Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald was tasked with finding out who outed CIA Agent Valerie Plame.
Somewhere along the line (and I think, very soon into the investigation) he found that Richard Armitage was the out-er, but that no crime was committed. So…
Why wasn’t it a crime? Why didn’t he prosecute Armitage?
Why did he continue with investigation?
Personally, I’m glad he did persist. But why? Once he found there was no crime why didn’t he pack his bags and go back to his day job?
Joe Scarborough flamed Fitzgerald yesterday for persisting when he had no underlying crime, and then sending a nice guy like E. Gordon Libby ( :rolleyes: ) off to prison.
Scarborough unleashed his diatribe on Tucker Carlson’s program, and of course, Tucker happily egged him on. Keith Olbermann, coming afterwards, stayed away from this particular issue entirely.
Nothing in the NY Times tells me what I want to know, and Google is no help either.
The fact that Armitage also disclosed Valerie Plame’s identity does not mean that Libby is not guilty of a crime. While Libby was not accused of leaking Plame’s identity, he did make false statements to FBI agents and to the grand jury. That is a crime.
Regardless of the cimes that were or were not committed, the whole thing stinks. The WH did not like what Joe Wilson said so they covertly attacked his credibility by saying his wife sent him because of nepotism. In the process they exposed the identity (or made it more widely known) of someone engaged in non-proliferation operations. Not sure why they didn’t just publicly dispute what he said based on facts (even if they had to make them up as usual). They had the bully pulpit and he was a nobody.
Fitzgerald chose to prosecute the crimes for which he though he could get a conviction. And, it looks like he made the correct choice. You can’t always get a conviction, even though a crime has been committed.
Just to add to what samclem said, as I understand it, the law regarding revealing the identity of a covert agent is written in a way that makes it quite hard to get a conviction. So, as he said, Fitzgerald went for a charge where there was a reasonably good chance of obtaining a conviction. It is probably the same reason that they got Al Capone for tax evasion, which was hardly the most serious of his alleged crimes.
The reason I find the Libby thing uncomfortable, though, is that Libby allegedly committed a crime (I know he’s convicted but I don’t know the exact evidence) by taking actions which occurred only because of the investigation itself. Fitzgerald spent tens, if not hundreds, of millions of taxpayer dollars pursuing Libby for a crime and failed to do so, so he got a conviction on a “Crime” that Libby could only have committed because he was the target of the very investigation that failed to convict Libby of the original crime.
That’s entirely different from the Capone conviction. Capone did in fact dodge taxes, irrespective of what the FBI did or didn’t do. The crime was committed, willfully so, before Capone was ever investigated for it, independent of anything else.
I am no friend of Libby, Cheney, or the rest of the warmongering scum who make up and support the Bush administration, but I’m amazed more people aren’t bothered by this. What you basically have here is a federal prosecutor using the power and coercion of the government, spending Christ knows how much money, to convict one guy on a technicality for a crime that never would have occurred had the investigation not been pursued in the first place. Had they given up on this nonsense once it was apparent the leads to the leak case weren’t bearing fruit, Libby’s crime wouldn’t have happened and uncountable millions of dollars saved, and no crimes would have gone unpunished that aren’t going unpunished anyway. Is nobody else just a little bit concerned the government can do this sort of thing? What was gained here?
The “Crime” Libby is now convicted for pretty much amounts to telling one group of people a slightly different story than he told another. I’m not advocating perjury but does anyone think this is worth it?
Perjury’s an incredibly big deal, no matter the context. So yes.
And “slightly” different? To think I was arguing in another thread that even well-read and knowledgeable people aren’t particularly familiar with this case.
So let’s make this clear; you think it was worth it to spend, say, $200 million and occupy the time of scores of federal employees for a couple of years to get a perjury conviction for perjury that would never have occurred without the investigation taking place? Logically, why not just launch a federal investigation at ANYONE, then? Sooner or later you’ll catch them in a lie. It worked on Bill Clinton, too, though he wasn’t convicted because of a higher standard for convicting a sitting President. Would that have been worth it had he been convicted?
As I understand it, Libby had already committed one of the crimes before Fitzgerald even became involved (although the investigation itself was, of course, already underway).
Fitzgerald didn’t set out to trick Libby into perjury, he set out to investigate the leaks. In the course of that investigation, Libby lied, and Fitzgerald discovered the lie, which he could hardly just ignore.
Clinton, contrariwise, was lured into lying, and lied in the course of a much less important investigation.
If there’s a duly authorized ongoing criminal investigation into X, and the FBI comes round your place and asks you about matters related to X, or if you’re sworn in before the grand jury and are questioned about matters related to X, you should damn well tell the truth, yes.
Was I unclear? You are a knowledgeable and well-read person. To state that there were only slight differences between the defendant’s account and what apparently actually transpired, you are evidently unfamiliar with the facts of this case. As you yourself stated.
It absolutely applies to Clinton. To the extent that the line of question regarding Lewinsky was a “matter related to X”—something that different people feel differently about, and about which I’m unsure of my own position—prosecuting him for perjury (and, as applicable, obstruction of justice) would have been 100 percent justified. Perjury is a huge deal. If we don’t have the confidence that people will tell the truth under oath (or when speaking to the FBI in furtherance of an investigation), where does that leave the integrity of the judicial system?
So it was ok to spend nearly 80 million to see if Clinton got a hummer?
I’m curious how that equates with outing a NOC agent and her cover organization, along with everyone she has done busisness with in the last decade. Just to flilng mud on a critic of the war justification.
Its a bit like going after a mosquito with a shotgun, don’t you think?
And the Libby investigation only cost 1.5 million before the trial started.
I agree, but that’s not the question I asked. What I’m asking you is whether it was worth it to launch a huge investigation to get a perjury conviction that wouldn’t have happened without the investigation. Understand; had the investigation not taken place, the perjury would not have taken place. Do you think it was all worth it, or would the United States today be better off had it all never taken place?
I’m not defending Scooter Libby, I’m asking if this is (a) a worthwhile expenditure of money and (b) a good precedent to set. I’m not a huge fan of Scooter Libby or Martha Stewart, but chasing them down and then convicting them of crimes that only occurred because you chased them down doesn’t strike me as being a marginalyl effective use of resources.
No. It was stupid. Remember, the investigation into Clinton began as a land deal scam investigation. The entire impeachment circus had nothing to do with that, and was effectively, like the Libby trial, a tail-chasing incident.
I’m not condoning perjury. What bothers me is that it strikes me as being the case that Fitzgerald (or Starr) were essentially using the power of the State to harass people until they could dredge up a lie to prosecute.
The former, at least insofar as blanket statements like that could always use a little more nuance. The impetus for the underlying investigation was worthwhile.
In my considerable experience with this case, I do not believe that to be an accurate statement of Fitzgerald’s actions or intentions.
