't want to cut off any discussion on the previous two posts, which I think are more vital discussions to carry on than this one, but I was just wondering if anyone out there is betting on how long before Scooter gets a pardon? Do you think he'll actually spend time in jail?
Do you think he should be pardoned? On what basis?
For my part, I have little doubt that he'll be pardoned. The Republicans have a history (see Reagan administration) of pardoning their cronies who've got in trouble for lying to the US (the Dems, for their part, have problems with pardoning the wrong people, too).
11 comments:
Cuidado, here, Dan. Set the partisanism aside for a moment and consider yourself in this situation.
Libby was accused (not just investigated) of a crime that did not exist. It would be like the the prosecutors in Louisville filing a legal complaint against you for, let's say, failure to own a car.
During the prosecutor's discoveries, formal gathering of data pursuant to your trial, they want to look at all your personal records. You protest that they are investigating something that is not illegal in the first place and move for a ruling on that before agreeing to disclose any information.
The courts then decide that, yes, you are right. Failure to own a car is not illegal. They were accusing you of something that was not a crime nor liability. BUT since you didn't accurately disclose all the personal information they demanded, you are now guilty of obstructing justice and so you have to go to jail for a year.
Is this the precedent you want to set?
eleutheros, Thanks for a good post!
The prosecutor insists that Ms. Plame was undercover. Okay, then why all the effort on Libby when Armitage admitted being the source of the leak (along with Rove and Cheney). THEY should be indicted for treason instead of people being satisfied that Libby is found guilty of obstruction of justice.
I do not agree with eleutheros' echo of the GOP position here. Libby was clearly guilty of obstruction and perjury--the same crimes that Clinton was charged with in the much-less-serious (legally speaking) Lewinsky matter. Conservatives HOWLED at him getting off, but then want to claim that Libby wasn't even accused of a crime. Nonsense.
I'm just ticked off that we are settling for Libby instead of going after the REAL lawbreakers.
Michael:"Libby was clearly guilty of obstruction and perjury"
Just as with Clinton and now Libby, the new norm seems to be that if you want to remove our enemies, accuse them of some crime or none, and then hound them until they trip up, which inevitably they will given time, and get them for perjury or obstruction.
A few centuries ago if you wanted to steal someone's property or ruin them for whatever reason, you accused them of being a witch. There was a thriving cottage industry of private jails, out buildings or pig sties served the purpose. You accused someone of being a witch, they were jailed and put into your private jail at their expense. Their property, stock, and land could be sold to pay for their incarceration pending trial and the jailer turned a tidy profit until the accused's assets were all used up.
Not much has changed.
I am appalled that anyone endorses this sort of goings on. Given leave to look into your affairs and intrude into your life long enough, I could get you to obstruct justice and perjure yourself, it would only be a matter of time.
At one time we stood firm on habeas corpus. In order to proceed with the investigation as to who committed a crime, you must first prove that a crime has been committed. Seems that's out the window now. As the Queen of Hearts says in Through the Looking Glass "First a verdict and then the witnesses."
Chilling that so many are OK with that.
By the bye, the prosecution might insist that Ms. Plame was under cover, but that to date has never been in evidence (in the legal sense). Until that is established, no one has committed a crime.
Unless of course you are OK with reinstating the witch trials.
To scale his punishment to that of Sandy Burger, Libby should be fined $100.
I find myself in the bizarre position of wholly agreeing with Eleutheros. The Libby case was a gross incident of prosecutorial misconduct; perhaps not in the statutory sense, but certainly in the ethical sense.
The Libby prosecution was as preposterous as the Clinton impeachment trial. If you sick a prosecutor on anyone long enough, then you can come up with some hypothetical crime. As Ayn Rand said:
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
Neither Libby, Cheney, nor Rove should be prosecuted for treason because Plame was not an undercover operative. She was an analyst operating without cover.
No, Plame had "non official cover," the most dangerous kind of overseas work for the CIA,even as an analyst. "Outing" her not only ended her career (she was reassigned to a safe job that didn't fully use her talents), but endangered many other official and unofficial CIA folks who could be identified because of her work. That's why identifying her is treason and should result in life imprisonment for Rove, Cheney, and Armitage.
I have not been commenting here on this post because, frankly, I'm not sure if I have enough info.
My approach to trials has been one of letting juries do their duty. I'm not a believer in trial by the nation or by the media.
Certainly we need to keep an eye on the judicial system to watch for abuses, but mostly I try to let juries do their duty and go with what they say.
This jury found that Scooter broke laws. Not only that, but they felt bad convicting Libby because they felt he was just the fall guy - that there are people above him who were trying to break laws to discredit a political opponent.
This rings true to me because this seems to be the way this group of those in power (going beyond Bush to include the whole of the Neocon network) works: "Laws are for other people, not us" seems to be the MO.
I do know that in this particular case, Richard Armitage was the one who committed the particular alleged leak. But, as I understand the jury's decision, the administration was also apparently involved in trying to manipulate data and leaks to their perceived advantage.
Armitage's work appears to have been an honest mistake. The jury found that, at least in the case of Libby, that he committed:
* obstruction of justice when he intentionally deceived a grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame;
* making a false statement by intentionally lying to FBI agents about a conversation with NBC newsman Tim Russert;
* perjury when he lied in court about his conversation with Russert;
* a second count of perjury when he lied in court about conversations with other reporters.
Am I misreading something?
For the record, this is not about partisanship (as was claimed by Eleutheros) on my part. I'm no fan of the Dems - I have stated repeatedly that I thought Clinton should have stepped down following his debacle over a much goofier offense.
This is about not trusting this particular administration because they have not proven themselves to be trustworthy.
Michael:""Outing" her not only ended her career (she was reassigned to a safe job that didn't fully use her talents), but endangered many other official and unofficial CIA folks who could be identified because of her work."
Then you'd agree that the primary source of the compromise of her identity is the real culprit, no?
Valerie Plame was a vocal critic of the Iraq war and Bush administration, not a bright stand to be vocal about if you need to keep a low profile as a CIA employee.
When the NYT ran stories that there had been a "governemt" investigation into the claims that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger and found there had never been any such purchase, it was left open and implied that the administration had ordered the investigation and was trying to keep quiet evidence that it had been wrong.
Rove answers those assumptions by saying that the NYT report is based on information from Joe Wilson who was NOT sent to Niger by the administration, but rather was there only at the behest of his wife. His wife was not further identified in any way.
Investigative reports dug deeply and found that Wilson's wife, Plume, was an employee of the CIA, an analyst. Robert Novak then reveals Plume's identity.
After her identity had become common knowledge, Rove, Armitage, and others repeat what they and everyone else has been reading in the media. This is the source of the notion that they "outed" Plame, as if they were supposed to act ignorant when her name is already in the news.
Plame was such an outspoken critic of the administration, she used CIA resources to try to discredit Bush. She did this on her own. Not under orders or direction. She is the one responsible for the ending of her career.
By the bye, the administration never said Iraq bought uranium from Niger, only they had attempted to buy it. Wilson fully admitted later in the investigation that he found that the Iraqi Minister of Information, the famous "Bagdad Bob", had traveled to Niger specifically to negotiate the purchase of uranium, which deal had fallen through. He had found information that proved the administration claim but in making available the "intelligence report" his wife had sent him to gather, but put the twist on it that he had found nothing to show they had obtained any uranium.
I'm out of touch with the news right now, so I'll refrain from commenting on the political part of this post. I did want to take a chance to say hello and tell you that your chipmunk photo brought a smile to my face this morning, Dan.
Thanks.
And, oh, Dan had asked "Should he be pardoned?"
No.
If you are in that arena, the rule that applies is "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it."
Thanks, Lene.
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