Did he? What I remember mostly from his news conference was a determined and relentless refusal to say any such thing. We are free to interpret his body language and attitude as we choose, and, Lord knows, many have done so.
Ain’t necessarily so.
As am I, and proudly so. But you could offer the spin of patriotism beyond the bounds of petty legality, and it would be bought, and with stern enthusiasm. Ollie North, anyone?
Some thoughts:
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Can you see a reason for Fitzgerald to offer Libby a plea bargain for a reduced sentence, simply to save the hassle of a trial? I can’t.
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If Fitz doesn’t offer Libby a plea bargain, then what are Libby’s choices?
a) Plead guilty to everything, and spend apparently many years in prison;
b) Go to trial, and risk the same outcome as (a); or
c) Give Fitz key evidence towards convicting either Rove or Cheney.
- The only fly in the ointment is the possibility of a pardon. I wouldn’t expect a pardon between now and the 2008 elections, because two things can happen between now and then:
a) The present line - Libby was the only one responsible for any legal/ethical violations - still holds; or
b) it becomes clear that Rove and/or Cheney were in on it too.
If (a), then pardoning Libby will be seen as a repudiation of that story. If there was just one bad apple in the White House, then the White House should be glad to be rid of him, and desire that justice be done.
If (b), then it would look as if Bush is trying to wipe out a scandal that implicates all of the top people in his Administration. Even in this Congress, you might hear impeachment murmurs, and the fallout at the polls could be, as Hoban Washburn might say, pretty interesting. (As in “Oh God, oh God, we’re all going to die.”)
But Libby might be willing to take the hit by himself under the presumption that he can drag out the pre-trial stuff for a year or so, then get pardoned at the end of 2008.
Conclusion: I think the only realistic possibilities are (1) Libby gives up Rove or Cheney to minimize his prison exposure; or (2) he hangs tight on the asumption that he’ll be pardoned, and the worst he’ll actually have to serve is two years at a Club Fed.
Funny you should mention that. Friday night I wondered if the present administration might actually be dumb enough to do as Nixon and company did and offer Libby a nice chunk of money if he keeps his mouth shut and cops a plea a la the Watergate burglars.
The promise of a pardon about 20 Jan. 2009 could work, too.
That’s so thirty years ago.
Today, the understanding would be one of a comfortable, upper-six-figure future with a K-Street lobbying shop.
I dunno. At best, Libby cannot distinguish between senior elected officials he works for in the White House and journalists. Would he do well on K Street?
Sure. It’s done all the time. It’s only a matter of the sides agreeing on time served. I will concede that Fitz is a hardass(yea!) and may require Libby to serve more time than he is willing to. I’m now starting to think Libby will have to do 1-2 years. But I still say that’s what will happen.
As for the rest of your points, I think they are mooted by the first point above being the likely scenario.
The plea certainly sounds sensible, but everything Scooter has been saying seems to revolve around “can’t recall” and “total exoneration.” Isn’t it possible that he still feels that he is entirely untouchable and thusly won’t plea out?
Why plea when you don’t think that you will lose?
[hijack]I was trying to explain the situation to a non-American friend. My assumption (YMMV) was that various types within the Admin were indeed trying, by not-necessarily-honorable means, to cover up the weakness of the neocon WMD argument by a campaign of spin and leaks. Okay. The fundamental part I had trouble understanding was – How (factually or tactically) did they hope to benefit by leaking that J. Wilson’s wife was a spy? If you’re attacking or undermining the credibilty of his WMD critique, isn’t the fact his wife is a spy either irrelevant to, or credibility-enhancing, as to his assessments of intelligence? Or, is the theory that this was pure spite/revenge and they leaked the information not to bolster the WMD case, but to punish the Wilson family by making her career untenable? Or is there some more Machaivellian ploy in which the Admin tried to attack the CIA intel through critiques of the Wilsons?[/hijack]
Because your lawyer has more experience defending a client who is charged with these things, and he advises you to plea bargain so that you don’t run the highly probable risk of spending more time in jail than you have to.
A random theory that I’ve seen floated was that it wasn’t about Wilson so much as it was about Brewster Jennings employees. The theory says it was an attempt was to slow down/derail the investigation into the source and authorship of the Niger/uranium forgeries.
but, ?
This is my big hurdle also; as it stands, the only reason I’ve heard is vidictiveness, which has two effects: (1) it punishes Wilson and (2) it serves as a warning to others who might criticize the administration.
Beyond the pettiness of the retribution, it just seems so…so…clumsy. Was there actually any thought process behind it? Assume the reasoning was: “we want to get back at Wilson for making us look bad. How can we do it?” This was the best they could come up with? I mean, I think the Bush administration is incompetent, but this is beyond the pale.
Alternatively, could it have been a mistake? If so, it’s no better as regards incompetence.
On preview:
Exactly. I must be missing something.
Imho, this tale of hubris and tragedy will be brought to its climax shortly before the midterm elections in 2006. All that negative publicity, timed thusly, would have the potential to allow the Democrats to regain control of one or both houses of Congress.
Not body language. I’m refering to his answer to a specific question from one of the reporters. I’ll see if I can find it later. He said something like “the substantial bulk of the investigation is over”. Plus, he’s going to have to reconvene another grand jury if he wants to press more charges, and with a new grand jury he’ll have to start from the beginning all over again.
As I understand it, the reasoning was that the White House wasn’t attacking the CIA itself, but was trying to cow the people who work in the CIA into not opposing them in any way, by demonstrating the lengths they would go to in order to destroy the careers of those who opposed them, as the Wilsons did. By ending Valerie Plame’s career, they were telling CIA staff that their jobs could be ended, too, if they didn’t play along with Cheney and his neocon pals.
This is the remark I was referring to:
Here’s the relevant angle from Novak’s article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102000874.html
Basically, the spin is: Wilson’s info. was crap (“not definitive”); even if it was valid, no senior people saw it (certainly not Bush, before his SotU Address, when he raised the nuclear specter); and Wilson’s Niger visit was essentially an unsanctioned field trip arranged by his wife–a low-level CIA officer, not one of the higher-ups, who should have authorized it–so none of this rises to the level of serious consideration.
The administration knew that the nuclear threat was the only thing that convinced many lawmakers to authorize the war. The bad yellowcake forgeries were the cornerstone of this argument. Wilson pointed out how crappy the evidence was, and suggested that the administration not only based their arguments on bad evidence, but also that they knew it was bad, and basically lied us into a war. So the administration had to figure out some way to downplay the importance of Wilson’s evidence, and give a reason why they never would have learned about it–so they said that some guy’s wife decided on her own to send him off to Africa on an unofficial, unauthorized trip, which is why they never heard about his report.
I also agree that intimidating other CIA agents and preventing Brewster Jennings from learning anything more about the WMD fraud were supplementary motives.
Then we will have to agree to disagree, and see what happens.
I don’t think it “happens all the time” in cases like this, though, because cases like this don’t happen all the time.
Don’t you think it’s odd that only one guy got indicted, but that one guy has apparently been thoroughly nailed to the wall here? Yet his indictment has links to several other officials?
It’s hard to imagine, given that he’s got someone as high as Libby so completely dead to rights, that he didn’t have the goods on any more minor players whose help hadn’t been particularly useful.
This is psy-war, no question about it. I don’t know whether it’s Rove or Cheney that Fitz hopes to land with Libby’s help, but that’s the game for sure.
No plea bargain until Libby has something of value to bring to the table.