Funmurphys: the Blog

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Posts Tagged Scooter Libby

The Married Man Defense

Feb 23

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | 2 Comments

The jury is still out in the Scooter Libby case, but I’ve weighed the evidence and have to agree that community service of this sort would be appropriate.

OK, according to the offense, I mean the prosecutor, the case is about Mr. Libby lying when he claimed he had forgotten that he had earlier learned about Mrs. Wilson from VP Cheney and other official channels and it was as if he had heard it for the first time from Tim Russert. According to the defense, the case is did Mr. Libby hear about Mrs. Wilson from Tim Russert as Mr Libby testified.

I have to say the case is about how many married people there are on the jury. If I were the defense, I would have offered up the married man defense – if I had been allowed to mount a memory defense unlike the actual accused. I can’t tell you how many important things I have relearned over the years as if for the very first time despite hearing it from my wife earlier (or at least that’s what she claims). “I told you that” — what married man isn’t familiar with that refrain. How many a married man has forgotten an anniversary, a birthday, or some other significant event?

So as a married man, a man who looked over at his son at Night At The Museum and said “You wear glasses?” to the immediate scorn of both wife and son, I can believe that Scooter Libby forgot something, something that people telling him thought vital, something that even he thought vital. I have no idea if he did or not, but I can believe it.

Tags: , , ,

The Talented Mr. Russert

Feb 14

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

Tom Maguire of Just One Minute Fame has made the case that Tim Russert could have lied (OK, just let his memory go dim) in the Scooter Libby perjury case because he was covering for prior less than the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth statements. Frequent commenter, Barney Frank, claims he should get credit for the white lie leading down a slippery slope of further cover up possibility. I’m sorry to tell both Mr. Frank and Mr. Maguire that there is a very fine movie that pre-dates Mr. Russerts legal entanglements, The Talented Mr. Ripley, that starts with a far more innocent misdirection and ultimately ends up in a far darker place than perjury. The movie is well worth seeing. The Libby Trial, not so much.

I have no idea if Russert was telling the truth about his conversation with Libby (Don Imus thinks he wasn’t), although his actual testimony was that while he doesn’t remember discussing Mrs. Wilson (which I can believe) with Libby, it was impossible that he told Libby about Mrs. Wilson. However, I can’t believe Mr. Russert couldn’t remember whether or not he told his boss he had cooperated with the FBI while NBC was fighting the grand jury subpeona. That I just simply can not believe. Nor can I believe that the FBI lost the notes from that initial conversation with Mr. Russert. Oddly enough, I haven’t seen either mentioned in conventional news outlets.

Tags: , , ,

Why Is Scooter Libby On Trial?

Feb 1

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

I’ve promised one last Plame post numerous times, but the Scooter Libby trial requires comment — if only for the sheer fun of saying the defendant’s name. If you want the ins and outs, Tom Maguire is as always your man. I’m taking a big picture look.

First off, near as I can tell just about everybody who got roped into Fitzgerald’s investigation has had trouble with remembering what actually happened — who said what to whom when — or has changed their story, yet only Mr. Libby is on trial. Mr. Fitzgerald claims that is because Mr. Libby deliberately mislead him and impeded his investigation, but his investigation into what? He determined that no crime occured, and that determination had nothing to do with who leaked first, it had to do with Ms. Plame-Wilson’s status.

Secondly, Joe Wilson has lied long and loud and clear yet he suffers no penalty for doing so. I’m not even sure he actually went to Niger since he’s lied about everything else. And as it turns out, he is the guy who actually leaked his wife’s status as an ex-NOC — up until he yapped to Mr. Corn, his wife simply worked at the CIA. It’s bad enough Armitage, Fleischer, Rove and Libby let out that much, but Joe himself did the most damage.

Third and last, why is Fitzgerald and the government wasting time with this prosecution when real live CIA leaks that actually caused harm are going uninvestigated and unpunished?

Tags: , , ,

I Love To Laugh

Jan 30

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | No Comments

I cannot tell a lie – I’m simply filled with glee at thought of the Scooter Libby trial. At this point, I don’t care if Scooter is convicted or acquited, if he wrongly is set free or wrong is convicted — what I want is the press to get what’s coming to them. I neither know nor care about the guilt or innocence of Scooter — but I want to see the press pay for the crimes they’ve committed against the truth all this time. Yes, I understand that nobody from the fourth estate will be fined, let alone jailed, but just having to go into court and be exposed to the best disinfectant, sunshine to quote the St. Louis Post Dispatch editorialist (not plagiarize, since the Post editorial page no longer recognizes plagiarism).

Libby was indicted because his testimony didn’t agree with three reporters. So what else can his defense be but that he was telling the truth or at worse made a simple but unintentional mistake of recall based on what everybody actually knew at the time?

And the benefits are limited to just the people who are called to testify – the disappointment of those who aren’t might be palpable, as they too might be exposed like everyones unfavorite, David Gregory:

I’ll bet that the Libby defense team will want to chat with more than just Ms. Mitchell. That said, we should note that David Gregory may really be out of the loop – he chimed in with this:

GREGORY: And it is interesting–it’s also interesting, I should just point out, that nobody called me at any point, which is unfortunately…
WILLIAMS: Apparently not.
GREGORY: …not the point.
RUSSERT: Does anybody ever?
GREGORY: But I just wanted to note that.
RUSSERT: I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.

Stand tall, Stretch – you may be the last man standing if Russert, Mitchell and Williams have a ghastly experience at the Libby trial.

Yes, that is the unmistakable stylings of Tom Maguire. I’m standing on the shoulders of giants today.

Tags: , , ,

Another Confederacy of Dunces

Jan 21

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | No Comments

I don’t think I’m the only one who’s licking his chops at the thought of the Scooter Libby trial and the thought of all those top drawer journalists hauled into court and forced to testify. What a gratifying spectacle that will be. It’s too bad they don’t allow TV cameras into court rooms – they really ought to make an exception in this case. Perhaps it could be on pay-per-view, I know I’d pay good money to watch. It would be Reality TV at it’s finest. Instead we will have to content ourselves with comparing the carefully sanitized version from the organizations who have their minions testifying and independent outlets. I’m reminded of the ending of Samson – you know, where the Philistines capture him and make sport of him in their temple, so he pulls the temple down on him and them.

Do I know if Scooter lied or not? No, I wasn’t party to the conversations. I do think lying during a criminal investigation is not just a bad thing, but a legally punishable one. My problem is that once Fitzgerald concluded that no law had been broken by the leak of Ms. Plame’s connection to the CIA, then his whole investigation should have been over. And that conclusion had nothing to do with his investigation of Libby – in fact, that should have been determination number one. And once the determination was made that there was no crime, then the Fitzgerald should have shut the whole enterprise down and gone back to actual crime fighting. If Fitzgerald got sand in his eye, it was because he took it off the ball. Instead, he went ahead to try and find out who said what to whom when in Washington. Good luck buddy, you’ll need it.

Tags: , ,

Wilson Plame Libby Woodward

Nov 17

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | 1 Comment

The case against Scooter Libby took an odd turn the other day when investigative reporter extraordinaire (just ask him, he’ll tell you) Bob Woodward announced the other day that he’d been given Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA analyst by an administration source other than Scooter Libby before Libby talked to Miller, Cooper, and Russert.

Tom Maguire is all over this, as always. And from every angle, especially Cheney.

What I think it means is that Fitzgerald will have a harder time convicting Libby. Why? Because Mr. Fitzgerald’s claim was that Libby was the first leaker based on the testimony of Miller, Cooper, and Russert and therefore his claim to have heard it from reporters first has to be a lie, and not just a disagreement over what was said in a brief conversation a couple of years ago. If it cannot be established that in fact this info was not leaked prior to Libby, then that claim goes down in flames. And further, Woodward claims he told Walter Pincus about Ms. Wilson, although Pincus doesn’t remember that. So now we have two reporters disagreeing about who told what during a brief discussion a couple of years ago. But wait, there’s still more – Mr. Woodward kept mum about this leak, despite the investigation, until Mr. Fitzgerald contacted him because one of Woodwards sources spilled the beans to Mr. Fitzgerald. So no doubt everybody is wondering who else is out there but hunkered down and waiting for Fitzgerald to make the first contact.

I think it also means we’re less likely to ever make sense out of it beyond partisan ax grinding. And that might be a good thing, because as far as I can tell it has become a sideshow, a distraction, the mother of all red herrings, from the important questions – what can we do to improve intelligence collection and analysis at the CIA and what can we do to safeguard classified information better. This is a case where we can’t see the forest for the trees.

Tags: , , ,

Libby Indicted, Resigns

Oct 29

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

Lewis “Scooter” Libby was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, false statements, and perjury yesterday. He wasn’t charged for the actual disclosure of classified information. Since Fitzgerald is alleging that Libby engaged in a pattern of deception, namely Libby’s claim that he first found out about Valerie Plame from reporters and merely passed along what he had heard from reporters, I think he should be charged with perjury. But what I don’t understand is, since Fitzgerald made clear that he considered Plame’s status with the CIA classified information and that Libby did indeed disclose it without proper authorization, why Libby wasn’t also charged with the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. So my complaint isn’t that Libby was charged with perjury, but that he was just charged with perjury.

If that’s all Libby faces, what message does it send? It’s OK to leak classified information, just own up to it in court? We seem to have adopted a standard in the US that disclosing classified information to foreign governments, friendly or otherwise is punishable, but disclosing to the press isn’t punishable. When was the last time a leak to the press itself investigated and charges brought? Here was a chance, and Fitzgerald has (so far) declined to take it. Does disclosure to the press somehow do less damage to national security? I sure don’t think so.

I’m also of the opinion that lying Joe Wilson should be charged for unauthorized disclosure of classified information, and there is some ammunition in Fitzgerald’s Press Release. First, Ambassador Wilson made the most damaging disclosure of classified information about his wife to David Corn since he went far beyond my wife works for the CIA. But he also maintained that there was nothing classified about his trip – neither his taking it nor his findings. Yet we find in the press release this statement:

on or about June 9, 2003, a number of classified documents from the CIA were faxed to the Office of the Vice President to the personal attention of Libby and another person in the Vice President’s office. The documents, which bore classification markings, discussed, among other things, Wilson and his trip to Niger, but did not mention Wilson by name.

Hmm, was the trip so unclassified as Ambassador Wilson has asserted?

After consulting with the State Department’s African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.

And Fitzgerald’s statement in the press release

shortly after publication on or about June 19, 2003, of an article in The New Republic magazine online entitled “The First Casualty: The Selling of the Iraq War,” Libby spoke by telephone with his then Principal Deputy and discussed the article. That official asked Libby whether information about Wilson’s trip could be shared with the press to rebut the allegations that the Vice President had sent Wilson. Libby responded that there would be complications at the CIA in disclosing that information publicly, and that he could not discuss the matter on a non-secure telephone line;

it’s not clear if the information that couldn’t be disclosed about Wilson’s trip is limited to, or even includes his wife recommending him for the job — which would reveal her CIA employment. Maybe there was more classified information to Wilson’s trip and report besides his wife.

Is this the end of the indictments? What about Karl Rove? Only Fitzgerald knows, and he (still) isn’t talking. Certainly the evidence uncovered so far is weaker against Rove or he’d have been indicted too; maybe Karl is in the clear because he did hear from a reporter before saying things like “I hear that too”.

Tags: , , ,

Fitzgerald, Plame, Wilson, Rove, Libby, Cheney

Oct 26

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

The web’s aflame with rumor and speculation over Fitzgerald’s investigation into the Plame kerfuffle. Of course, I get all my Plame news from Tom Maguire, who never grows tired of the fact that we know so little. Consider that Fitzgerald and his people are famously closed lipped. Who do all these leaks come from? Even if they came from Fitzgerald (gigantic if there), let me remind you of the most important point about leaks involving politics (OK, any leak for that matter) – they are always self serving for the leaker. Always. The fact that the leaker can provide only partial truth allows the leaker to control and manipulate the story.

And isn’t leaking grand jury testimony a crime as well? I understand a witness can come out and talk about the questioning, even lie about it like good old Sid Blumenthal, but other than that the testimony is legally protected. So the only way for it not to be a crime is if the leaker about a particular witnesses testimony ultimately derived their leak from the particular witness? Which leads us right back to the self serving nature of any leak. Sigh.

So what’s really going on here. Is the most important part of the whole sodden mess the fact that Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA employee? Is it that CIA is a rogue organization that is trying to undermine the elected President of the United States? Or does it’s import derive as proxy for the Iraq war itself?

Personally, what I care about most is the unauthorized discloure of classified information. If Fitzgerald can return indictments about that, even perjury indictements, I’ll consider it a successful investigation. But I want the perjury to be perjury, not just how good Karl Rove’s memory is. So if he deliberately lied to conceal unauthorized disclosure, then good. If he forgot a particular conversation of several that occured with one or more people, then bad. And by that I mean if he were tardy in disclosing a conversation with Matt Cooper, someone who Rove had no reason to believe wouldn’t disclose, then an indictment is just butt covering.

But if it turns out that the Valerie Plame wasn’t covert and the CIA persued this case while it has let plenty of other equally or more serious dislosures go in the past, then I think the CIA becomes the big story. Why should it be OK for a disgruntled current or ex-CIA employee to disclose classified information to the press, but not the White House?

Here are the unanswered questions for me. Was Valerie Plame a covert agent at the time her name was leaked? If so, it raised for me another important question then – how did her name leave the CIA? What does that say about their security proceedures? If not, what is the CIA trying to pull here?

Which reporter broke the sacred confidentiality to tell Joe Wilson who the sources were? I mean, how else was he able to finger Karl Rove and Scooter Libby way back at the start of the kerfuffle? It was only a month after Novak’s article that Wilson said he wanted to see Karl Rove “frogmarched” out of the White House in handcuffs. Libby’s name followed soon after, and then Joe Wilson backtracked and shut up about it. Odd how the press isn’t interested in Joe Wilson’s source, which he admitted to, and how that source named the two people that have been most prominently featured as people who talked to the press.

Speaking of Joe, why isn’t he being investigated as the man who clearly did the most to out his own wife? For those who like convoluted conspiracies (I’m not one), why not think the Valerie was tired of living the covert life, have Joe out you, and bam you’re out, in the clear, the darlings of the media, book deals, Vanity Fair articles. Hey, it’s more plausible than Flight Plan.

What about the role of the State Department? Plame was “moving to State Department cover”, there are reports of a State Department memo with her name in it, State opposed the war in Iraq just like the CIA. Has the institutional opposition at these two power centers overstepped the bounds of good government? And will we ever see that probed?

Most of all, what does Fitzgerald really have?

OK, that last one is a repeat of how we know so little. And what amazes me is how there are some who don’t seem to realize that. We don’t even know if Valerie Plame was covert. Did the neighbors know she worked for the CIA? I have no idea, but Mark Kleiman is convinced by an article in the LAT which relies on two neighbors. Did the LAT contact “all” the neighbors but only inlcuded quotes from two? Cliff May said lots of people in Washington knew a long time ago – but Cliff wasn’t a neighbor. Was he just talking trash, or was he telling the truth? Beats me, I don’t live in Washington. We have to rely on these leaked reports to the press, which clearly has lower standards about such leaks than, say, allegations by a victim that she was raped by Bill Clinton.

Some people don’t even know what we do know – namely that Joe Wilson is a liar who came forward not courageously before the war, but after when the status of the Iraq WMD was known. If Ambassador Wilson was so upset by President Bush’s so called manipulation of intellegence before the war (you know, when CIA head Tenet was claiming that Iraqi WMD was a “slam dunk”), why didn’t he come forward then, when it could have done some good?

One last final thoughts (not for the subject, just the post) – whatever you may think of Fitzgerald’s integrity, it seems as if people are treating the indictments as the final word on the subject. They aren’t, they are just accusations. I know that depending on whose ox is being gored, people will ignore that fact or ignore every other fact.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Novak, Wilson, and Plame

Oct 2

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | 1 Comment

The latest Washington scandal sounds like an old rock group, but it is serious business. Did someone at the Bush Whitehouse leak the name of a CIA operative (Valerie Plame Wilson) who was the wife of a former ambassador (Joseph Wilson IV) who wrote an op-od critical critical of the Bush administration? If administration officials broke the law by deliberately leaking her status with the CIA, then by all means they should be prosecuted and fired. If it was a nobody somewhere in the great Military Industrial Complex who did this (i.e. me), that’s the fate they would suffer. It shouldn’t change because of either its political nature or the position of the officials. I know that in the past nothing happens to leakers, but it ought to. I think putting a few senators and representatives in the dock would be highly beneficial, but then I think all public officials, regardless of party affiliation, should be held accountable to the same standards as everybody else.

If you want blog coverage, Just One Minute is all over this. If you prefer your coverage from big media, Google News is always a great source.

The odd thing to me is that the parts that should be straightforward are so murky and the the murky stuff is simply opaque. The CIA should know whether or not Ms. Plame is an undercover operative as covered by law and therefore whether or not the leak broke the law. If she isn’t covered, there should be no investigation, so I have to assume she is. And the next stop should be to question the star witness, Bob Novak – just like they should for any journalist who is an eyewitness to a crime. I don’t buy the notion that there is some right to keep sources confidential if a crime has been committed, and I don’t think journalists should be treated any differently than any other private citizen. So it should be straightforward whether or not a law was broken and if so, who did it.

But it isn’t, and so Bush will twist slowly, slowly in the wind while the investigation fumbles along to no certain conclusion. If Bush were machievellan, he’d get a couple of volunteers to claim they were the leakers, that it was inadvertant and not malicious, and have them resign. What would Novak do – reveal his real sources? The scandal would be over, and the whole matter would be forgotten by most of the electorate.

The larger picture is very much confused in my mind. Apparently, Dick Cheney was concerned enough about the intel about Iraq trying to buy yellow cake from Africa that he asked the CIA to indepently check on it. So the CIA sends Joe Wilson – why? Of all the nutty yet courageous ex-Ambassadors, they picked him. What, wasn’t Felix Leiter available? Besides being married to an agent, what were his qualifications (remember his contacts in Niger were from 25 years ago)?

So he conducts his investigation by talking over tea with some Nigerians, comes back to the US where he files only a verbal report, and then goes on to right an op-ed that claims that based on his brief and cursory investigation, Iraq didn’t get yellowcake from Niger, and therefore the Bush administration was lying when it claimed that UK intellegence was reporting that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake from Africa.

Then somebody tells Bob Novak that his wife works for the CIA, and that’s how he got the job. How does this person know that Mrs. Wilson works for the CIA? Do they sign their reports, and as an expert on WMD proliferation they’ve been reading a lot of them recently? Is this how everybody seems to know that she works for the CIA? And how is leaking her CIA connection supposed to intimidate the Wilsons, or even undercut his op-ed, which if anything is enhanced by giving him some connection, however tenuous, with expertise in WMD proliferation? It is either really stupid, or simply honest.

After this Wilson claims that even mentioning her maiden name is somehow a breach of security, despite the fact that he included it in his bio on the net. And now he’s claiming that he knew all along that Iraq didn’t have WMD, although he apparently felt confident of it earlier to claim that Saddam would use it against US troops. Yeah, I know, a foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of small minds.

And now we have the press outraged that somebody would leak a CIA agent’s name, although not outraged that the press would print it, we have serial leakers (i.e. congresspeople) outraged that somebody would leak confidential information, and we have people demanding a special prosecutor despite their track record when all we need is a justice department that isn’t afraid to put a journalist in jail for refusing to name a criminal.

And yes, you have me, who hopes that we find out who did what and why, who hopes that the guilty are punished and the innocent exhonerated, that justice be applied impartially, and that we all remember and hold accountable the people we place our trust in, in public service or in the media. But then, I’m just an old fashioned guy.

Tags: , , , , ,