It’s not hearsay if there is corroborating evidence, like documents or an audiotape you can attest to. There are a number of other exceptions to hearsay, but I’m not seeing how any others would apply.
If this is true, this means that the President stood before the American people and lied to them full on: he claimed that he didn’t know anything about the leak and would fight to get to the bottom of it. In fact, there was a supposed full review of his staff to find out who was the leaker. Was that all a big joke? Of course, Libby has every reason to lie to save his skin, so take with a grain of salt.
Of course, there are any number of demonstrable lies already in the offing now leading up to the war, the conservative rage at “Bush Lied” nonwithstanding.
Thing is, the party line right now goes something like “It’s the Executive’s prerogative, so STFU.” Libby now telling the truth hurts precisely no one above him in any conceivably actionable way, and mostly serves just to limit the risk of perjury and punishment to himself. Political fallout will be nonexistent. The political climate is virtually cemented at this point, and no one who likes Bush will give a damn. Nor will anyone who doesn’t like him be able to make any hay. It’s an interesting development for a footnote in the history books, I suppose, but the real consequences will be so minor I simply can’t think of a good reason not to take Libby’s statements at face value. We know enough already about the Plame affair that these “revelations” are entirely consistent.
let’s see - outing a spy whom we (the US gov) has trained for years, making her imimediately ineffectual at her trained position, possibly puttin gher contacts in danger, all to discredit her husband who was pointing out the fucking reality that the Administration’s position wrt pre invasion claims were, at very best, tenuous, that same invasion that has led to over 2000 American deaths, thousands more injured, tens of thousands of Iraqis dead, continues to this day with absolutely no end in sight - that’s not a “big deal”???
you don’t think that perhaps if the American people hadn’t been sold a fucking lie, that maybe, just maybe we wouldn’t be in the fucking mess we’re in now?
Generally speaking “outing” a spy could easily be seen as treasonous behavior, I would think. Hope you aren’t one of the r/w ijiots who repeatedly call voicing opposition to the war “giving aid and comfort to the enemy”.
Let’s just back up a bit here now that a news story is available to us. The OP is a bald misstatement of the facts of the case. Deliberate? Dunno.
From the Bloomberg article:
Libby’s testimony apparently says only that Bush, through Cheney, gave permission to release certain information. That information, according to Bloomberg, did not include the identity of Plame.
And I see that the NY Sun story is back up now. The facts presented in there don’t support the assertion of the story headline either.
CNN is now saying they and others have misreported the story; that Plame’s identity was not a part of the information the President authorized the VP to authorize Libby to discuss. Let the spin begin!
it depends on what the statement are being offered to prove. taking them one at a time:
“cheney told me to do it” is not hearsay, it’s not an out of court statement
“cheney said, ‘bush told me to tell you to do it’” can be offered as a verbal act (i.e. cheney said, “Bush told me to tell you to do it”), but it cannot be offered as proof of what bush said, only what cheney said.
I disagree. Play Bush’s press conference about the leaks where he denies any knowledge of the political smear tactic side by side with people claiming that the President did it and it’s perfectly okay. That’s a LOT worse than arguing about what “is” is.
And so, that grain of salt comes in handy. Though it would still be interesting to know what the President authorized released and why, in this context.
It will be interesting to see if the Republican-controlled media pick up on this. I’m no lawyer so I don’t know squat about the admissibility of any of this. I’ll leave it to the professionalism of Fitzpatrick to decide what this all means. If true, then I personally am not terribly surprised. This White House is a pretty ruthless bunch, and if you cross them you can expect that they’ll do what they can to get you.
Sure it is. If you can an audiotape of a conversation and you can attest to your voice on it and identify the other voices, that’s acceptable. Likewise if you have a document attesting to what was said, like minutes or something, you can attest to being present and read them and confirm them.
Apos, you’re making that argument to people who denigrate the authenticity of the Downing Street memo on the same basis (you still do, right, John?).
My own suspicion is that Incurious George did not specifically authorize that action, but instead had told his Uncle Dick that he could do whatever he thought he needed to do to “protect America”. Cheney used that as a blanket excuse he could point to whenever he needed a subordinate to fall on his sword - the guy might not do it to protect Cheney, but he might to “protect America”. Now Libby’s realized he simply got played for a sucker.