Re: The Good Ship Fitzgerald Is Listing
- From: adykes@xxxxxxxxx (Al Dykes)
- Date: 15 May 2006 10:08:58 -0400
In article <922h62t3npeconfecou7dm4fl5ge6ksqua@xxxxxxx>,
Horateo Fudruckerten <none> wrote:
This whole thing is a joke. It's just another attempt by liberals
to do what they can't do at the ballot box. This is one of the
biggest *non-storys* in recent history. The only reason the libs
have gotten so much play out of this smear attempt is due to
the liberal media giving it massive *play*.
That must be why the CIA (with a Bush appointee as Director) asked
Bush's Attorney General to appoint a prosecutor to investigate the
outing of a secret agent.
And The Attorney General, with a pick of lots of prosecutors, picked
Fitzgerald.
I don't see a democrat anywhere in this.
On Sun, 14 May 2006 12:54:48 -0400, "Pookie"
<pookie18323@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Good Ship Fitzgerald Is Listing
May 14th, 2006
While the media focuses on handwritten notations by the Vice President on a
newspaper article, there is much more to be gleaned from late Friday's court
filings in the Libby case. The spin says that damaging new evidence has
surfaced. But the filings by Fitzgerald reveal how rapidly his case is
sinking.
Discovery in legal cases is rather like playing the old game "Battleship"
where you can surmise from your opponent's responses to your blind probes
where he is hiding his fleet. So you can sink it. Scooter Libby's legal team
is playing the game masterfully and as the latest filings late Friday show,
Fitzgerald's fleet is taking on a lot of water. News articles as evidence
In the course of the May 5 hearing it was revealed that Fitzgerald intended
to offer as evidence at trial a series of news articles (obviously sourced
by Wilson). The Court asked the prosecution to identify any news articles
is anticipated offering into evidence in its case in chief. The first is the
op-ed in the New York Times written by Wilson which appeared on July 6,
2003, with the Vice President's notes on the margin [scroll to page 3 for an
image].
Before getting to the arguments Fitzgerald makes for its admission, let's
consider the actual motivation for placing this item before the jury. I don'
t consider those to be identical to the stated reasons. He wants this before
the jury because he has said he has no intention of calling Wilson to the
stand as his witness. He has said clearly that he does not stand by Wilson's
credibility and yet he wants the jury to buy into the Wilson revenge theory
first peddled by Ambassador Munchausen and his pals David Corn, Ray McGovern
and Marc Grossman. It's that simple.
Wilson is radioactive and will be demolished by the defense, so Fitzgerald
wants to distract the jury's attention from that indisputable and damaging
fact while forwarding Wilson's attack on the Administration. Put Wilson's
article in front of the jury, not the man himself.
In this latest pleading, the Prosecutor contends that he wants to show how
beginning from the date of the op-ed, Libby's attention was focused on
responding to the issues in that article. Even then he is quick to add that
the statements in the article "may not be considered as proof of the matters
asserted therein." Indeed.
Of course, Ambassador Munchausen's tale of his truth-seeking Mission to
Niger actually began earlier, about May 2, 2003 at the Senate Democratic
Policy Committee Meeting, (now mysteriously scrubbed from its website),
during which he first peddled it to Nicholas Kristof. The tale continued on
for two months during which time he spoke to numerous journalists, all of
whom were equally focused on it. And some, including David Corn (who has
never been questioned in this inquiry), seemed to have knowledge (probably
from Wilson) of his wife's position in the agency. Libby says he has five or
more witnesses that Wilson outed his own wife, (and a wise bettor would put
his money on more.)
Fitzgerald also wants to show the jury annotations apparently made by Vice
President Cheney to the article to demonstrate that he and Libby were
focused on the assertions in the article and in responding to them.
So what? This is evidence in a case which the prosecutor claims is a small
case about perjury respecting conversations with three reporters. Nowhere in
the op-ed does Wilson mention his wife or her role or her employment. If
every article that caught an official's attention-because, I might say, it
involved a pack of lies harmful to an important matter-were to be considered
evidence of wrongdoing, no one would be safe from such ridiculous probes.
Fitzgerald also wants to offer in redacted form 5 other articles: the May 6,
2003, NYT article by Kristof; the June 12, 2003, Washington Post article by
Walter Pincus (which was a pack of lies, as I reported, and the Post, 2 ½
years after it was published, admitted), the June 30, 2003, New Republic
article by John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman; the July 14, 2003 Chicago Sun
Times article by Robert Novak and the July 17, 2003 Time.com article by
"Cooper and others".
As to the first three articles, Wilson was the admitted or obvious source.
Plame may as well have been a source for at least the Kristof piece. The
Novak article was sourced by the man Fitzgerald is protecting, apparently
Richard Armitage.
The Calibresi connection
It is curious that the prosecutor attributes the Time article to "Cooper and
others". One of those others was named Massimo Calibresi. Libby in prior
pleadings said that documents from Time he received from the prosecutor show
that Calibresi spoke to Wilson just prior to Cooper's call to him and just
after they spoke.
The article made assertions about leaks to harm Wilson which came from the
creative pens of the authors, and not the conversation with Libby. Indeed, I
suspect it was prewritten and the call was pretextual. The article might
have been already prepared, perhaps in relevant part even dictated by the
Ambassador himself.
But the prosecutor doesn't want to mention Calibresi as a co-author because
he doesn't want us to focus on the hocus-pocus behind that article.
Introduction of the article as evidence is intended to prejudice the jury.
The rationale
What specific reasons are offered for presenting such prejudicial material
to the jury?
Context "for evidence of conversations concerning Mr. Wilson's wife" is
claimed for the Kristof article - in which Wilson's name and his wife's are
never mentioned. For the Pincus article, now completely though tardily
discounted by the publisher, also doesn't mention Wilson or his wife.
Fitzgerald claims that because it increased media attention to the "un-named
Ambassador's trip" and motivated defendant to respond, it makes it more
"likely that the defendant's disclosures to the press concerning Mr.
Wilson's wife were not casual disclosures that he had forgotten."
In other words, to those not impaired by tunnel vision, responding to the
lies that were published means one had to be focused on an incidental matter
of infinitely less significance. And the more the lies about the trip were
spread in the media, according to the Prosecutor, the more certain it is
that responders had to focus on an ancillary, almost irrelevant matter not
reported in any of those stories.
In Fitzgerald's view, to note lies in an article is evidence of wrongdoing.
And so, too, is the fact that the lies are spreading. There is simply no
other rational way to view the rickety scaffold of "evidence" the prosecutor
is trying to erect.
Even evidence that you spoke with care to an aide about media lies, is
evidence of wrongdoing. Fitzgerald wants to introduce into evidence the New
Republic article
"because it caused the defendant to speak with Ambassador Eric Edelman
(who just left his position as defendant's Principal Deputy) in late June
2003 and discuss the fact that they could not talk about the former
Ambassador's trip because of 'complications' at the CIA which could not be
further discussed on an open telephone line."
The caution about the call relates to the National Intelligence Estimate,
not Plame, but I strongly suspect that Fitzgerald used it otherwise before
the grand jury and is attempting to try the same trick yet again.
Equally as preposterous is the rationale offered for submitting the Novak
article, for which we know Libby was not the source. The source - Armitage
it seems - is being protected by the Prosecutor in this ostensible
investigation of who leaked the information.
Fitzgerald says it is important the jury see the Novak article because on
the day it was published
"A CIA official was asked in the defendant's presence by another person in
the OVP, whether the CIA official had read that column. (The CIA official
had not.) At some time thereafter.the CIA official discussed in the
defendant's presence the dangers posed by disclosure of the CIA affiliation
of one of its employees as had occurred in the Novak column."
Therefore, the prosecutor argues, he has found a motive for Libby to lie.
Shrinkage
Let's review the shrinkage of the prosecution's case. He states in his
indictment that Plame was "classified" but now concedes he will not put in
evidence that she is. He stated in his press conference that disclosure of
her identity "harmed us all" and at the May 4 hearing said he was not
putting in evidence of that though he might argue "potential harm."
Now he's saying that someone from the CIA said to someone else in a room
where Libby happened to be that there might be unspecified "dangers" in the
revelation of this information. From that he argues that Libby, who had no
idea that the information being bruited about-largely, I think by Ambassador
Munchausen himself- was classified and might cause "danger", purposely lied
about conversations with reporters in which evidence of any deliberate
leaking is virtually non-existent.
I think the "classified" charge having been sunk in the harbor, Fitzgerald
is trying to use this conversation to pretend to the jury that there was
something really secret about Plame's identity and harmful about its
disclosure. And remember the agency we are talking about has been the source
of enormous leaks clearly harmful to national security. In fact, I think the
only "danger" in the disclosure is that it reveals the perfidy and
incompetence of certain people within the Agency respecting the Wilson
Gambit.
As to the article in Time written, as the prosecution notes "by Cooper and
others" (sweeping under the rug Calibresi and his patent collusion with
Wilson), Fitzgerald says the evidence of wrongful intent is that the Office
of the Vice President (OVP) contacted the magazine to complain of the
selective "on the record" quote by Libby.
And the evidence of Libby's crime in this is? In the words of the
prosecutor:
"The effort to include the defendant's full quote, while at the same time
offering no dispute as to the characterization of anonymous government
officials concerning Ms Plame, is important because the Cooper article
asserts that government officials had intimated that Ms Plame was involved
in sending Mr. Wilson on the trip."
So, officials, be forewarned if you demand a correction about what you said.
For if you do not at the same time deny assertions about what others
reportedly said, you are offering up to counsel like Fitzgerald evidence of
your own wrongdoing.
Why would Libby deny a claim that officials confirmed the report of Plame's
role when (a) he didn't; and (b) he has no idea who, if anyone, did?
Remember that, according to the indictment, Cooper said only that Libby,
when asked about Plame's role in sending her husband to Niger, said "I heard
that, too." And though in the Time article Cooper suggests that he'd
received "confirmation" of the report from persons who are ostensibly Libby
and Rove, no real journalist would regard Libby's remarks as confirmation of
anything. Evidence that Cooper didn't regard the statement as confirmation,
either, is the contemporaneous email he sent his editor saying Time should
call the CIA's public affairs officer, Bill Harlow, to confirm it.
More media materials
Fitzgerald also indicates he may refer to but not offer in evidence some
other media materials. The most risible claim respecting these is the
rationale for referring to the annotated copies of an October 2003 Seymour
Hersh article in the New Yorker. The annotations seem to Fitzgerald to show
that Libby's claim that he was too focused on national security matters to
notice anything about Plame are undercut by the fact that they were
annotating articles in the media which most certainly undercut
Administration positions on national security.
Or it may be that his reason for wanting to refer to the July 17, 2003 Wall
Street Journal editorial "Yellowcake Remix" which contained quotations from
Libby's transmittal of a copy of the portions of the 2002 National
Intelligence Estimate is even more laughable. Fitzgerald, revealing once
again his ignorance of Washington, says this:
"This evidence is relevant to establish that during the relevant time
frame in July 2003, the defendant, notwithstanding other pressing government
business was heavily focused on shaping media coverage of the controversy
concerning Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from Niger."
As if media coverage was irrelevant to Libby's duties of helping to shape
and explain the Administration's position on the war!!
I'd say from the discovery proceedings to date, the Prosecution cannot and
will not show that Plame was "classified," that it cannot and will not show
that disclosure of her identity caused any harm, that the person who did do
that has not and will be charged, that it has yet to show even potential
harm, and that it is a far way from showing that Libby had the slightest
motive to lie. And that the stench of selective prosecution is unmistakable
I think the case is taking on lots of water and the Prosecutor is quite
frankly out of his depth.
Note on Libby's filing
Libby's filing is shorter and largely responds to the Judge's request for a
more detailed briefing on his claim that Rule 16 of the Federal Rules of
Criminal Procedure which requires the government to give the defendant
statements it intends to use at trial relates to potential defense
witnesses (as opposed to government witnesses).
He says he needs them to "counter the charges in the indictment, corroborate
testimony, and [for] leads to other admissible evidence." His most important
stated reason to obtain the documents he seeks under the rule is that they
"will illuminate, among other things, how these witnesses learned that
Valerie Plame worked for the CIA, whether they understood her employment
status to be covert or classified and whether they disclosed information
about Ms. Wilson to anyone else."
Clarice Feldman is an attorney in Washington, DC
http://americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5494
--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. Proudly then, even more so in hindsight.
.
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