I’ll add that you can’t engage in post hoc analysis about whether it was worthwhile to launch the investigation knowing that it would only result in the conviction of one individual for perjury, obstruction of justice, and false statements charges. Rather, I think the two relevant inquiries are, first, whether it was appropriate to investigate the alleged leak in the first place and, second, upon discovering in the course of investigating the leak that the defendant had apparently perjured himself and obstructed the course of the investigation, whether Fitzgerald should have declined to prosecute him for these offenses.
Perjury can NEVER happen without an investigation or a trial to form the context for it. So even if an investigation turns up nothing or a trial results in no conviction, perjury cases should still be pursued to preserve the basis for the justice system.
This goes back to the issue that it is rarely the crime, it is the cover-up that gets you in trouble.
There are some rules that can be learned from our leaders:
Nixon will tell you to burn the tapes, assuming you don’t just turn of the damned tape recorder.
Reagan will tell you to add in a few more, “I don’t recalls.”
Clinton will tell you to bend the meaning of words and obfuscate to the maximum.
Nailing Libby for perjury does not bother me, though I don’t think he deserves much time in the slammer.
I believe the perjury took place in the course of an investigation that was meant, not to necessarily entrap someone/anyone, but to see if any elected officials had engaged in wrongdoing. Fitzgerald didn’t know ahead of time that someone was going to perjure himself; he was trying (presumably) to find out any and all crimes committed. That one happened in the course of the investigation doesn’t mean that it should be overlooked.
I grant you that Fitzgerald was hoping for bigger game - indicting a Vice President would have been quite a scalp. But if a smaller fish jumps into your net, haul it in.
The investigation wasn’t launched to get a perjury conviction.
The investigation was launched to find out the details and the truth of the matter.
In the course of the investigation Libby threw sand in Fitzgerald’s eyes [lied etc]
Fitzgerald was unable to get to the truth of the matter because he had “sand thrown in his eyes” by Libby.
Libby’s crimes are in no way diminished because they kept Fitzgerald from performing his investigation thoroughly. Actually, Libby’s crimes are that he prevented Fitzgerald form performing his investigation thoroughly.
To say that since the attempt to thwart an investigation is successful it’s not really a crime is just silly on the face of it.
In regards to the money, we are somewhat stymied by not knowing how much it cost. You threw out the figure of “say, $200 million” as an example. But, the problem is that, as yanceylebeef pointed out, the actual cost was only $1.5 million as of the start of the trial…presumably a lot higher now, but still I would imagine at least 1 order of magnitude below your estimate.
Note that $1.5 million works out to something on the order of 0.0001% of the annual federal budget, whereas $200 million works out to something on the order of 0.01% of the annual federal budget. So, in either case, we aren’t exactly breaking the bank to pay for this. [As an alternative measure…and one that is of at least some relevance to the topic at hand, $200 million would pay for about a day of the Iraq war…whereas $1.5 million would pay for about 15 minutes.]
Factual Q: I have heard it asserted that Fitzgerald already knew that Armitage was the leaker before he even talked to Libby (or at least before Libby perjured). Can anyone prove or disprove that?
edit: added parens
Okay. You’re starting with a false premise. Or rather, several false premises. First, that Armitage was “the” leaker; that is, that no one else independently leaked the information. Second, that Fitzgerald knew that Armitage was “the” leaker when the events forming the factual predicate of the defendant’s indictment occurred. Third, of course, that Fitzgerald knew even that Armitage was “a” leaker at that time. And fourth (and relatedly), that even if Fitzgerald had the knowledge described in #2 or #3, that his investigation was then at an end. If any of these assumptions is wrong, your inquiry is meaningless from the get-go.
Fitzgerald knew long ago that Armitage was Novak’s primary source. But he also knew that Libby, Karl Rove, and Ari Fleischer (at least) had either leaked or confirmed Plame’s status to various journalists. (Novak was just the first one to publish a story.)
I did not follow this case closely (much at all, really), but I never heard the multiple leakers hypothesis until this thread. Was this theory out there during the investigation?
Those aren’t premises, they are two variants of the question I asked.
Yes, I did assume that finding and punishing the leaker was the purpose for the investigation. If that is incorrect, your explanation is appreciated.
Rickjay’s argument seems colorable in my eyes, but as I stated, I don’t know the facts. You would do much better arguing with him.
After posting: Thank you, DoctorJ
one of the things that law enforcement and prosecutors have to be careful to avoid is the trap of “tunnel vision” - investigating a potential criminal offence with a pre-conceived version of what happened. A good police/prosecution team will approach the complaint with an open mind - has a criminal offence occurred? in what way? by one person or a group of persons?
approaching this particular complaint with the idea that there was one and only one leaker would be that type of mistake. the police & prosecution have to keep an open mind, not only about whether a criminal offence occurred, but if so, in what way. in such a case like this one, with so many actors involved within government and in the media, I would expect that even if the facts started to point to only one leaker, the police and prosecutors would have to continue to investigate to be sure that that was in fact what happened. once they identified Armitage as a leaker, they couldn’t just say “whoops - that’s it”. they would have to eliminate other possibilities as well.
September 2003: the CIA requests that the DOJ look into the matter of Plame being outed.
The DOJ and FBI began investigating on 9/26/03, according to Wikipedia. The grand jury was sworn in on 10/31/03, and Fitzgerald wasn’t appointed until 12/30/03. The obstruction of justice count is based on Libby’s grand jury testimony of 3/5/04 and 3/24/04.
For those who believe Fitz went on a perjury-trap witch hunt, it’s possible that Fitz ruled out the possibility of an indictment on any of the statutes pertaining to Plame’s cover being blown during his first nine weeks as prosecutor, and went ahead anyway with his questioning of witnesses in the hope that they’d lie under oath. But that’s what you’ve got to believe.
Let’s get real here. What was the underlying purpose of the investigation that got Libby tried for perjury? Answer: the treason committed almost certainly at the behest of Dick Cheney, betraying Valerie Plame and her contacts and endangering their lives.
What was the underlying purpose of the investigation that got Clinton indicted for perjury? To discover the truth about a blowjob.
So on the one hand we have a perjury whose underlying target was the crime of blowjobbery, on the other hand we have a perjury whose underlying crime was treason.
Which sounds like the worse crime to you?
Judge the perjury investigation by the underlying crime that led to it, and you’ll see which is the worthwhile prosecution and which is an act of petty vindictiveness.
Sure, Starr couldn’t get any traction on Whitewater no matter how much he tortured Joan Whastername, so he did a serious blowjob investigation. So what? It BECAME a blowjob investigation.
