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one press conference on this matter (the one announcing Libby's prosecution for perjury and obstruction), that both who the perps are and WHY they outed Plame are a grave matter of national security. Further, it was the CIA who requested the investigation.
When you say that Republicans and Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald have "very carefully narrowed" the "inquiry," you are reversing the truth. Libby is the one who "narrowed" the "inquiry." That is why he is being prosecuted. As Fitzgerald said, he is "throwing dust in the eyes of the umpire." He is OBSTRUCTING the inquiry.
And the inquiry is not over. Fitzgerald has been strongly pointing at a conspiracy, led by Cheney (but personally, I think, was ultimately masterminded by Rumsfeld), in the Libby indictment, in pretrial documents, and in the trial itself. A lot of new items have come out at the trial, pointing at Cheney yet more. I really don't think he's done with this investigation--by any means.
How Fitzgerald works--his record as a prosecutor--is exactly this way. He indicts the underlings for perjury and obstruction, and he is very patient as to nurturing that pressure along, until something cracks open. And I think he is very smart to NOT prosecute on the main crime NOW. Bush could pardon people on the main crime, but not on perjury (or not easily on perjury). (Bush in fact can do anything he wants to. Who's to stop him? I'm talking about what he thinks he can get away with. He's already got a rebellion in the Republican Party on the war.)
Yeah, it's odd that all the people who have ADMITTED to outing Plame either have known deals with Fitzgerald to testify against Libby in the trial, or have deals we don't know about (Rove) to testify behind closed doors to the GJ. But I am not at all ready to dismiss all this as Republican politics, nor to dismiss Fitzgerald as a Republican tool. I just don't think it's true. We all have to make judgments of people in positions of power. Mine of Fitzgerald is that he is very much a straight-shooter. I think he has good reasons for going about this investigation the way he has. For instance, Rove was red herring. He was just a political operative of the outing--whom Libby initially tried to pin it on. But Rove didn't mastermind it. He couldn't have. This was no political rogue act. As Fitzgerald has painstakingly shown, it is a deep conspiracy, generated from the VP's office. He got through the first layer of coverup (Rove did it for political reasons). Now he's at the second layer of coverup (Cheney did it for political reasons.) (I think the inner skin of this onion of coverups is that Rumsfeld did it for STRATEGIC war reasons--because someone in the Brewster-Jennings network had detected and foiled a scheme to PLANT nukes in Iraq, as followup to the Niger/Iraq nuke forgeries).
What I see Fitzgerald doing is batting away Rove, batting away Ari Fleischer and Richard Armitage, batting away Judith Miller and Robert Novak, and--and all the flak they and Libby were spreading around ("everybody knew"), and, like a bulldog, pursuing Dick Cheney.
As for Walton, and the instruction to the jury, he is RIGHT ON. They MUST NOT be distracted by what the main crime was, or who else might be responsible for it. For a perjury/obstruction charge to work, to be upheld, and to put Libby under pressure to give up the main perps, the jury must strictly consider what Libby said under oath. Was it a lie or not? And did his lies and other actions obstruct the investigation? (--which they surely did). (He tried to throw blame off Cheney, by lying about who he heard Plame's identity from.) It's no business of the jury's, really, whether there even was a main crime (--though there surely was, and it was the crime of treason). The investigator, Fitzgerald, was charged with finding out if there was, and if so, who did it. (Was it a political accident? Was it a deliberate conspiracy?) (ALL facts so far point strongly to conspiracy.) But to get this critical conviction for perjury/obstruction, the jury's deliberations must be clean, and the conviction firm against appeal. It DOESN'T MATTER if Plame was covert or not, or even if she was outed, or not. The CIA said she was. They referred it for investigation and prosecution, and Libby LIED in the course of the Special Prosecutor trying to find out the truth.
From what I can see, Fitzgerald was absolutely right to limit this trial to THAT factual situation. It was LIBBY's lawyers who tried to widen the scope! --precisely because they KNEW, if it got all mucked up with Cheney and treason and outing CIA agents and war, Libby would be lost in the shuffle. Libby, one of the main keys to Cheney's guilt, might be forgiven for lying (or have his conviction reversed) BECAUSE OF Cheney's guilt. And thus the chain of pressure would be broken. Libby as victim. (And his lawyers most definitely tried to play that card in their opening statement.)
This is a very, very tangled case, not because what happened is all that unclear, but because of the tangle of lies that were woven around it. Fitzgerald has been brilliant in untangling that web. I do know what dangerous criminals these are, and how they might be manipulating events. ANYBODY could be bought, and ANYBODY could be threatened, with evil men like these in charge. It's my read on it that that has not happened to Fitzgerald and his team, and that it's not over. At minimum, we will have a GJ report naming Cheney as an unindicted co-conspirator (with Fitzgerald throwing the matter to Congress). (Note: In Jefferson's Rules, a grand jury can submit a privileged bill of impeachment to the House, just as a state legislature can. But if Fitzgerald names Cheney, he may not have to go that far.)
The "aspens" may have this one figured out, and have prepared their VP replacement, which MIGHT give whoever it is an advantage in '08. I don't think it will, but that may be their plan. And Cheney may be trying to widen the war in the Middle East to prevent his being dumped. I DO think there is a Bush/Cheney split among the "aspens" (Republican bigwigs), and that this is why: Cheney is guilty of treason (felony outing of a covert CIA agent and an entire covert WMD counter-proliferation network), and Fitzgerald is very close to being able to prove it.
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