Centerfield

I cannot wait

From listening to the chattering heads (aka broadcast media) this morning, they really don't have a clue. Sheer guesswork and tea-leaf reading. Third-hand unconfirmed single-sourced rumors. Well, gotta fill the air time somehow. Keep them ratings up....

Reuters' announcement that documents would be released at noon Eastern has vanished from the wire. The only new item on the Fitzgerald web site is the press conference announcement.

How much dough do you stand to lose on this Tully?

Not a dime. Assuming no more indictments are coming out of this grand jury, then several people owe $10 to an acceptable charity for having wagered with me. My wager was that this grand jury would return no indictments for violations of the IIPA.

Libby just resigned.

And, of course, Tully was right...no indictments on the actual crime that was supposed to be central to this investigation.

If Libby is convicted, he needs to do time, but this continued investigation of Rove...if you can't find something in 2 years? Come on.

Interestingly, according to NPR, a number of liberals are actually opposing indictments in this matter and the AIPAC case (two AIPAC officials indicted for RECEIVING classified documents or information.) They believe these indictments will have a chilling effect on whistleblowing.

I'm not sure I agree, but it is refreshing that some people are able to look beyond the partisan positions to look at the bigger picture.

No more time than Martha served for lying. He tried to tap dance-but I think a slap on the wrist would suit just fine.

OK, I've read through the indictments, and as near as I can make out, Libby is charged with having lied to investigators and the grand jury about already knowing that Plame was a CIA employee when he was playing footsie with reporters, back in June 2003.

Essentially (and this assuming that what is in the indictment is true) Libby knew that Plame worked for the CIA before he talked to reporters. Reporter's version: When reporters asked him if it was true that she worked for the CIA, he confirmed it. Libby's version: When reporters asked him if he knew Plame worked for the CIA, he said he had heard the same thing from other journalists (a non-confirmation). Then he lied to the investigators and grand jury about it, saying that he learned she worked for the CIA from journalists, when he knew she was a CIA employee a month earlier.

Lying to journalists is, of course, not a crime. Lying to federal investigators is. So is lying under oath to grand juries. Bad Scooter! (Dumb Scooter.)

I second that last thought whole-heartedly, Tully... DUMB, DUMB, DUMB Scooter. How could he be so stupid as to lie to FBI agents and the grand jury? From the indictment, it appears that the prosecutor has quite a few very solid witnesses about what Libby knew and when he knew it, and it doesn't jibe with what Libby told the agents and the grand jury.

One of the issues I've followed is this "everybody knew she was a spy" defense. I've always wondered what the evidence for this was. According to the indicment, Libby claimed in his testimony that Tim Russert told him that all the reporters knew she was an agent. Russert has obviously denied saying that.

I'm only up to page 10, so back to the raw documents for now.

Ok, there's 2 parts to each count. One is that Libby misrepresented the substance of the conversation with the reporter. That comes down to his word against Tim Russert's and Matthew Cooper's, etc.

But the other part is that in recounting each conversation for the FBI agents and the grand jury, Libby testified that he did not know, at the time of the conversation, that Mrs. Wilson worked at the CIA e.g., "I still didn't know it as a fact. I thought I was - all I had was this information that was coming in from the reporters". From what I saw in the early pages, Fitzgerald has him pegged on that six ways to Sunday on that issue (it appears that even the Vice President testified that he told Libby who she worked for). He had pretty official verification that Plame worked for the CIA well before any of his conversations with reporters.

My prediction? Libby may squawk for a bit, but then he'll plead. It looks to me to be pretty solid case of both perjury and making false statements to the FBI. Not minor quibbling over details, but over the major issue of whether Libby learned of Plame's CIA employment from official sources, or from other reporters. Based on the transcripts in the indictment, he repeatedly stated that he only learned of her employment from reporters. Based on the summary of other witnesses set forth in the indictment, that was not true; he learned of her employment through several, very official sources.

And the evidence indicates he unequivocally learned the information before he talked to the reporters, making whatever he might have heard from the reporters utterly irrelevant in prosecuting him. No "he said/he said" defense there. He knew, he lied to federal investigators about how and when he knew, he lied under oath about how and when he knew, he did so on two occasions, and the grand jury felt he did so intentionally for the purpose of misleading them (obstructing justice).

Would that be a good summation, Pat?

Dumbass move on his part, but hardly the national security crisis that has been touted up to this point.

One of the points that I have found interesting in the last few days is the apparent script that has apparently been distributed in Democratic circles. Suddenly, this investigation is into "how Bush lied to get us into Iraq." The Forehead was spouting that very line on CNN. They are twisting this indictment into a confirmation that "Bush lied." Of course, not enough people are even familiar enough with this to realize what absolute nonsense that is.

They are twisting this indictment into a confirmation that "Bush lied." Of course, not enough people are even familiar enough with this to realize what absolute nonsense that is.

Yeah, I puzzled over this as well. While we are certainly talking about stories that are all related to Iraq, Libby lying to a grand jury proves nothing whatsoever about whether the admin misled the public on the WMD rationale.

BUT, it is now possible that the threat of punishment may be used to get Scooter Libby to reveal whatever he knows about the pre-invasion rationale.

I get where you're coming from, Brian, but I honestly just don't see it. What's there to bargain for? Libby is caught cold with nothing to trade. The courts have no reason to compel him to yak about anything else because it's (legally) unrelated to the allegations against him. If Fitz thought that was an option, that there was something to "trade up" for, he'd have already done it under a sealed indictment, and someone else would have been handing in a resignation today while Scooter's troubles went away in trade for testimony. Didn't happen, which means odds against are now enormous, unless Libby can suddenly produce original photos of W. cavorting nude with underage sheep in the Rose Garden while wiring the Defense budget to a private account in Switzerland. (Even then Libby wouldn't get a walk without producing the account numbers.)

Fitz's a Special Prosecutor, not an Independent Counsel. He doesn't get to stay in business forever just by expanding his purview and investigating whatever he feels like. He was tasked to investigate the leak matter for possible criminality, and apparently found none. (I note that had he found criminality, we would probably have seen indictments much sooner, even before the election last year.) But one of the witnesses blatantly and demonstrably lied under oath in front of the grand jury, so that witness gets the joy of explaining himself to judge and jury, who will determine his guilt or innocence. You can't let that slide--you charge him.

I'd say that Pat's got it on the nose. Scooter will plead out to a single count to avoid trial, take a suspended sentence and a fine, and go to work on K Street as a lobbyist after getting a $1 million book advance. He might even be able to get a misdemeanor plea if his lawyer is sharp, just as Sandy Berger did. After all, no undergarments were involved....life on the Hill!

This is the danger of having two threads on the same subject. I've both debunked the "lighter sentence for dirt on Rove/Bush/Cheney" myth and outlined the probable sentencing outcome on the other thread.

Yep, I'm bailing out of this one to take the commentary "upstairs" to Pat's thread. This thread now closed for comments. Go to the Libby goes bye-bye thread above for more discussion.